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Water, energy and food are essential resources for economic development and social well-being. Framing integrated policies that improve their efficient use requires understanding the interdependencies in the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus. Stakeholder involvement in this process is crucial to represent multiple perspectives, ensure political legitimacy and promote dialogue. In this research, we develop and apply a participatory modelling approach to identify the main interlinkages within the WEF nexus in Andalusia, as a starting point to developing a system dynamic model at a later stage. The application of fuzzy cognitive mapping enabled us to gain knowledge on the WEF nexus according to opinions from 14 decision-makers, as well as contributing to raising awareness and building consensus among stakeholders. Results show that climate change and water availability are key drivers in the WEF nexus in Andalusia. Other variables with significant interlinkages within the WEF nexus are food production, irrigated agriculture, energy cost, socio-economic factors, irrigation water use, environmental conservation, and farm performance indicators. The scenario analysis reveals the interdependencies among nexus sectors and the existence of unanticipated effects when changing variables in the system, which need to be considered to design integrated policies.

Nowadays, the pension system in Mexico, based on the Mexican Social Security Institute Law of 1997, does not comply with the expected coverage rate, which causes the impoverishment of the retired population. This situation is expected to worsen because workers can´t contribute enough to their own savings accounts within the current system. The present research contributes to the debate on the reforms of the pension system through the evaluation of alternative scenarios for the investment of pension funds. These scenarios are generated through the structural analysis of the Mexican economy, based on the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) called SAMMEX-12. Next, a linear model MCS is used to carry out an economic impact assessment, which allows evaluating these scenarios in terms of production, GDP and employment.

A economia brasileira apresentou um crescimento elevado no período entre 2005 e 2011. Junto com ele, possíveis mudanças estruturais podem ter ocorrido. O objetivo desse artigo é realizar uma análise comparativa da estrutura produtiva brasileira de forma sistêmica, tendo como base Matrizes de Contabilidade Social (MCS) elaboradas para o Brasil para os anos de 2005 e 2011. Utilizando as MCS's, avalia-se a estrutura econômica em termos de setores-chave e interações intra setoriais dentro da estrutura produtiva nacional. Além disso, é feita uma decomposição dos multiplicadores em efeitos diretos, indiretos e induzidos, e também uma análise de multiplicador do emprego. Os resultados demonstram o maior papel do efeito induzido na relação entre os setores e a economia, destacando a importância em se trabalhar com MCS para analise sistêmica da economia.

Sovereign rating has had an increasing importance since the beginning of the nancial crisis. However, credit rating agencies opacity has been criticised by several authors highlighting the suitability of designing more objective alternative methods. This paper tackles the sovereign credit rating classi cation problem within an ordinal classi cation perspective by employing a pairwise class distances projection to build a classi cation model based on standard regression techniques. In this work the -SVR is selected as the regressor tool. The quality of the projection is validated through the classi cation results obtained for four performance metrics when applied to Standard & Poors, Moody's and Fitch sovereign rating data of U27 countries during the period 2007-2010. This validated projection is later used for ranking visualization which might be suitable to build a decision support system

Versión en línea del registro antes de la inclusión en un número ; Online versión of record before inclusión in an issue. ; The aim of this paper is contributing to fill the gap between the macroeconomic effects of policy reforms and the microeconomic and social ones, considering simultaneously both kind of impacts. Regarding fiscal adjustments, concern about the sustainability of public deficit and debt resulting from the Great Recession led governments to adopt austerity measures in most European countries. Our analysis considers the redistributive effects of such adjustments for the Spanish economy by simulating a hypothetical reduction of public deficit and distinguishing between spending cuts and tax hikes. In terms of analytical approach, a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model and a microsimulation model are integrated to include the general equilibrium effects of these measures as well as the effects on income distribution. The results contribute to the growing but limited literature on the distributional effects of fiscal consolidations by showing that policymakers have to choose between more inequality or more poverty. ; Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. Javier De Miguel-Vélez acknowledges the fnancial support from Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (grant number ECO2016-75204-P) and from Junta de Extremadura European Fund of Regional Development (GR18124). Jesús Pérez-Mayo acknowledges the fnancial support from Junta de Extremadura and the European Fund of Regional Development (GR18106) Pilar Campoy-Muñoz and M. Alejandro Cardenete acknowledge the fnancial support from Junta de Andalucía Research Group (Climamodel SEJ-511). ; peerReviewed

About one third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted. For this reason, food losses and waste has become a key priority within worldwide policy circles. This is a major global issue that not only threatens the viability of a sustainable food system but also generates negative externalities in environmental terms. The avoidance of this forbidding wastage would have a positive economic impact on national economies in terms of resource savings. In this paper we look beyond this somewhat traditional resource savings angle and we shift the focus to explore the distributional consequences of food losses and waste reduction using a resource constrained modeling perspective. The impact due to the behavioral shift of each household is therefore explained by two factors. One is the amount of resources saved when the behavioral shift takes place, whereas the other one has to do with the position of households in the food supply chain. By considering the whole supply chain, instead of the common approach based only in reducing waste by consumers, we enrich the empirical knowledge of this issue and improve the quantification of its economic impact. We examine data for three EU countries that present different economic structures (Germany, Spain and Poland) so as to have a broader and more robust viewpoint of the potential results. We find that distributional effects are different for consumers and producers and also across countries. Our results could be useful for policymakers since they indicate that policies should not be driven merely by the size waste but rather on its position within the food supply chain.

Programs to reduce employers' social security contributions are being widely discussed in both the political arena and academic forums as tools for promoting economic growth and boosting employment. This paper employs a computable general equilibrium model to assess the economic impact on the national economy of the proposals from the Spanish Confederation of Enterprise Organizations about reducing the social security contributions paid by employers. The results show that the proposals fail to reduce unemployment when they are combined with compensation by revenues from indirect taxes; whereas compensation through increased personal income taxes shows positive results on unemployment in exchange for decreases in private consumption.

Antecedentes y objetivo: la industria automotriz mexicana se ha convertido en una de las más fuertes a nivel mundial; genera notables aportaciones al producto interno bruto (PIB) y crea empleos directos e indirectos, al promover la entrada de inversión extranjera directa (IED). El presente trabajo valora el impacto de la industria automotriz sobre la economía mexicana.Metodología: el desempeño de la industria automotriz en la estructura económica de México y su impacto sobre la economía por flujos de inversión se analizan mediante el uso de matrices de contabilidad social. Con la metodología propuesta se obtienen la clasificación de sectores y los multiplicadores de impacto y empleo. Posteriormente, se introduce un shock de inversión para analizar su efecto sobre los principales indicadores económicos del país.Resultados: la clasificación de sectores indica que la industria automotriz no está fuertemente ligada a la economía nacional. Los multiplicadores contables señalan que el sector presenta sensibilidad muy débil ante cambios en el resto de las cuentas. Los multiplicadores de empleo la catalogan como una industria con alto índice de productividad laboral. Además, al simular un shock de inversión por expansión, se muestra que en esta condición la conexión con el resto de la economía es más fuerte y genera mayores flujos de capital, con las demás actividades productivas.Limitación: sólo hay datos completos y confiables de matrices de contabilidad social para 2012 en México actualizadas para el sector automotriz.Conclusiones: la industria automotriz se desarrolla de manera aislada del resto de la actividad económica, sin embargo, la evidencia empírica muestra que el impacto que este sector ejerce sobre el resto de la economía ante flujos de inversión es más fuerte, y, a su vez, se identifican aquellas actividades que son clave dentro de este proceso de expansión.

Altres ajuts: PAIDI SEJ-511 ; About one third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted. For this reason, food losses and waste has become a key priority within worldwide policy circles. This is a major global issue that not only threatens the viability of a sustainable food system but also generates negative externalities in environmental terms. The avoidance of this forbidding wastage would have a positive economic impact on national economies in terms of resource savings. In this paper we look beyond this somewhat traditional resource savings angle and we shift the focus to explore the distributional consequences of food losses and waste reduction using a resource constrained modeling perspective. The impact due to the behavioral shift of each household is therefore explained by two factors. One is the amount of resources saved when the behavioral shift takes place, whereas the other one has to do with the position of households in the food supply chain. By considering the whole supply chain, instead of the common approach based only in reducing waste by consumers, we enrich the empirical knowledge of this issue and improve the quantification of its economic impact. We examine data for three EU countries that present different economic structures (Germany, Spain and Poland) so as to have a broader and more robust viewpoint of the potential results. We find that distributional effects are different for consumers and producers and also across countries. Our results could be useful for policymakers since they indicate that policies should not be driven merely by the size waste but rather on its position within the food supply chain.