Joaquín Maudos, professor in the Master’s Degree programme in Banking and Quantitative Finance and senior lecturer in the Universitat de València, has published an article for national newspaper El Mundo headlined “Manufacturing and/or services?”.

Valencian productivity is “nearly 9%” lower than the national average. This has many undesired effects, one of which is contributing to the Valencian Community’s poor per capita income rate, 11% lower than that of the average Spaniard. But in some sectors, both manufacturing and services, we are up to 38% more productive. How can businesses or public administrations strengthen our competitive advantages, and why is it that certain sectors the region heavily specialises in are, at the same time, so uncompetitive?

With the answers to these questions in mind, Joaquín Maudos published on Tuesday, December the 15^th an opinion article in Spanish daily paper El Mundo, under the headline “Manufacturing and/or Services?”. Here is a translated extract from that article, which was based on a report published by the Valencian Institute of Economic Research (IVIE).

“If the per capita income of a Valencian is 11% lower than the Spanish rate, that is, among many things, because our productivity is nearly 9% poorer, but that shouldn’t hide the fact that there are certain sectors in which we are specialised and where we perform better than the national average. This is where we need to pull out all the stops, to stimulate these sectors, whether they belong to the manufacturing industry or the service industry, and some of which are traditional Valencian domains.

The full article can be read following this link: http://www.uv.es/maudosj/prensa/FCB_2015_12_15_ELMUNDO.pdf.

Joaquín Maudos is a senior lecturer and investigator in Economic Analysis for the Universitat de València, where he also graduated and doctored in Economics. He teaches in the Official Master’s Degree in Banking and Quantitative Finance; to be more precise, the first year subject on Bank Management. He is also Deputy Director at the IVIE. His full CV, publications and other media appearances can be viewed here: http://www.uv.es/maudosj/index.html.

For the exact numbers that Maudos refers to in his article, the presentation he delivered in his participation at the 2015 Cañada Blanch Forum (mentioned in the article) on December the 2^nd can be accessed following this link. For further information on the activities that were organized for this convention, check the full programme for the event on the IVIE’s website.