The aim of the paper is to examine the commuting behaviour of self‐employed workers in Spain as well as its relationship with satisfaction with jobs and housing. According to our results although conventional estimations indicate that commuting trips are shorter among the self‐employed, the differences with employees vanish when the potential endogeneity of self‐employment is controlled for. We also show that the job and housing satisfaction levels of the self‐employed are less sensitive to commuting than those of employees, and that in fact no significant effect is observed for relevant segments of the former group, what gives partial support to the theoretical model that we propose where imperfect information problems affect the employees but not the self‐employed.

Background: Academic performance in school stems from an interaction of factors associated with students, families and schools. Among these factors, physical activity could play a very relevant role. Objective: The goal of this study was to determine whether students’ physical activities in and outside school were related to their academic performance. Design, setting and method: We used the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 database for Spain using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models to answer our research questions. Results: Results suggest a positive association between the number of days per week doing moderate physical activities and academic performance in science, reading and mathematics. However, a higher number of days per week doing vigorous physical activities was associated with lower scores in reading and science. We also find a negative association between exercising or practising sports before going to school and the scores achieved in the three competences evaluated. Conclusions: Our results show that physical activity can play an important role in academic performance and that the effects of physical activity on children and teenagers should be further investigated.

As an answer to the "Great Recession" and Zero Lower Bound problem, main central banks had to use unconventional monetary policy (UMP). This research focuses on the distributive effects of these measures on household income and household wealth in the United States of America (USA) and the Eurozone. For this purpose, this paper presents four models that were constructed using the Structural Vector Autoregressive methodology (SVAR). The results suggest that the UMPs applied by the Federal Reserve (FED) in the USA could increase wealth and income inequality through the portfolio channel. However, the same results were not observed in the Eurozone.

En los últimos años la tecnología blockchain está revolucionando el actual sistema de pagos internacional. Este trabajo argumenta que la sustitución gradual del efectivo en la Eurozona por una criptomoneda basada en la tecnología blockchain, podría conllevar grandes ventajas microeconómicas y macroeconómicas. No obstante, para llevar a cabo una decisión política de esta envergadura, es necesario asegurarse de que todos los agentes dispondrán de los medios necesarios para poder realizar sus transacciones. Por ello, el presente trabajo analiza la inclusión financiera y el uso del efectivo en la Eurozona - empleando microdatos de la encuesta Global Findex del Banco Mundial - al objeto de discernir si una propuesta de sustitución del efectivo por dinero virtual sería oportuna o recomendable. Los resultados descriptivos y econométricos evidencian una menor inclusión financiera y un mayor uso del efectivo en la Eurozona que en áreas monetarias de similar nivel de desarrollo, aunque presentándose gran heterogeneidad entre países. Asimismo, se observa que la probabilidad de utilizar efectivo es mayor para individuos con niveles de renta y educación inferiores. En base a los resultados, se concluye que las posibles propuestas que aboguen por la eliminación total del efectivo en la Eurozona deberían realizarse de forma gradual y con un fuerte apoyo público a los sectores de la población con menores niveles de renta y educación.

The view that expansionary monetary policy can exacerbate both income and wealth inequality by increasing asset prices has become increasingly popular.The aim of this paper is to study the distributive effects of monetary policy on wealth inequality. In the first part of this research, we develop a simple framework based on accounting identity to examine the redistributive repercussions of changes in monetary policy on net worth through different channels. Based on this framework, in the second part of the paper, we show empirical evidence concerning the effects of monetary policy on wealth inequality in the US. To derive this, we combined macro and micro data, and proceeded in two steps.Firstly, we estimated a Proxy structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model, combining high-frequency identification used as external instruments with a classic SVAR, to measure the response of the real and financial variables that could affect wealth inequality after an expansive monetary policy shock. Considering this information, we then used the microdata of the Survey of Consumer Finance (US, 2016) and simulated changes to the value of a household's assets and liabilities, as well as the inflation rate, produced by an expansive mone-