The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise

This is a major myth pushed by the cultural left and regressive left these days: that Spain in the period of Muslim rule was some kind of multicultural paradise and beacon of Enlightenment in Dark Age Europe.

That myth is completely shattered by this book:

Fernandez-Morera, Dario. 2016. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain. ISI Books, Wilmington, Deleware.

See this interview of Dario Fernandez-Morera here:



See also an interesting review here.

As Fernandez-Morera argues, there was no multicultural paradise. It was a society of largely mutually-hostile segregated communities, living separate lives, and where Christians and Jews lived as second class citizens subject to punishing extortionate tax and humiliating restrictions on their freedom.

Fernandez-Morera (2013) points out that life also became progressively worse and worse for Jews in Islamic Spain. For example, Jews had been forced to wear a special yellow band or badge to distinguish themselves, and there was a homicidal massacre of the Jewish population of Granada in December 1066.

By the 13th to 15th centuries, particularly after the Almohad rulers of Spain demanded the forced conversion of Jews and Christians (Fernandez-Morera 2013: 27), life became so bad for the Sephardic Jewish population in Spain that there was a mass exodus to Christian countries (Fernandez-Morera 2013: 22).

So, all in all, this society can hardly be regarded as any kind of model for the modern world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fernandez-Morera, Dario. 2013. “Some Overlooked Realities of Jewish Life under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain,” Comparative Civilizations Review 68: 21–35.

Bill Mitchell on the Euro, Austerity and MMT

Nice, short interviews.

Mark-up Pricing in Spain

Álvarez and Hernando (2005) report the results of a survey on price setting behaviour of firms in Spain (see also Álvarez and Hernando 2007).

The research was conducted by a private company between May and September 2004 using a questionnaire prepared by the Banco de España, and involved 2,008 firms from the manufacturing, energy, trade, hotel and restaurant, transport and communications sectors (Álvarez and Hernando 2005: 8). These sectors represent about 51.3% of Spanish Gross Value Added (GVA) (Álvarez and Hernando 2005: 8).

The median firm changes the price of its main product once a year (Álvarez and Hernando 2005: 20).

The firms were asked to assess the importance of nine theories explaining price rigidity and rank these theories with a score from (1) (unimportant) to (4) (very important).

The theories were ranked in the following order from most important to least important:

(1) Implicit contracts

(2) Coordination failure

(3) Explicit contracts

(4) Temporary shocks

(5) Quality signal

(6) Pricing points

(7) Menu costs

(8) Change non-price factors

(9) Information costs.

These results are in line with other surveys.

While the survey fails to ask firms whether they use mark-up pricing, nevertheless the results strongly suggest that this form of price setting is important: for example, the survey results indicate that changes in costs of production are the main cause of price increases (Álvarez and Hernando 2005: 36).

Fabiani et al. (2006: 18, Table 4) report that the percentage of Spanish firms using mark-up pricing is 52%, but it is unclear where this data comes from.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Álvarez, Luis J. and Ignacio Hernando. 2005. “The Price Setting Behaviour of Spanish Firms Evidence from Survey Data,” ECB Working Paper Series No. 538 (October)

Álvarez, Luis J. and Ignacio Hernando. 2007. “Pricing Behavior of Spanish Firms,” in S. Fabiani, C. Suzanne Loupias, F. M. Monteiro Martins and Roberto Sabbatini (eds.), Pricing Decisions in the Euro Area: How Firms set Prices and Why. Oxford University Press, New York. 165–181.

Fabiani, S., M. Druant, I. Hernando, C. Kwapil, B. Landau, C. Loupias, F. Martins, T. Mathä, R. Sabbatini, H. Stahl and A. Stokman. 2006. “What Firms’ Surveys tell us about Price-Setting Behavior in the Euro Area,” International Journal of Central Banking 2.3: 3–47.