BUSCADOR RECOLECTA

Consider the problem of locating a public facility taking into account the agents' preferences. To construct strategy-proof social choice rules, we propose a new preference domain that allows agents to have any single-peaked or any single-dipped preference on the location of the facility such that the peak/dip of the preference is in her own location. We characterize all strategy-proof rules in this general framework and study the conditions under which this family of strategy-proof rules includes non-dictatorial rules that have more than two alternatives in the range or that are Pareto efficient. Finally, we characterize for some focal cases all strategy-proof and Pareto efficient rules., Financial support from Fundación Ramón Areces and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the projects ECO2015-64330-P and ECO2015-65701-P, is gratefully acknowledged.

We calibrate a two-country New Keynesian model with endogenous portfolio choice and valuation effects to discuss the determinants of the increase in Canadian Net Foreign Assets with the US
observed after 2012. Furthermore, we discuss the shocks that may explain the “reversed two-way”
capital flows pattern recently characterizing the Canada-US asset trading: Canada has a negative
position on bond holdings owned by US investors while a positive balance emerges on its equity
holdings from US firms. The combination of a global technology shock, the US fiscal contraction,
an adverse wage-push shock in the US and the greater monetary stimulus in the US than in Canada
(QE) provide insights to describe the recent capital flows between Canada and the US. Both the
QE and the negative wage-push shock in the US play a crucial role as explanatory factors through
substantial valuation effects., Miguel Casares would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish government (research project ECO2015-64330-P)

The authors examine optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian model with unemployment and financial frictions where banks produce loans using equity as collateral. Firms and households demand loans to finance externally a fraction of their flows of expenditures. Our findings show amplifying business-cycle effects of a more rigid loan production technology. In the monetary policy analysis, the optimal rule clearly outperforms a Taylor-type rule. The optimized interest-rate response to the external finance premium turns significantly negative when either banking rigidities are high or when financial shocks are the only source of business cycle fluctuations., The authors are grateful to Banco de Espana for the grant on the project 'Politica monetaria en economias con fricciones financieras y bancarias.' Luca Deidda gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Italian Ministero dell'Universita, PRIN, Fondazione Banco di Sardegna, and Fundaçao para Ciencia ea Tecnologia, Portugal. Miguel Casares and Jose E. Galdon-Sanchez also acknowledge Spanish Ministerio de Economia for research project ECO2015-64330-P.

We analyse inflation and inflation differentials in the euro area allowing for long memory and a new type of limiting theory denoted fixed-bandwidth. Our results differ from those based on standard normal asymptotics and the short memory assumption, and we also find that the inflation differentials between 'core' and 'peripheral' countries are strongly persistent. 'Core' economies appear to have less persistent differentials and may be more integrated, while 'peripheral' countries with high inflation may find themselves under competitive pressure for a long time., Javier Hualde’s research is supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad through project ECO2015-64330-P.

This paper examines the link between ethnic segregation and domestic terrorism. The results show that ethnic segregation has a positive and significant effect on the incidence of domestic terrorism, which indicates that countries where ethnic groups are spatially concentrated face a higher risk of suffering this type of violence. This finding is not affected by the inclusion in the analysis of different covariates that may affect both ethnic segregation and domestic terrorism. The observed relationship between the degree of spatial concentration of ethnic groups and domestic terrorism is confirmed by various robustness tests. The results also suggest that the threat of secession is an important transmission channel linking ethnic segregation and domestic terrorism., This research has benefited from the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [project number ECO2015-64330-P].

This paper computes the steady-state optimal rate of inflation assuming two different sticky-price
specifications, Calvo (1983) and Taylor (1980), in a model with monopolistic competition. The optimal
rate of inflation in steady state is always positive. This result is robust to changes in the degree of
price stickiness. In both cases of staggered prices, the optimal rate of inflation is approximately equal
to the ratio between the rate of discount and the Dixit-Stiglitz elasticity., Asier Aguilera-Bravo gratefully acknowledges financial support from Fundación Banco Sabadell, Fundación Bancaria Caja Navarra and Universidad Pública de Navarra. Miguel Casares would like to acknowledge financial support from the Spanish government (research project ECO2015-64330-P).

We consider inference for the mean of a general stationary process based on standardizing the sample mean by a frequency domain estimator of the long run variance. Here, the main novelty is that we consider alternative asymptotics in which the bandwidth is kept fixed. This does not yield a consistent estimator of the long run variance, but, for the weakly dependent case, the studentized sample mean has a Student- limit distribution, which, for any given bandwidth, appears to be more precise than the traditional Gaussian limit. When data are fractionally integrated, the fixed bandwidth limit distribution of the studentized mean is not standard, and we derive critical values for various bandwidths. By a Monte Carlo experiment of finite sample performance we find that this asymptotic result provides a better approximation than other proposals like the test statistic based on the Memory Autocorrelation Consistent (MAC) estimator of the variance of the sample mean., Javier Hualde’s research is supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad through project ECO2015-64330-P.

The volatility of unemployment fluctuations has been about 3 times higher in Spain than in Germany over the recent business cycles (1996-2013). In contrast, fluctuations of the rate of wage inflation were significantly more volatile in Germany than in Spain. We estimate a New-Keynesian model and find several explanatory factors: wage rigidity has been higher in Spain, the labor force has been more elastic in Germany than in Spain, large and persistent shocks augmenting the labor force have been estimated for Spain whereas in Germany there have been substantial shocks reducing the intensity of hours per worker, and the ECB’s policy design brought monetary shocks with much greater influence to the Spanish unemployment., Miguel Casares and Jesús Vázquez acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía (research projects ECO2015-64330-P and ECO2013-43773P, respectively).

This paper examines the relationship between quality of government and regional resilience in the European Union during the Great Recession. The results show that the quality of government is an important factor when shaping the regional reaction to the crisis. Our estimates reveal that higher quality of government is associated with greater regional resilience over the Great Recession. This is partly due to the role played in this context by spatial spillovers induced by the quality of government in neighbouring regions. The observed link between governance and regional resilience is robust to the inclusion in the analysis of different explanatory variables that may affect both government quality and regional resilience. Likewise, our findings do not depend on the specific dimension of governance considered, the estimation method or the econometric specification employed to capture the nature of spatial spillovers., This research has benefited from the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Projects ECO2015-64330-P and ECO2016-76681-R).

Selenocyanates and diselenides are potential antitumor agents. Here we report two series of selenium derivatives related to selenocyanates and diselenides containing carboxylic, amide and imide moieties. These compounds were screened for their potency and selectivity against seven tumor cell lines and two non-malignant cell lines. Results showed that MCF-7 cells were especially sensitive to the treatment, with seven compounds presenting GI50 values below 10 μM. Notably, the carboxylic selenocyanate 8b and the cyclic imide 10a also displayed high selectivity for tumor cells. Treatment of MCF-7 cells with these compounds resulted in cell cycle arrest at S phase, increased levels of pJNK and pAMPK and caspase independent cell death. Autophagy inhibitors wortmannin and chloroquine partially prevented 8b and 10a induced cell death. Consistent with autophagy, increased Beclin1 and LC3-IIB and reduced SQSTM1/p62 levels were detected. Our results point to 8b and 10a as autophagic cell death inducers., The research leading to these results has received funding from 'La Caixa' Banking Foundation. P. Garnica wishes to express his gratitude to the Asociación de Amigos de la Universidad de Navarra for the pre-doctoral fellowship. Furthermore, the authors wish to express their gratitude to the Plan de Investigación de la Universidad de Navarra, PIUNA (Ref 2014–26 ) as well as Calgary Foundation for financial support for the project.

In a fractional cointegration setting we derive the fixed bandwidth limiting theory of a class of estimators of the cointegrating parameter which are constructed as ratios of weighted periodogram averages. These estimators offer improved limiting properties over those of more standard approaches like ordinary least squares or narrow band least squares estimation. These advantages have been justified by means of traditional asymptotic theory and here we explore whether these improvements still hold when considering the alternative fixed bandwidth theory and, more importantly, whether this latter approach provides a more accurate approximation to the sampling distribution of the corresponding test statistics. This appears to be relevant, especially in view of the typical oversizing displayed by Wald statistics when confronted to the standard limiting theory. A Monte Carlo study of finite-sample behaviour is included., Javier Hualde’s research is supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad through project ECO2015-64330-P.

This paper disentangles the ethnic drivers of the effect of food-related income shocks on African conflict employing geo-localized information. We consider diversity and political ethnic variables and several conflict definitions. We find that differentiating between organized armed-force and non-organized conflict can be more informative than between factor and output conflict. We show evidence that conflict is driven by the opportunity cost and state capacity mechanisms. Furthermore, ethnic cleavages have a large role in the transmission process of income shocks on organized armed-force conflict; whereas their role in non-organized violence is more limited. The sensitivity to ethnic heterogeneity for producer-price and droughts shocks is much larger than for consumer-price changes., Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Projects ECO2015-64330-P and ECO2015-70540-P) is gratefully acknowledged.

The authors report empirical evidence indicating that US business formation has recently turned
more volatile, procyclical and persistent due to changes in exit dynamics. To study these
stylized facts, we estimate a DSGE model with endogenous entry and exit. Business units
feature heterogeneous productivity and they shut down if the present value of expected
future dividends falls below the current liquidation value. The estimation results imply
structural changes in US exit dynamics after 2007: the semi-elasticity of the exit rate to
critical productivity has increased and the average plant-level productivity has decreased., Miguel Casares would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish government (research project
ECO2015-64330-P) and Banco de España.

This article examines the link between interregional inequality and civil conflict in a panel of 125 countries over the period 1993¿2013. The results show that the level of interregional inequality has a positive and statistically significant effect on the incidence of civil conflict, which implies that countries with higher regional income disparities are more likely to experience internal violence. This result is not driven by a specific group of influential countries and is robust to the inclusion in the analysis of a substantial set of covariates that may affect both interregional inequality and civil conflict. Likewise, the observed link between regional income disparities and internal violence does not depend either on the estimation strategy or the measures used to quantify the degree of interregional inequality and the incidence of civil conflict within the various countries. These results suggest that policies designed to decrease the magnitude of regional income disparities may contribute to reducing the incidence of civil conflict., This research has benefited from the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [ProjectECO2015-64330-P].

This paper examines the role played by spatial spillovers in shaping the regional distribution of quality of government across the European Union. To do so, it constructs a hybrid spatial weights matrix combining geographical, technological and social distances between the European regions. The results reveal that the quality of government in neighbouring regions has a positive and statistically significant effect on one region¿s quality of government, which highlights the relevance of spatial effects in this context. This finding is robust to the inclusion in the analysis of different variables that may affect regional governance. Likewise, the observed effect of neighbouring regions does not depend on the specific dimension of governance considered, the spatial weights matrix used to describe the spatial linkages between the European regions, or the econometric specification employed to capture the nature of spatial spillovers. The results also show that policy innovations related to governance spread from regions with high and intermediate levels of quality of government., This research benefited from the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities [project numbers ECO2015-64330-P, ECO2016-76681-R and PGC2018-093542-B-I00].

This paper investigates the empirical relationship between globalisation and civil conflict in a sample of 159 countries over the period 1972–2009. To that end, we use a measure of globalisation that distinguishes the social and political dimensions of integration from the economic dimension, thus allowing us to adopt a broader perspective than in most of existing studies. The results show that the inclusion of country fixed effects removes the statistical association between the degree of integration with the rest of the world and the incidence of internal conflict. We present instrumental variables estimates that also show no causal effect of globalisation on civil conflict. These findings do not depend either on the specific dimension of globalisation considered or the measure of conflict used in the analysis. Likewise, the absence of a relationship between globalisation and civil conflict is not driven by countries located in the most conflictive regions in the world., This research has benefited from the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Projects ECO2011‐29314‐C02‐01 and ECO2015‐64330‐P).

The article examines the link between ethnic segregation and spatial inequality in 71 countries with different levels of economic development. The results reveal that ethnic segregation is associated with significantly higher levels of spatial inequality. This finding is not affected by the inclusion of various covariates that may influence both spatial inequality and the geographical distribution of ethnic groups, and is confirmed by a number of robustness tests. The results also suggest that political decentralisation and government quality could act as transmission channels linking ethnic segregation and spatial inequality., This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Projects ECO2011-29314-C02-01 and ECO2015-64330-P).