The Effect of Public Infrastructure on the Private Productive Sector of Spanish Regions

In this paper we analyze the effect of infrastructure on the cost and productivity performance of the private productive sector of Spanish regions over the period 1980–1993. We use a dual approach based on cost functions that allows us to recover the usual parameters estimated with production functions. In addition, we obtain rates of return and cost elasticities of production factors at the regional level. Our framework explicitly considers that some factors are quasi-fixed and their volume can differ from their optimal endowment levels. Our results indicate that the public sector has contributed significantly to enhance productivity and reduce costs in the private sector of almost every Spanish region. Nevertheless, there is still scope for the government to continue its investment efforts, given that there remains an appreciable gap between observed and optimal public capital, and we find that in the long run, public capital promotes private investment.     

The Subject of the King and a Mercantile Ideology in Early Modern Spain

This article proposes an interpretation of Lope de Vega's El Brasil Restituido (1625) that points to the political, military, and economic crises of Spain in Europe as the underlying themes of the representation of the retaking of the Brazilian colony of Bahía from the Dutch. The Spanish monarchy faced a major challenge to its European supremacy during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. Not only was its military power being frontally contested at different sites of Europe, but its political and economic influence was rapidly deteriorating as well. One of the goals of the Count-Duke of Olivares, the powerful prime minister of Phillip IV, was to regain European leadership by mobilizing the mercantile segments of Spain. The play illustrates the confluence of two ideological systems during the transformation of Spanish feudal society. On the one hand, the dominant ideology of blood purity legitimizes the seigniorial structure of lineage; on the other hand, the representation of a new merchant as a good servant of the king discloses the important role that a mercantile enterprise and ethos had acquired in the formation of a subject to the monarchy.     

Institutional Change in Land Planning: Two Cases from Galicia

Why do societies implement land policies? A number of arguments have been put forward in the literature, ranging from economic conceptions based on market failure and the problem of negative externalities to a more social conception based on welfare distribution and collaborative planning. However, neither all societies with similar market failures or negative externalities develop and implement land planning nor implemented land planning always results from collaborative planning. The arguments found in the literature seem not to fit the reality and, in most cases, cannot explain why societies create or undertake innovations in land planning. Within the framework of institutional change theory and based on the analysis of the emergence of two land planning devices—a land use law and a land banking law—in Galicia, Northwest Spain, this paper argues that land planning is developed to tackle negative outcomes of former institutional setups. However, the negativity of such outcomes is measured not in terms of economic performance, but in terms of social acceptance. The search for a workable definition of property within the Galician society seems to be the main driver of institutional change in land use planning analysed in this paper.     

Portugal’s Declaration During the Negotiation of the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage: International Protection and Cooperation versus Possession

Portugal was the second country in Western Europe to ratify the 2001 UNESCO Convention, a pivotal step that occurred on September 21, 2006. In 2000 the Portuguese delegation presented a statement in the UNESCO meeting for the draft Convention, the substance of which emphasises the protection and cooperation principles concerning the underwater cultural heritage rather than the issue of its possession. In 2008, the discovery of a sixteenth century Portuguese shipwreck near Oranjemund, Namibia, confirmed that the referred statement opened a premonitory strategic window for the conciliation of interests of States around such examples of common heritage.     

Wave Hindcasting and Anchoring Activities in Ancient Harbours: The Impact of Coastal Dynamics on Ancient Carthago Nova (Cartagena,Spain)

Journal of Maritime Archaeology - This study analyses nautical harbour activities and their spatial distribution using a high-resolution method of wind-wave hindcasting, in order to identify the...     

Micro-photogrammetric and morphometric differentiation of cut marks on bones using metal knives,quartzite, and flint flakes

In a previous article, we presented an innovative method to analyze cut marks produced with metal tools on animal bones from a metrical and tridimensional perspective (Maté-González et al. 2015). Such analysis developed a low-cost alternative technique to traditional microscopic methods for the tridimensional reconstruction of marks, using their measurements and sections. This article presents the results of an experimental study to test this photogrammetric and morphometric method for differentiating cut marks generated with metal, flint, and quartzite flakes. The results indicate statistically significant differences among cut marks produced by these three types of raw material. These results encourage the application of this method to archeological assemblages in order to establish a link between carcass processing and lithic reduction sequences on different raw materials and also to define the kind of tools used during butchery.