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This study aims to understand which factors determine the corporate performance of Portuguese and Spanish listed companies between 2011 and 2018, also considering the sub-period marked by the presence of the Troika in Portugal, between 2011 and 2014.

To achieve this aim, panel data methodology was used, specifically the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991), Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998) for 110 non-financial companies from the Iberian Peninsula.

The results point out different signs and significance of the variables in the companies of the two countries. Regarding the sub-period, our results suggest that the intervention of the Troika in Portugal acted in a very different way from the neighboring country.

This research shows the importance of studying countries individually, even with small dimensions, to reinforce the path that is still necessary for more sustainable companies. Furthermore, when companies have strong governance structures, the harmful contagion from one neighboring country to another may not happen.

Purpose – The main aim of this chapter is to analyze Spanish internal and external territorial conflicts, mostly associated with the border effect between two continents with different economic and cultural systems. We assess the impact that the emergence of the new economy, represented by new technologies, R&D, privatizations, and foreign direct investment, has had in South-Spain, particularly in Andalusia, throughout the period 1995–2010. Special attention has been paid to the dynamics of convergence–divergence processes in terms of per capita income with respect to its neighboring different economic and cultural areas: Europe and the Maghreb.

Methodology – For the aforementioned purposes, we suggest applying the game theory approach to solve domestic secessionist conflicts, and the method followed by Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) to address economic conflicts by means of promoting convergence with Europe. We propose economic competition between cities as a way to deal with external territorial conflicts concerning neighboring countries.

Findings – The main results obtained from econometric applications indicate that privatization processes, foreign direct investment, research and investment, and investment in new technologies allow for the real convergence of Spain and Southern Spain with European economies.

Research limitations – This chapter does not address smaller conflicts.

Social implications – Conflicts resolutions promote peace in both continental borders.

Originality – This chapter analyzes the most relevant domestic and external Spanish conflicts. The most important domestic conflicts are the linguistic and cultural conflicts in bilingual regions. The major external Spanish conflicts analyzed herein are both territorial conflicts between Spain and Morocco and Muslim immigration.

Since the dawn of the civilizations that olive has been playing a critical role on both the society and the economy. Indeed, one can argue that olive and olive oil were as critical as they shaped a form of culture, a seminal pillar that supported the Mediterranean civilizations and that has since then spread worldwide, influencing others. As waves and tides, the use of olive and olive oil has certainly met low points, to the extent that its use even became to be considered old fashioned more recently, when the traditional Mediterranean food and culture started to be jeopardized by very different modern ways of living. Nevertheless, despite defying challenging conditions, stubbornly as always, the Mediterranean diet not only continues to prevail, but keeps granting the admiration of diverse strands of the society and science, being notoriously evident the set of recent research that points to its health benefits, having olive oil as the cornerstone, a vegetable fat, considered to be highly healthy, as it enhances the control of important health indicators, such as the bad cholesterol, serving for nutritional and therapeutic uses, and preventing the occurrence of a number of diseases, including cardiovascular problems and some forms of cancer.

Taking into consideration this framework, the research presented in this book is focused on the examination of the main trends on olive and olive oil in the Iberian Peninsula, from production to retail and consumption, by analyzing several data sets covering recent decades. In terms of findings for more recent years, it was possible to conclude that despite the increasing recognition of the benefits of olive and olive oil by the society, and despite the increase in olive production, the consumption of olive oil has been decreasing internally, being replaced by increases in exports. This is most probably due to the economic conditions that have deteriorated due to the 2008’s financial crisis, which, together with an increase in olive oil prices, has prevented a considerable portion of the population to have financial conditions to access to the consumption of such an important component of the Mediterranean diet.

In the macroeconomic environment of the Iberian Peninsula, this paper aims to examine the influence of corporate governance characteristics on corporate sustainability performance. The purpose of this paper is to address corporate practices while determining which corporate governance characteristics can improve corporate sustainability, considering, for this purpose, three dimensions of sustainability: economic, environmental and social.

This sample comprises 99 non-financial companies of the Iberian Peninsula, during the 2013–2017 period. The authors have used the panel data methodology, specifically the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation method proposed by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998) to test the hypotheses formulated.

The results obtained have shown that corporate sustainability performance is affected differently depending on the sustainability dimension that is considered. Specifically, the economic dimension is determined by public debt, the board size, board diversity and the existence of an audit committee. Regarding the environmental dimension, the board size and the presence of the audit committee, as well the corporate social responsibility committee, are the most important determinants. Finally, the social dimension was influenced by the board size, audit committee and the control variable of capital structure, which means that in this dimension, the sources of financing used by the company also help in determining its levels of social concern.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that a study has been carried out in the Iberian Peninsula on the corporate sustainability using GMM-system model for three dimensions of sustainability. Corporate sustainability depends on external and internal factors of companies. Therefore, regulators and managers should realize that they will have to be more effective in their statements.

This paper aims to analyze the performance determinants of listed companies in the Iberian Peninsula, focusing on the analysis of the effect of gender diversity and the structure of the board of directors.

To achieve this aim, the authors analyzed 97 listed companies, of which 23 are Portuguese and 74 are Spanish, between 2015 and 2019. The authors use Arellano and Bond’s (1991) generalized method of moments system model to test the hypotheses.

The results show an important impact of corporate governance variables on corporate performance. Specifically, board size, average director age and board academic qualifications are crucial to explaining profitability and market value. Moreover, the authors identified a nonlinear relationship between gender diversity and profitability and market value levels due to critical mass theory and quotas that enhance more social justice. The authors concluded that the corporate performance determinants differ depending on the performance measures.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyze the nonlinear effect of gender diversity and board structure (size, educational qualifications and average director age) on the performance of Iberian listed companies as a single market.

In the macroeconomic environment of the Iberian Peninsula, this paper aims to understand which factors, intrinsic to management, affect the performance of wine companies.

The sample comprises 3,113 wine Iberian companies between 2011 and 2018. This study has used the panel data methodology, specifically the generalized method of moments system estimation method of Arellano and Bond (1991); Arellano and Bover (1995); and Blundell and Bond (1998) to test the hypotheses proposed.

Using return on assets (ROA) and sales growth as measures of corporate performance, this study’s results suggest that sales growth is the variable that has the most significant determining factors, both specific to the company and given the macroeconomic environment. Investors and civil society well understand the meaning of sales growth, namely, in a sector close to the final consumer. When using ROA as a dependent variable, the results suggest that because it is a pure management variable, the manager tends to be more concerned with maintaining adequate levels of economic profitability to ensure sustainability and future solvency, without giving prominence to the macroeconomic environment.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that a study has been carried out in the Iberian Peninsula on the wine industry using ROA and sales growth as measures of corporate performance. This study shows that sales growth is a measure traditionally known to external stakeholders, and to that extent, its determining factors are the variables that these players most value in the market.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the functioning of the main Spanish and Portuguese containers ports to observe if they are operating below their production capabilities.

To achieve the above-mentioned objective, one possible method is to calculate the data envelopment analysis (DEA) efficiency, and the scale efficiency (SE) of targets, and in order to consider the variability across different samples, a bootstrap scheme has been applied.

The results showed that the DEA bootstrap-based approach can not only select a suitable unit which accords with a port’s actual input capabilities, but also provides a more accurate result. The bootstrapped results indicate that all ports do not need to develop future investments to expand port infrastructure.

The proposed DEA bootstrap-based approach provides useful implications in the robust measurement of port efficiency considering different samples. The study proves the usefulness of this approach as a decision-making tool in port efficiency.

This study is one of the first studies to apply bootstrap to measure port efficiency under the background of the Spain and Portugal case. In the first stage, two models of DEA have been used to obtain the pure technical, and the technical and SE, and both the input-oriented options: constant return scale and variable return scale. In the second stage, the bootstrap method has been applied in order to determine efficiency rankings of Iberian Peninsula container ports taking into consideration different samples. Confidence interval estimates of efficiency for each port are reported. This paper provides useful insights into the application of a DEA bootstrap-based approach as a modeling tool to aid decision making in measuring port efficiency.

The purpose of the paper is to clarify the distinction between vulnerability and energy dependence of a country and to present simple indicators that are used to analyse energy vulnerability.

This paper introduces the different facets of the energy vulnerability concept and discusses the options available to manage risks arising from energy vulnerability.

The concept of energy vulnerability takes various forms and cannot be reduced to appreciating the degree of dependency of a country concerning energy supplies.

The contribution of the paper lies in offering a coherent set of indicators for analysing the energy vulnerability issue and in identifying a potential research area of developing a composite indicator of vulnerability similar to that of the human development indicator.