CAEPS is the name of the Centre dAnàlisi
Econòmica i de les Polítiques Socials, a consolidated research unit
of the Universitat de Barcelona (UB).
CAEPS has been created in 2002 as a result of the fusion of two former
research groups: EPS (Grup de Recerca en Economia de la Política
Social) and GEI (Grup de Recerca en Economia Internacional i Integració
Econòmica).
It has 18 permanent members that are also lecturers in
the Faculty of Economics of
the Universitat de Barcelona.
CAEPS research is organized around four main areas:
In the Economics of Social Policy, the main objective has been the analysis of the long run sustainability of the Spanish fiscal policy and its welfare state in the current context of an intense population ageing.
The group has performed the first applications of the Generational Accounting technique to the Spanish case. In addition, it has introduced some improvements in the standard methodology of this technique in order to obtain estimators of the sustainability of public policy that take into account cyclical alterations in the conditions of the labor market.
Much work has been devoted to the different programs that constitute social policy, focusing on the analysis of the Pension System and the Health System. On the one hand, the group has analyzed the effects of different reforms of the pension system. On the other, it has studied, besides the effects of population ageing, the impact of the improvements in the quality of the health system benefits in the demand for health insurance, the impact of information policies in the perception of smoking risk; and the effects of the decentralization of health policy in Spain.
Finally, and given the interaction existing between public policies and demography, some members of the group have analyzed, from a theoretical point of view, the optimality of public policy in a framework of overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility.
In the field of International Economics and Economic Integration, the activity of the group has focused in the analysis of the effects of economic integration. In this respect, the main objective has been the analysis of the effects of European integration in territorial cohesion. One of the possible effects of integration could be an industrial relocation and the concentration of industry in a few areas. There is the risk of an increase in regional inequalities.
The group has analyzed this problem from two points of view: the theoretical, within the framework of the new economic geography and the empirical, performing an analysis of the evolution and determinants of regional inequalities in the location of industry during the historical process of domestic market integration in Spain.
In the Catalan Economics line of research, CAEPS leads the "Cątedra Ramon Trias Fargas d'Economia Catalana", created by the Universitat de Barcelona under sponsorship of the Fundació Ramon Trias Fargas. The main objectives of this chair of Catalan Economics are to enhance the research in this area of analysis, focusing on the economic structure of Catalonia and the future prospects of the catalan economy; the dimension and structure of catalan firms; the economic impact of fiscal flows from Catalonia to Spain and the European Union; the economic integration process and Euroregions; and the history of catalan economic thought.
In the field of Economics of Forecasting,