ALBERT

Beschreibung: In the present paper we tested the use of Markov-switching Generalized AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (MS-GARCH) models and their not generalized (MS-ARCH) version. This, for active trading decisions in the coffee, cocoa, and sugar future markets. With weekly data from 7 January 2000 to 3 April 2020, we simulated the performance that a futures’ trader would have had, had she used the next trading algorithm: To invest in the security if the probability of being in a distress regime is less or equal to 50% or to invest in the U.S. three-month Treasury bill otherwise. Our results suggest that the use of t-student Markov Switching Component ARCH Model (MS-ARCH) models is appropriate for active trading in the cocoa futures and the Gaussian MS-GARCH is appropriate for sugar. For the specific case of the coffee market, we did not find evidence in favor of the use of MS-GARCH models. This is so by the fact that the trading algorithm led to inaccurate trading signs. Our results are of potential use for futures’ position traders or portfolio managers who want a quantitative trading algorithm for active trading in these commodity futures.

Beschreibung: 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.

Beschreibung: 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.

Beschreibung: 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.

Beschreibung: 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.

Beschreibung: 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.

Beschreibung: While there is a progressive ageing of the population, we are witnessing a rapid development of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). Although for most of society this technology is within reach, there are population segments for whom access is limited, especially adults who are considered of old age. Due to the relevance that the relationship between ICTs and older adults acquires in today’s society, it is necessary to carry out an analysis of the scientific literature in order to understand the knowledge structure of this field. In this research, a comparative bibliometric analysis of 172 documents published in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases was carried out until 2018 and is complemented by a co-citation analysis. The results show that this subject is incipient and is in its exponential growth stage, with two thirds of the production concentrated in the 2012–2018 period. Four out of five authors are transient with a single authorship and the collaboration level is high. The most productive country is Germany followed by the United States and Australia.

Beschreibung: In order to shed light on the trends and performance of the contributions in the field of tourism innovation, a comparative bibliometric analysis of production in this area, indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases is carried out in this research. We opted for a document tracking strategy through a search of terms, in which 211 and 264 articles were identified in WoS and Scopus, respectively. Based on the analysis of the selected articles, it is concluded that it is an emerging and fragmented field of knowledge with more than two thirds of its production concentrated in the last five years. Other results indicate that there is a great concentration of articles within the subject areas of business, management and accounting (Scopus), and social science (WoS), highlighting Hjalager, A, M. as the most prolific researcher and tourism management as the journal that publishes the highest number of papers. Spain, the United Kingdom, and Denmark hold the top positions in the ranking of countries by number of articles and authors affiliated with one of their centers. In the area of tourism innovation, Scopus has better coverage due to collecting a greater number of articles and receiving a greater number of citations.

Beschreibung: In the mid-1980s, at the same time as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms resulted in a decrease in agricultural employment, the Single European Act transformed the reduction of regional differences into an objective of European regional policy. The LEADER Initiative and the PRODER Program were two of the instruments chosen by the European Commission to deal with the effects that these new challenges would have for the rural environment. This research studies the scope and limitations of these programs. For this, we analyzed their implementation, resorting to the case study of the region of La Vera, Extremadura (Spain). The results show that although the structure of these programs is consistent with the purpose of developing and diversifying rural economies, their application must overcome a number of risks, including an excessive concentration of investments in the tourism sector, which stands out from the rest. In addition to highlighting the limitations of tourism as an axis of development, this research detects some aspects that should be taken into account when implementing these programs.

Beschreibung: The objective of this research is to analyze the scientific production indexed in the international Scopus database on the subject of “corporate social responsibility and corporate social performance” in small and medium-sized enterprises. In the literature, it is currently possible to observe how large corporations undertake social responsibility actions as a usual practice. However, in the case of small and medium-sized enterprises, the reality is different due to their high heterogeneity. To fulfil the proposed objective, a bibliometric analysis is carried out, identifying 277 articles on the subject. It is observed that scientific production is concentrated in a period of 18 years (2000–2018), the majority being qualitative studies.