Institute of Applied Economics (IREA) in Barcelona was founded in 2005, as a research institute in applied economics. Three consolidated research groups make up the institute: AQR, RISK and GiM, and a large number of members are involved in the Institute. IREA focuses on four priority lines of investigation: (i) the quantitative study of regional and urban economic activity and analysis of regional and local economic policies, (ii) study of public economic activity in markets, particularly in the fields of empirical evaluation of privatization, the regulation and competition in the markets of public services using state of industrial economy, (iii) risk analysis in finance and insurance, and (iv) the development of micro and macro econometrics applied for the analysis of economic activity, particularly for quantitative evaluation of public policies. IREA Working Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. For that reason, IREA Working Papers may not be reproduced or distributed without the written consent of the author. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IREA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractPlans for the development of high speed railways lines (HSR) in Spain are widespread. At the beginning of 2010 four HSR lines were operating in routes where the air transport mode used to be dominant. In this paper we examine through econometric means the air carriers' reaction to these HSR entrances by using data at the route level. We test whether the HSR have changed both, the airlines' frequencies and the market shares. Our results show that it has reduced on average the number of air transport operations by 17 percent. On the other hand the demand has increased substantially, though the weight of air transport in the total market has been reduced, as it has been reduced the weight of the dominant Spanish air carrier Iberia on air markets.

Corruption is a major problem, and not only in developing countries. It impedes economic growth, weakens the rule of law and undermines the legitimacy of institutions. Although it has been studied at national level from different perspectives, there is a recent growing body of research on local corruption. As far as we know, these latter studies focused on corruption and its effects on votes. However, a further question arises as to whether there is a mimetic effect on neighbouring municipalities? We employ data from Spain, and the boom in local corruption in the 2000s, to respond to this question. Specifically we have constructed a panel database (2001-2010) on local characteristics, economic factors and corruption at local level in order to achieve this. Our spatial econometrics methodology supports the hypothesis that corruption is not local-specific, and leads to two opposing outcomes: on the one hand, local corruption is contagious and the probability of being 'infected' increases by 3.1 per cent for each corrupt neighbouring municipality; on the other hand the likelihood of a municipality being taken to court increases by 6.7 per cent for each neighbouring municipality accused. Although the former is alarming, the latter provides hope in the fight against local corruption.

Many developed countries have boosted investment into High-Speed Rail (HSR).This infrastructure is costly and requires high investment during the construction and operation periods, which is mainly financed with public funds. This economic effort is seldom set off, which leads to subsidies with the money collected from public debt growth or tax pressure increases. The question that immediately emerges is whether the entrance of this new infrastructure generates spillovers at the local level. In this paper, we answer this question by using local data on economic activity, municipalities' characteristics and local public budgets in Spain for the past decade (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010). To approach to this problem, we use GIS tools and build a database to estimate the impact by considering difference-in-difference analysis. Our estimations yield a general conclusion: when HSR comes to town, both local revenues and the local fiscal gap improve by 10% and 16%, respectively. These improvements primarily affect municipalities located within 5 km of an HSR station.

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In late 2011, the Spanish terrorist organization ETA announced the end of armed violence after more than forty years of illegal activity. While the existing literature has already established the negative impact of terrorist actions on international tourism in a particular region, this paper aims to determine whether ETA's final ceasefire and definitive dissolution had a positive impact on domestic tourism in Basque Country. To that end, a directed gravity model is estimated over a panel data-set of 699 domestic tourist flows between the Spanish regions from 2008 to 2013. Results suggest that the negative impact on visitor flows was localized in the Basque Country. Also, regardless of a permanent ceasefire announced in 2010, only the 2011 'definitive cessation of violence' had an immediate significant impact on the number of visitors to the Basque Country. These results complement the scarce literature on post-conflict tourism analysis and may have implications for regional authorities in affected regions in their efforts to rebuild their destination brands.

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