Antonio Cabrales

Articles for the general public

• La LOMCE, una evaluación preliminar. This article reviews my opinions of the new Law for the reform of the Spanish education system. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in El Mundo.
• El origen del estado del bienestar y su futuro: un experimento. In this article, Sevi Rodríguez-Mora and I report the implications for the welfare state of an experiment we have recently published. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in La Vanguardia.
• María Angeles de Frutos: al servicio de la ciencia. One of the saddest things I will ever write, an obituary for my colleage María Angeles de Frutos. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in El País.
• ¿Cómo hacer una escuela efectiva?: Sin excusas.. This article discusses the success of the No Excuses charter schools in America.Article in pdf format.It has appeared in La Voz and other journals of grupo Vocento.
• Un dilema veraniego: Repetir o recuperar.. This article discusses whether a student achieves better outcomes by retaking a grade or taking remedial summer course.Article in pdf format.It has appeared in La Verdad and other journals of grupo Vocento.
• Tecnología de información y ahorro sanitario.. This article discusses the potential for cost reductions in health systems coming from information technology.Article in pdf format.It has appeared in El Diario Vasco and other journals of grupo Vocento.
• Political institutions and the curse of natural resources. This article is a non-technical description of a recent publication of mine with Esther Hauk, The quality of political institutions and the curse of natural resources investigating why natural resources are sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse. The article is available (here) in Vox, an economic policy portal from CEPR.
• ¿Cómo evaluar a los profesores universitarios? – El nuevo Estatuto del Personal Docente e Investigador. This article argues that the new law (over)regulating the career of university professors in Spain is flawed and there are better alternatives. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in Expansión.
• El Estatut: identidad nacional, balanzas fiscales y educación.. This article discusses the economic implications of the current Catalan education system. Article in pdf format.It has appeared in El Diario Montañés and other journals of grupo Vocento.
• Inmigración, Facebook y la reforma pendiente.. This article argues that not reforming the Spanish economy may lead to massive emigration (again) from Spain into Europe. Article in pdf format.It has appeared in Las Provincias and other journals of grupo Vocento.
• La innovación y los nudos de Aumann.. This article explains why funding of basic science should be daring. Article in pdf format.It has appeared in Norte de Castilla and other journals of grupo Vocento.
• El G-20 en Pittsburgh. This article explains what the G-20 does and summarizes the main challenge it faces: international coordination. Article in pdf format.It has appeared in Cinco Días.
• Crisis e incentivos en las instituciones financieras. This article explains some aspects of recent financial innovations, in relation to the incentives of financial institutions, which have contributed to the current crisis. We propose some regulatory adjustments to benefit from the innovations while moderating their negative effects. Article in pdf format.It has appeared in El País.
It is also available in the new website on the economic crisis, Crisis09, itself part of Sociedad Abierta, a Spanish economic policy portal, sponsored by FEDEA.
• The Spanish Trade-off: Bricks vs. Minds. This article is a discussion of the reasons behind the current economic recession, an over-reliance on the real estate sector (bricks); as well as a set of proposals to go back to long term growth, essentially to rely more on "minds." The article is available (here) in Vox, an economic policy portal from CEPR.
• Recetas contra la crisis. This article argues that a crisis is an opportunity to do necessary reforms. Spain needs to lower the administrative burden posed by different levels of government. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in Expansión.
• Congresos a la búlgara. This article is a version for non-specialists of my working paper with Antoni Calvó-Armengol and Léonard Wantchekon: "Pathway from Communist Revolution to Liberal Democracy." We find a rationale for the apparently paradoxical behavior of party conferences where a leader is elected routinely by extremely large majorities. We argue that voting serves as a coordination device in a game after the conference (say, canvassing for votes in a general election) where individual party members are more likely to put effort if they are convinced that others will do likewise. The article is available (here) in Sociedad Abierta, a Spanish economic policy portal, sponsored by FEDEA, which is a partner of Vox,
• Guess who’s your co-author today? Economic models of sorting and segregation. This article is a version for non-specialists of my working paper with Antoni Calvó-Armengol and Yves Zenou: "Social Interactions and Spillovers: Incentives, Segregation and Topology." We discuss the results of a model where individuals make efforts to produce (research, education for their children, or other things) but also to socialize, and socialization leads to more productivity (your children are raised better if you know other parents, your research is better if you go to conferences). The article is available (here) in Vox, an economic policy portal from CEPR.
• Hurwicz, Maskin y Myerson, más sabios que el rey Salomón. This article tries to explain some of the things which made the 2007 Economics Nobelists famous. The article is available (here) in MI+D, the R&D portal of Madrid's regional government (or directly here in my webpage).
• La economía de los medios de comunicación. This article is a summary for non-specialists of some recent academic papers on the economics of the media, and my guess about their explanatory power for the extreme partisanship of Spanish media. The article is available (here) in Sociedad Abierta, a Spanish economic policy portal, sponsored by FEDEA, which is a partner of Vox, CEPR's own portal. (Click here if you prefer directly the pdf format.)
• Do Americans really pay too much for pharmaceuticals? This article is a version for non-specialists of my working paper with Sergi Jiménez-Martín: "The Determinants of Pricing in Pharmaceuticals: Are U.S. prices really higher than those of Canada?" Our thesis is that with a large enough sample and once one controls for income, American prices are not as high as ``common wisdom" suggests. The article is available (here) in Vox, an economic policy portal from CEPR. (Click here if you prefer directly the pdf format.)
• El cobrador en el atasco. In this article, with the excuse of municipal elections I try make a case for the benefits of congestion pricing in the (quite congested) roads of big Spanish cities. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in Expansión.
• Andreu Mas-Colell: espejo de economistas. This article, written with Juanjo Dolado, takes advantage of several, almost simultaneous, distinctions to Andreu Mas-Colell to pay tribute to an extraordinary scholar who is also an excellent administrator and a good man. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in Expansión.
• El coste de la gripe aviar. In this article, I argue that both governments and individuals should react rationally rather than hysterically to global pandemic threats. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in La Vanguardia.
• Cómo comprar I+D. In this article, I show that the argument that pharmaceutical price regulation leads to R&D delocation from a country does not make sense, either theoretically or empirically. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in La Vanguardia.
• Presentation for Barcelona's Museum of Science, on current advances of the economists' work in complex networks. Powerpoint presentation (6.5Mb-hard to load on normal connections).
• Engle, Granger y un empollón de Madrid . Here I try to convince businesspeople (in Spain) that they should perhaps pay more attention to what academic "nerds" (that's what "empollón" means in Spanish) do, using Nobel laureates Engle and Granger as an excuse, since they had a big impact in the financial world (and elsewhere). Article in pdf format. It has appeared in Inversión. I have also done a presentation in the Madrid Stock Market, on the same issue. To see the presentation click here.
• Entscheidung unter Unsicherheit and Entscheidung unter Unsicherheit: die Ergebnisse. In these articles, we propose and then explain the results of an experiment in global games which has interesting implications for things like bank runs, currency crises, and all sorts of games with strategic complementarities. Sorry, they are in German, but in the "near" future, we will post an English translation. Meanwhile, there are a couple of academic articles where you can see these issues explained in excruciating detail (e.g. here or here.) Article where we propose the experiment in pdf format. Article where we explain the experimental results in pdf format. They have appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the German edition of Scientific American.
• El precio de la vivienda y la ciencia lúgubre. In this article, I argue that if prices of real state in Spain go down, there can be dire consequences. Most Spaniards find it hard to believe that residential real state prices can actually go down. In fact, they have done so in Spain, as recently as 1991-1997, but inflation masked it. Article in pdf format. If you want to see the evolution of real state prices in Spain in recent years, please click here. It has appeared in Inversión.
• Riquelme y el trasvase. Some firms (again soccer teams) are willing to hire two people to do the same job in order to promote competition between them and thus ameliorate incentive problems. For similar reasons bringing water to the South East of Spain from more than one source may also be a good idea, and it could solve some problems that currently envisioned options have. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in Empresa y Finanzas.
• La esclavitud voluntaria de Rivaldo y Raul. Here I discuss (in Spanish) why some workers (notably soccer players) are willing to accept contracts that specify that new employers will have to pay hundreds of millions of euros to old employers. Article in pdf format. It has appeared in Empresa y Finanzas.
• Nash and Game Theory. This article discusses the contributions of John Nash to Game Theory. It appeared, in Greek translation, in Game Theory: a festscrift in honor of John Nash, edited by Constantina Kottaridi and Gregorios Siourounis, Eurasia Publications, Athens 2002. Article in pdf format.