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This paper aims to examine the dynamic return and volatility connectedness for six major industrial metals (tin, lead, nickel, zinc, copper and aluminium) and the coronavirus media coverage index (MCI).

To that purpose, this study applies the fresh time-varying parameter vector autoregression methodology (TVP–VAR model) during the sample period between 2 January, 2020, and 16 April, 2021, that is, covering the three waves of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

This study’s results show interesting findings. First, dynamic total return and volatility connectedness changes over time, highlighting a significant increase during the third wave of the pandemic. Second, the MCI index is a leading net transmitter in terms of return and volatility at the introduction of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus crisis. Third, this study clearly distinguishes two profiles among industrial metals: copper and tin/zinc as net transmitters and lead and aluminium as net receivers. Finally, the most relevant differences between them are concentrated not only at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (first wave) but also during the second and third waves of the coronavirus outbreak.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research that explores the dynamic return and volatility connectedness in the industrial metal market, applying the TVP–VAR methodology during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of political connections in the value of companies listed on the Spanish stock market.

The authors study two issues on this topic: the impact on the company value of the appointment as director of an ex-politician through an event study; and the long run stock market performance of companies with political connections. The authors employ a sample of listed firms in the Spanish stock market for which the authors collected data about their political connections. The authors perform the study during a wide period (1996-2011), comprising four legislatures.

The results show that from the market perspective the value ex-politicians bring to the company outweigh their costs, especially in times of crisis or economic recession.

Given the concern of regulators and legislators to increase transparency and good governance of companies, this paper shed light on the role that politicians play on the company boards and and their contribution to their value.

Nuestro objetivo es estudiar el impacto en el valor de las empresas cotizadas en el mercado bursátil español del nombramiento como consejero de un ex-político, y la valoración que el mercado realiza de la existencia de conexiones políticas en las empresas.

Para los años 1996-2011 analizamos el impacto en el valor de la empresa del nombramiento de un político como consejero. Para ello empleamos la metodología del event study en el corto plazo y a través del rendimiento de las carteras estudiamos si estas empresas obtienen rendimientos anormales a largo plazo.

Nuestros resultados muestran que desde la perspectiva de mercado el valor que aportan las conexiones políticas supera sus costes, especialmente en momentos de crisis o desaceleración económica.

Dada la preocupación de los reguladores y legisladores por aumentar la transparencia y los códigos de buen gobierno de las empresas, este trabajo ayuda a entender el papel que los políticos juegan en los consejos de administración de las empresas.

This paper aims to explore lot quality assurance sampling (LQAS) applicability and usefulness in the evaluation of quality indicators in a hospital emergency department (ED) and to determine the degree of compliance with quality standards according to this sampling method.

Descriptive observational research in the Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón (HGUGM) emergency department (ED). Patients older than 15 years, diagnosed with dyspnoea, chest pain, urinary tract colic or bronchial asthma attending the HGUGM ED from December 2005 to May 2006, and patients admitted during 2005 with exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or acute meningitis were included in the study. Sample sizes were calculated using LQAS. Different quality indicators, one for each process, were selected. The upper (acceptable quality level (AQL)) and lower thresholds (rejectable quality level (RQL)) were established considering risk α=5 per cent and β=20 per cent, and the minimum number of observations required was calculated.

It was impossible to reach the necessary sample size for bronchial asthma and urinary tract colic patients. For chest pain, acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and acute meningitis, quality problems were detected. The lot was accepted only for the dyspnoea indicator.

The usefulness of LQAS to detect quality problems in the management of health processes in one hospital's ED. The LQAS could complement traditional sampling methods.

Healthcare risk epidemiology identifies medication error as the commonest cause of adverse effects on patients. Medication error can occur at any phase of the complex medication process so prevalence rates need to be estimated at each drug treatment phase: prescription, transcription and administration along with their clinical repercussions. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

Medication errors were recorded on an ad hoc sheet and staff were observed handling medications. Recorded errors were later classified and their clinical repercussions determined by experts.

In total 757 inpatients and 5,466 drug prescriptions were studied. The prescription error rate was 4.79 percent (95 percent CI 4.21‐5.36). The most frequent error in this phase was failing to observe international prescribing standards. The highest error rate was found in transcription (14.61 percent, 95 percent CI 13.67‐15.54). Almost 1,900 dose administrations were observed. There was a 9.32 percent error rate (95 percent CI 7.98‐10.67). The commonest error in this phase was omission. Most were transcription errors, which were detected before harm was done.

The dispensation phase is absent.

Errors can be reduced if they are understood. Education and training based on the study's findings can reduce medication errors.

The paper highlights ways to reduce errors in the medication process.

The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on some outstanding patterns of change observed in Spanish agriculture over the last decades, and to discuss the ways in which the productivist rationale is reproduced in them. We start by providing an overall picture of the structural transformations of agriculture revealed by the national statistics, calling attention to the increasing importance of a “hard core” of farms progressing under a rationale of growth and modernization. Later, drawing on the literature, we comment some meaningful trajectories of farm change observed in three selected Mediterranean farming systems, namely horticulture (as an example of a long-consolidated intensive agriculture), vine growing (an orientation which has undergone stunning changes in Spain in recent times), and small ruminant production (an extensive farming system with a high conservation value). The three farming systems are advancing, to a greater or a lesser degree, along intensification, concentration, and specialization pathways. However, the introduction of new elements in the most expansionary farm strategies (such as the participation in quality schemes) will provide interesting elements of discussion of the adaptable nature of productivism and its capacity to accommodate to external opportunities and constrains.

Spanish-speaking children learn to read words written in a relatively transparent orthography. Variations in orthographic transparency may shape the manifestation of reading difficulties. This study was intended to help clarify the nature of developmental dyslexia in Spanish. Developmental dyslexic group (DD) were compared to two control groups, a chronological age-matched control group (CA) and a reading level-matched control group (RL). Measures included naming speed, verbal working memory (WM), phonological short-term memory (STM), phonemic awareness, and different reading subtests (letter, word and pseudoword reading, punctuation mark, reading skills). On the reading subtests, accuracy and reading speed were measured. Results demonstrated that developmental dyslexics show a severe deficit in lexical access on accuracy and speed measures, in addition to reading-related cognitive deficits in areas such as naming speed, verbal WM, phonological STM, and phonemic awareness. Hierarchical cluster analysis demonstrated that a subgroup of children with DD showed lower IQs and more severe reading-related cognitive deficits in naming speed, verbal WM, and phonological STM. Our results are consistent with studies conducted in the Spanish language and in other transparent orthographies.

The objective of this study is to determine the efficiency of tourist accommodation companies located in the main tourist area of southern Europe as one of the three elements of the local sustainable development triangle.

The analysis, carried out using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology on 130 companies, has obtained that from the CCR perspective (results-oriented method when companies present constant returns on the input variables).

The companies involved are quite inefficient, while which from the BCC perspective (where the input and output variables used in the company respond to a variable and not constant scale) are quite efficient. The efficiency of these companies in the seven provinces of Andalusia has also been analysed to determine if there are patterns that differentiate them and thus be able to propose strategies that improve the sustainability of these territories. The conclusions of the study indicate the need to improve the operational efficiency of rural accommodation companies.

The analysis of efficiency in the hotel sector and even more so in the rural tourism sector is relatively scarce in the literature, especially in Spain. More specifically, Rubio and Román (2006) have demonstrated the existence of scale inefficiencies in hotels, but no evidence has been found in previous studies that this behaviour carries over to accommodation establishments located in the destinations under study.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the creation of a catalogue of museum objects associated with two media art collections. The proposal was formulated under the Voremetur Project “Vocabularios para una Red de Archivos y Colecciones de Media Art y sus efectos: metaliteracy y turismo de conocimiento” (thesauri for networked media art archives and collections and their effects: metaliteracy and knowledge tourism) (HAR2016-75949-C2-1-R). Collection characteristics and typologies are discussed along with the difficulties encountered and the interoperability of the platform chosen with other Web resources that foster visibility.

This paper describes a case study and a review of the protocols and standards used to catalogue media art collections. Digitised descriptions were processed with Omeka software in conjunction with the expanded Dublin Core metadata schema. This paper also reviews the literature on the conceptualisation of these collections and the challenges involved in their conservation and management.

The result was the creation of a digital repository for two media art collections: one linked to Espacio P; and the other the outcome of digitising part of the MIDECIANT collection (Archivo Media ART AEMA).

The methodology innovates the description and analysis of museum objects on media art in Spain. The proposed cataloguing method can be replicated and used to describe similar collections and lays the grounds for creating a Spanish network of media art archives and collections.

The Portuguese montado is a particular land use system, characterized by the combination, in the same area, of the forestry and the grazing components interrelating with each other, in large-scale farm units. Mostly, this system is acknowledged due to its specific landscape character, in a savanna-like phisionomy, with changing densities along a continuous tree cover of holm and cork oaks and grazing in the under cover. The montado is a production system, and its extensive character and particular pattern makes it possible to support a multitude of ecosystem goods and services nowadays valued by society. Nevertheless the system is threatened and the resulting landscape is under strong reduction in the last decades. This paper shows the dimension of the ongoing reduction, for the whole region of Alentejo, since 1960 and up to now. And furthermore, based on a survey to land managers of montado in a Natura 2000 site, it shows how the land management options for the most are still focusing on production and productivist ideals, even when keeping a multifunctional system. These orientations do not result in a radical replacement of the system, and therefore the illusion is kept that the multifunctionality is mantained – but progressively the system loses its balance and the tree cover decays in such a way that the montado disappears. This unique landscape is thus under severe threat. The paper ends with a discussion on the urgent need for integrated policy goals and tools for the montado as a system, and for much more colaboration with the land managers in order to strength the multifunctionalty relevance and support a novel attitude replacing the productivist concept of farming, misleading in the context of this system.

Purpose – Recent research suggests that the positive effect of knowledge diversification on the value of corporate knowledge is limited.

Design/methodology/approach – This study uses an information processing perspective to explore the highest value that firms can draw from knowledge diversification and to argue that R&D cooperation and foreign direct investment help develop this value.

Findings: Regressions on a sample of 21.434 patents of German manufacturing firms show that technologically diversified knowledge has an inverted U-shaped influence on the value of technological knowledge. The findings also suggest that R&D cooperation increases the value generated by technologically diversified knowledge. However, foreign direct investment does not seem to have a moderating influence on the relationship between technological diversification and value.

Research limitations – We use patent citations to measure knowledge transfers. However, not all inventions are patented.

Originality/value – The information processing theory, which we apply in this chapter, provides consistent explanations for both the inverted U-shape of diversification and the extension of the optimal diversification of knowledge by R&D cooperation.