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Businesses use their resources and abilities to maximise their efficiency, and the implementation of innovative tactics has become common in recent years. Based on the evaluation of a performance model based on the variables of the Cobb-Douglas production function, the present paper intends to empirically confront the ways in which Spanish agribusinesses and farming companies, particularly the ones located in the Murcia region, can improve their management through their efficiency and their relation to innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides the main results of a more comprehensive project on the current situation of the Galician audiovisual (AUGAL) approaching, in this concrete case, the sector of the film production for Cinema and Television. The effects that the economic crisis is causing in this area of the industry are studied in it. In order to understand the situation, we firstly make a thorough analysis of its evolution all through this last decade, of the undertaken strategies of action and of the short-term trends of production. And we finally reflect on the future prospects for this second decade of the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study introduces a Spatial Efficiency Index. Its definition is based on the traditional concepts of 'technology set' and 'distance function', as well as on spatial econometric methods. This index measures productive efficiency in each productive unit in relation to its close environment, instead of comparing each unit with all others. This way both local efficiency patterns and the highest local efficiency inequalities can be identified. An empirical application was developed so as to analyse data from Small and Medium sized Spanish Industrial Enterprises, using nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis techniques. Our proposal is a contribution to the development of indexes that explicitly include proximity relations-a field with countless research possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A longstanding basis of empirical economics is that average labour productivity declines during recessions and increases during booms, and thus behaves procyclically. In the short run, in many countries output growth and productivity tend to move together and across a wide range of industries. In recent years, this observation has gained increased prominence as each proposed explanation for the observed procyclicality has important implications for modelling the business cycle and measuring the technical change. By filtering out the influence of business cycles, it is possible to isolate changes in the long run, or structural rate, of productivity growth and so assess the importance of any source for economic growth. Nevertheless, the focus of these empirical works has been the aggregate economy or manufacturing industries, and not the services sector. The novelty of this paper is the focus on the patterns within the services sector. The aim of this paper is to better understand short-run changes in productivity growth within the service sector industries, which are necessarily different from those existing within the manufacturing sector. Another goal of this research is to assess whether this observed procyclicality remains if the service sector is the scope of analysis, and whether this is homogeneous among the different activities within this miscellaneous sector or not. Empirical evidence for the Spanish economy since 1980 is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates the structure and dynamism of business services in the Region of Madrid compared to the EU-15 countries. It focuses on the comparative analysis of productivity and its components, as well as a specific geographical and locational study of these services in the Region of Madrid. The sector productivity structure of countries and regions is similar. From this, it may be deduced that productivity units of the different countries, within the same branch, use fairly similar productivity methods and technologies. Through the analysis of the relative size of the different branches rendering business services, important discrepancies regarding processes of economic organisation between the regions studied may be deduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the process of provincial convergence in labour productivity that has taken place in Spain between 1985 and 2002. In order to quantify the influence of space on the convergence process, it applies a spatial econometric approach, concluding that although spatial effects do indeed exist, they do not seem to be too relevant for the aforementioned process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the effect of public infrastructure on private factor productivity and efficiency in the Spanish regions. The focus is on the role of investment in public infrastructure and on analysing how the relative endowments of public to private capital affect productivity growth. The results obtained indicate that, although public investment contributes to enhance private productivity growth, the less productive regions are suffering from a relative deficit of private capital. Other variables that might condition productivity (i.e., human capital, asymmetries in the economic cycle, and the sector structure) are also considered. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Efficiency estimation in stochastic frontier models typically assumes that the underlying production technology is the same for all firms. There might, however, be unobserved differences in technologies that might be inappropriately labeled as inefficiency if such variations in technology are not taken into account. We address this issue by estimating a latent class stochastic frontier model in a panel data framework. An application of the model is presented using Spanish banking data. Our results show that bank-heterogeneity can be fully controlled when a model with four classes is estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between convergence in GDP per worker and the evolution of total factor productivity (TFP). Specifically, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to estimate TFP in the Spanish regions between 1964–91. As original contributions, public capital is included as a productive input, and different price indices are applied for each region, thus isolating any possible effect of price evolution on regional efficiency and convergence. Finally, the TFP indices are introduced into a neoclassical convergence equation. The findings show, in constrast to other studies, that convergence has taken place in TFP, though this process may have now run its course. It is also concluded that the convergence to be observed in labour productivity across the Spanish regions may be much more closely linked to catch-up in total factor productivity than to diminishing returns to productive factors, and that public capital has a relevant role as a production factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we have adapted productivity analysis to the case of a cost model using a quadratic cost function and discrete data. The main theoretical result is a productivity index that can be decomposed into modified versions of the contribution of technical change and the effect of the variations in the scale of production. This framework has been applied to the study of the Spanish electric sector from 1985 to 1996. during which relevant regulatory changes were introduced in order to increase productivity. For this, a normalized quadratic cost function was estimated. The results show important productivity gains with both technical change and scale effect playing important roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]