ALBERT

Description: In the present paper, we review the use of two-state, Generalized Auto Regressive Conditionally Heteroskedastic Markovian stochastic processes (MS-GARCH). These show the quantitative model of an active stock trading algorithm in the three main Latin-American stock markets (Brazil, Chile, and Mexico). By backtesting the performance of a U.S. dollar based investor, we found that the use of the Gaussian MS-GARCH leads, in the Brazilian market, to a better performance against a buy and hold strategy (BH). In addition, we found that the use of t-Student MS-ARCH models is preferable in the Chilean market. Lastly, in the Mexican case, we found that is better to use Gaussian time-fixed variance MS models. Their use leads to the best overall performance than the BH portfolio. Our results are of use for practitioners by the fact that MS-GARCH models could be part of quantitative and computer algorithms for active trading in these three stock markets.

Description: Poverty is one of the main indicators of economic development worldwide, in such a way that one of the Sustainable Development Goals is to eradicate poverty in all its forms worldwide. The objective of this research was to examine the effect of the gross value added (GVA) of tourism on poverty in the 198 contiguous Ecuadorian cantons. The methodology used was the application of a set of spatial econometric models to capture the regional effect of tourism on poverty. Data were obtained from the Central Bank of Ecuador and the National Survey of Employment, Unemployment and Under-Employment of the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC). The results show that tourism activities and regional poverty are negatively related; thus, a 1% increase in tourism-related economic activity decreases the regional poverty of the canton itself by 4.31%, and that of neighboring cantons by between 0.7% and 2.4%. The inclusion of the control variables shows that schooling and the mestizo population contribute to reducing the canton’s poverty, since the regions with a high GVA of tourism have high levels of schooling and a mestizo population. Thus, regional poverty increases when the level of schooling increases in neighboring cantons. On the other hand, in cantons with a high Mestizo population, compared to the African-American population, the poverty of the canton and its neighboring regions decreases. Public policy measures which aim at reducing poverty must take into account spatial spills from tourist activity in the cantons.

Description: This investigation seeks to explore the importance of agglomeration mechanisms in the location decisions of new manufacturing firms in Ecuador, based on sector and canton level data for the 2000–2010 period. A model is proposed to explore the relative importance of agglomeration mechanisms in location decisions of new manufacturing companies, a regression is performed using instrumental variables, the econometric estimation is developed, and an identification strategy is proposed. The results of the empirical analysis show that the learning mechanism, and history, have a positive and significant impact on the creation of new firms. An increase of 1% in the transfer of knowledge in the industries and cantons of the country is correlated with the increase in the location of new firms in the order of 9.2%. In turn, history has a positive and significant effect on the creation of new firms, in industries and cantons characterized by a past industrial environment. Even when the learning mechanism and history are controlled by provinces, sectors, and cantons, they continue to be the most important determinants of the location of new firms. This evidence could be attributed to the public investment in Ecuadorian industry in recent years. In this sense, the contribution of this work is found in the empirical distinction of the mechanism that favors or inhibits the location decisions of new companies. The analysis was replicated for a three-digit sectorial disaggregation level, to verify whether the agglomeration mechanisms operate differently on a different industrial scale. The results suggested that there were no differences to be considered. When the analysis was done excluding the cantons of Quito, Guayaquil, and Cuenca, given their high representation in terms of the birth of industries and employment, the results were consistent with those previously mentioned. However, it is so only with respect to history, which in this case accounts for 38.8% of the birth of firms; whereas, matching accounts for an order of 38.9% in the period of analysis. This result is explained in the context of the country’s industrial policy.

Description: The aim of this work is to identify community the initiatives anchored to community-based tourism (CBT) in Ecuador with the aim of providing an overview of the current reality of community tourism in the country, in addition to publicizing the product lines under development within community initiatives. The methodology used is a descriptive analysis based on the review of secondary sources, which reflect the reality of the different tourism initiatives related to the Plurinational Federation of Community Tourism of Ecuador (FEPTCE) at the level of continental Ecuador. FEPTCE groups indigenous, Afro–Ecuadorian, Montubian and mestizo communities, who depend on their territory and have identified tourism as a mechanism to continue living with dignity within these territories, due to the option of economic diversification that is generated. Within the communities that belong to the FEPTCE, living with dignity implies achieving a good quality of life, which is not based on satisfying a series of basic needs, but implies going further, achieving the idea of “Good Living”, that is to say, reaching an appreciation of well-being, based on the conception of the full set of what culture is, in order to generate comprehensive sustainability of its spaces. Among the main results, the distribution and coverage that the FEPTCE has within continental Ecuador regarding community tourism is shown and analyzed. As a formal network of community-based tourism, it is made up of five networks at the regional level and nine at the provincial or cantonal level, which are analyzed in this study. The consolidation of the initiatives launched has been difficult with only 83 of the initial 121 being active and only 18 registered as community tourist centers. This case study shows that in Ecuador the network approach as the first step in the development of the CBT worked. Therefore, the development of the CBT must be approached from a network approach in which indigenous peoples (indigenous, mestizo, Afro-descendant, etc.) participate, administrations, the private sector, civil society, NGOs and tourist destinations, to which they must to join academic institutions by contributing solid data obtained through research that helps tourism development.

Description: Two of the greatest challenges that threaten sustainable development are the water supply crisis together with the control of water resources pollution. The United Nations recognises that the right to safe drinking water and sanitation is an essential right, and states are called upon to intensify their efforts to provide the entire population with affordable access to safe drinking water. However, due to population growth and climate change, water resources are under great pressure, producing millions of cubic metres of wastewater. Due to the near impossibility of increasing water supply in a natural way, the importance of wastewater management as a method has grown in recent years, which, although it is not to increase the amount of this resource, but to facilitate its successive use before its final return to the sea. The objective of this article is to carry out a bibliometric analysis regarding the production and impact of the scientific research related to wastewater management indexed in the WoS and Scopus databases. The purpose is to know key aspects such as the progression of production over the years, maturity in research, coverage of the subject, identifying the most discussed topics and therefore identifying the gaps, the most relevant authors and the core of journals through which knowledge in this area is disseminated, as well as its impact through the analysis of citations. This analysis can help future researchers in this field by providing an overview of the current literature that helps them identify new research approaches to position their own work and identify the most relevant authors in this field. Likewise, a comparison is made on coverage and overlap between the two main international databases WoS and Scopus. From the analysis of the 211 articles selected through an advanced search by terms with a time limit set in 2018, it is concluded that we are facing a very incipient field of knowledge that has aroused great interest since 2010, with about half of the articles published in the period 2012–2018. Although WoS and Scopus differ in general terms in scope and coverage policies, both systems are complementary and not exclusive. In the specific area of wastewater management, Scopus is the base that provides the best coverage taking into account the number of articles published and the number of citations received.

Description: The aim of this research work is to analyze growth and convergence processes in the service sector and its large groups, market, and non-market services, at the regional level in Ecuador by taking the labor productivity variable as a reference. The methodology used is an analysis of distributive dynamics of the data, applying the non-parametric method of Kernel density functions from a mathematical economics approach. The results obtained show that the service sector has non-alarming levels of inequality, its trend over time is increasing. When disaggregating the data, it was observed that non-market services show a rapid growth in inequality. In contrast, market services show greater stability during the period analyzed. Regarding intra-distribution dynamics for the service sector and its subsectors, in the long term, poor regions improve, while rich regions deteriorate. However, deterioration of advanced regions is less intense in non-market services.

Description: In this paper, we test the use of Markov-switching (MS) GARCH (MSGARCH) models for trading either oil or natural gas futures. Using weekly data from 7 January 1994 to 31 May 2019, we tested the next trading rule: to invest in the simulated commodity if the investor expects to be in the low-volatility regime at t + 1 or to otherwise hold the risk-free asset. Assumptions for our simulations included the following: (1) we assumed that the investors trade in a homogeneous (Gaussian or t-Student) two regime context and (2) the investor used a time-fixed, ARCH, or GARCH variance in each regime. Our results suggest that the use of the MS Gaussian model, with time-fixed variance, leads to the best performance in the oil market. For the case of natural gas, we found no benefit of using our trading rule against a buy-and-hold strategy in the three-month U.S. Treasury bills.

Description: In Ecuador, the sectorial policies, public policies and state investment, increase the presence of polarized and polycentric territories with very heterogeneous characteristics and with asymmetric levels of economic growth and development. The explanation for the unequal growth of regions in Ecuador is determined by the existence of different types of asymmetries; that determine economic dynamics and non-convergent development processes. The aim of this research is to determine the effect of an increase in public spending on physical infrastructure and education, on the improvement of productive conditions and on the process of reducing disparities (convergence) at the regional level in Ecuador. To do this, the hypothesis of beta convergence will be tested, which is conditioned by the proxy variables of public expenditure or investment in infrastructure and education at provincial level, for the 2001–2015 period. The results show the existence of a "slight" process of convergence per capita and productivity, although with a significant level of territorial "segregation". In the same way, it is observed that public investment made in this period did not increase the productivity of small and medium-sized provinces significantly, severely conditioning the sustainability of the process of reducing disparities at regional level.

Description: The objective of this research is to examine growth and convergence processes in the provinces of Ecuador, considering sectoral productivity as an analysis variable. To do so, evidence of the productivity of the agricultural, secondary and service sectors is presented, and by applying the non-parametric method of density functions of the kernel, the complete distribution of the data is analyzed. The results obtained indicate that territorial inequality in Ecuador has very different behavior depending on the sectors of the economy. It is noted that inequality in terms of productivity is very high in the agricultural sector, it is at an average level in the secondary sector, and is less intense in the service sector. In the long-term, the overall balance is that sectoral inequality decreased among Ecuadorian provinces. However, there are two processes differentiated in time; in the first phase, inequality decreases more rapidly and in the second phase, it even increases in some sectors, as in the case of secondary sector returns.

Description: While global water demand continues increasing, the quantity and quality of water resources is decreasing in many regions. Conflicts over competition in the use of water are likely to increase as societies face social, economic and political challenges, especially aggravated by climate change. In this scenario, sustainable management of water resources is a key priority to meet the growing demand for water and to achieve a safe and environmentally sustainable future supply. The main objective of this article was to show an image of the international scientific production related to “Sustainable Water Resources Management” by using the comparative bibliometric study of the documents indexed in the WoS(Web of Science) and Scopus databases as a tool; and to analyze relevant aspects such as their coverage, correlation, overlap, growth, citation, dispersion or concentration, among others. For this purpose, and by means of an advanced search of terms, a representative set of 160 articles in WoS and 210 in Scopus were selected (with a time limit that limited the results to anything published before 2017, including 2017), which form the ad-hoc basis of the analysis. Their significant increase in both the number of articles and citations received in the last 10 years demonstrates the growing interest of the scientific community in its study. Regarding the analysis of the databases, although WoS and Scopus differ in terms of scope, volume of data and coverage policies, both information systems are complementary and non-exclusive. Despite their similarities, Scopus performs better coverage in the specific area of Sustainable Water Resource Management by collecting a greater number of articles and receiving a greater number of citations.