Background: After the emergence of the first vaccines against the COVID-19, public health authorities have promoted mass vaccination in order to achieve herd immunity and reduce the effects of the disease. Vaccination rates have differed between countries, depending on supply (availability of resources) and demand (altruism and resistance to vaccination) factors. Methods: This work considers the hypothesis that individuals’ health altruism has been an important factor to explain the different levels of vaccination between countries, using the number of transplants as a proxy for altruism. Taking European Union’s countries to remove, as far as possible, supply factors that might affect vaccination, we carry out cross-sectional regressions for the most favorable date of the vaccination process (maximum vaccination speed) and for each month during the vaccination campaign. Results: Our findings confirm that altruism has affected vaccination rates against the COVID-19. We find a direct relationship between transplants rates (proxy variable) and vaccination rates during periods in which the decision to be vaccinated depended on the individual’s choice, without supply restrictions. The results show that other demand factors have worked against vaccination: political polarization and belonging to the group of countries of the former Eastern bloc. Conclusions: Altruism is a useful tool to define future vaccination strategies, since it favors the individuals’ awareness for vaccination.

This paper analyses the effect on retail fuel prices of factors such as belonging to dominant firms, the position of a local monopoly or oligopoly, and service station location. We study the effect of belonging to the dominant firms in the market, Repsol and Cepsa, of enjoying a local natural monopoly or oligopoly in rural areas, and of being located in places with captive demand, such as highways and motorways, as well as in the city centre. We apply this study to service stations in the province of Seville (Spain). The main findings are that the two main distributors, Repsol and Cepsa, set a higher price. We also find market power at a local level, which appears through monopoly or duopolies in rural areas, and which also results in higher prices, albeit to a much lesser degree. In addition, we see that stations servicing users on high-capacity roads as well as stations located in Seville city centre also set higher prices.

El objetivo del presente trabajo consiste, partiendo de las hipótesis establecidas en la literatura, en la realización de un análisis comparativo de ratios financieros relativos a solvencia, liquidez, rentabilidad y la financiación, de las empresas capitalistas respecto a las cooperativas, durante el periodo comprendido entre 2008-2015, en España. Además de una comparación general tomando como referencia a la economía española en su conjunto, es decir, sin distinguir por sectores o tamaños de empresas, también se realiza dicha tarea individualmente por sectores productivos y por tamaños. Asimismo, se persigue contrastar las hipótesis mencionadas. Los resultados muestran una mayor rentabilidad financiera en las capitalistas y con diferencia, tanto desde la perspectiva de la economía en su conjunto, como en cada uno de los cuatro tamaños de empresas y en 6 sectores. La rentabilidad económica, con resultados no ya tan indiscutibles, también es mayor en las empresas convencionales en las pymes y empresas medianas y grandes. En relación a la solvencia, ésta es mayor en las cooperativas, tanto desde una perspectiva general de la economía, como en las microempresas y en cinco sectores, lo cual contraviene la hipótesis establecida. En cuanto a la liquidez las capitalistas alcanzan mayores niveles en la comparación general de la economía y en el sector primario. Sin embargo, ocurre lo contrario para las microempresas y para tres sectores. Por último, en cuanto al endeudamiento, en la comparación general así como en ocho sectores productivos y en las microempresas y pymes, éste es mayor en las empresas capitalistas, no cumpliéndose la hipótesis teórica de partida.

Most of the literature on tourism taxation focuses on indirect taxes, on their use as a policy to promote tourism or as a system for collecting and controlling revenue. This document addresses an issue which has thus far remained almost unexplored; the direct taxation of tourism through the corporate tax borne by companies in the sector. The proposed objectives are twofold: first, to verify whether direct taxation leads to an additional tax on the tourism sector, which compensates for the lower collection due to the application of reduced rates in indirect taxation; and second, to ascertain whether there are differences between the different subsectors of the tourism sector in this regard. For this, a random sample of 16,266 Spanish companies for the period 2014–2018 is used, taken from the SABI (Iberian Balance Analysis System) base. Results show that Spanish tourism companies are taxed above average, although less than most subsectors of the services sector, such that it cannot be said that there is compensation for the lower VAT tax burden. However, the exception is travel agencies, who bear a much higher levy on corporate tax whilst at the same time enjoying a special VAT regime.

The evolution of the pandemic caused by COVID-19, its high reproductive number and the associated clinical needs, is overwhelming national health systems. We propose a method for predicting the number of deaths, and which will enable the health authorities of the countries involved to plan the resources needed to face the pandemic as many days in advance as possible. We employ OLS to perform the econometric estimation. Using RMSE, MSE, MAPE, and SMAPE forecast performance measures, we select the best lagged predictor of both dependent variables. Our objective is to estimate a leading indicator of clinical needs. Having a forecast model available several days in advance can enable governments to more effectively face the gap between needs and resources triggered by the outbreak and thus reduce the deaths caused by COVID-19.