The weight of the housing tenancy market in Spain is very low. It is frequently argued that an ineffective judicial system, implying a cumbersome procedure to evict a non-paying tenant or simply requiring a long period to execute a decision, may be an important determinant of the tenancy...

After steady employment growth since the 1990s, Spain has experienced the sharpest increase in unemployment among OECD countries during the crisis, amplified by structural problems of the labour market. Very high de facto severance payment of permanent contracts has resulted in a rigid dual...

We exploit historical differences in foral law to consistently estimate the contribution of the quality of enforcement institutions to economic specialization across Spanish provinces in the period 1999-2014. The distribution of economic activity in Spain as of today shows a strong pattern of...

We examine the contribution of economic and institutional transitions as two potential sources of subnational economic growth in Spain. To this end, we exploit the economic reforms of the 1959 Stabilization Plan (as an example of technocratic, economy-oriented reform) and the democratic...

Setting limits on government action is critical to economic development. Some forms of government organization, such as market-preserving federalism, seem effective to protect property rights in the long term with good results for economic efficiency. Spain endowed its regions with “Statutes...

This paper studies for the first time the impact on various measures of economic efficiency of regulatory complexity by sector in Spain. We base our analysis on an innovative database that classifies 206,777 regulations by economic sector and region, which highlights the growing volume of...

Complex or poorly drafted regulations are more difficult for economic agents to implement, eroding economic efficiency. The literature has so far concentrated on the analysis of regulatory complexity as a phenomenon related to the “quantity” of norms. Regulation can also be complex because...