Matías Mayor (p), Francisco Jose Delgado, Santiago Lago-Peñas

Jesus Mur

The aim of this paper is to study the role of municipal quality of life as a driver of tax strategic interactions among local governments. A number of studies point out the existence of strategic interactions using spatial econometrics models where spatial weights are mostly based on non-economic criteria or basic economic variables such as per capita GDP. In this study, we propose a more sophisticated well-being indicator of municipal quality of life as the driver for these interactions. In order to deal with potential endogeneity of this mechanism we rely upon instrumental variables estimators. The empirical analysis focuses on the main local tax in Spain –the property tax- and on the municipalities above 50,000 inhabitants, and it confirms the relevance of differentials in quality of life to understand tax choices. 

Lisa Gianmoena (p), Vicente Rios Ibanez

Matías Mayor

This study analyzes the drivers of CO2 emissions. To that aim, we focus on
a sample of 123 countries during the period 1991-2014. Spatial Bayesian Model
Selection and Model Averaging techniques are used in order to examine the empirical
relevance of i) spatial functional forms, ii) spatial weight matrices and iii) a large set
of factors that could affect CO2 emissions. Our findings suggest that CO2 emissions
are mainly determined by economic factors.

Jesus Mur (p), Jan Hauke, Tomasz Kossowski

Lisa Gianmoena

The purpose of our paper is to carry out an in-depth analysis of the crosssectional
relationships existing in the Polish labour market. To that end, we are going to use the main
layers of the Polish territorial administration: voivodeships, or provinces, and powiats, or counties.
The analysis is going to be focused on the short-run dynamics of the spatial relations using, when
possible, high frecuency series. Our main concern is to check for the stability of the spatial structure
across time. We do expect to find evidence of several breakpoints, related to exceptional shocks suffered
by this economy in the last decades. If we corroborate this assumption, the next stage is to evaluate
the importance of the changes, for which it will be necessary to model the cross-sectional relationships
that prevailed before and after the shocks. This information would allows us to characterize the
spatial pattern of the changes and fo formulate some hypotheses about their generation and launching
mechanism.