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(2026-02) López i Casasnovas, Guillem
(2026-01) López i Casasnovas, Guillem
We provide a framework that connects industrial policies to global imbalances and technological hegemony, and describe some empirical facts consistent with our model. We study the international spillovers triggered by industrial policies promoting high-tech sectors. Since high-tech goods and services are typically traded internationally, these policies boost the supply of tradable goods. Moreover, industrial policies lead to trade surpluses if the government pursues an unbalanced policy mix, such that domestic demand does not rise as much as supply. These surpluses are absorbed by the rest of the world, which in response runs trade deficits. Absent policy interventions, trade deficits reduce the competitiveness of the domestic tradable sector, stifling innovation and productivity growth. Innovation policies can help the rest of the world to mitigate these negative spillovers.
(2026-01) Cesa-Bianchi, Ambrogio; Ferrero, Andrea; Fornaro, Luca; Wolf, MartinStudies of the credibility of sources is a key research focus in the communication field, especially in journalism. Given the increase in misinformation as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, source credibility is crucial for people to contrast news stories in an infodemic context. Our research, based on a demographic study (N = 2007) carried out in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic, used a multifactor news credibility indicator to explore how different types of sources affected the perceived credibility of a fake news item on COVID-19 in the written digital press format. We also performed a cluster analysis to determine the subgroups profiled according to key sociodemographic variables (age, gender, and education). Our results indicate that expert and political sources had a null effect on news credibility, while citizen and celebrity sources had a clear negative effect. Furthermore, our fake news story that did not cite sources was awarded a positive level of credibility. We also found that age, gender, and education level were statistically significant in their association with news credibility.
(2023) Martí-Danés, Aleix
; Besalú Casademont, Reinald, 1983-; Pont Sorribes, Carles
; Gómez-Puertas, LorenaResearch shows that as toddlers' vocabularies expand, words in the early lexicon become increasingly interconnected through shared phonological and semantic features. Understanding how these dimensions jointly shape lexical organization is central to theories of early spoken word recognition. The present study investigated how the simultaneous presence of phonological and semantic similarity between nouns influences lexical activation during spoken word recognition. We presented 21-month-old English monolinguals with an intermodal preferential looking task adapted to a priming paradigm while their eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracker. Participants heard a spoken noun (prime) followed by a related or unrelated spoken noun (target). The experiment included three conditions: Phonologically Related, where prime-target pairs share the initial phonemes (e.g., toe-toast); Phono-Semantically Related, where prime-target pairs share the initial phonemes and belong to the same semantic category (e.g., turkey-turtle); and Unrelated, where prime-target pairs do not share the initial phonemes and do not belong to the same semantic category (e.g ., bubble-toast and box-turtle). Results revealed two key findings: (1) Targets in the Phonologically Related condition elicited significantly fewer looks than the Unrelated condition, suggesting phonological interference. (2) Targets in the Phono-Semantically Related condition elicited significantly more looks than both the Unrelated and Phonologically Related conditions, indicating strong facilitation when both cues are present. Additionally, girls demonstrated more pronounced word recognition than boys. This study extends our understanding of the interactive roles of phonological and semantic cues, as well as sex differences, in mental lexical organization among young toddlers.
(2026) Avila-Varela, Daniela S.; Cabiddu, Francesco; Escrichs, Anira
; Luegi, Paula; Veríssimo, João
; Jones, Gary