Impossible intimacy: discovering the cultural interplay between new and the old worlds in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita

Tese de mestrado em Estudos Anglísticos apresentada à Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, 2008Não foi de toda alietória a escolha da obra Lolita de Vladimir Nabokov como ponto de partida para esta tese. Apesar de ser um livro muito tratado, continua pela sua complexidade a exercer um fascínio imanente sobre os seus leitores. No cerne deste livro encontram-se fundidos séculos de tradição literária, onde são reinventadas velhas fórmulas e conceitos estéticos, com um sentido de humor implacável e inteligente característico de Nabokov. Um dos tópicos primordiais desta obra coincide com a preocupação fundamental desta tese: desvendar a dialéctica entre a Europa e a América representada pelos personagens aparentemente antiéticos Humbert, o erudito cavalheiro europeu, e Lolita, a rude ninfeta americana. Simultaneamente, esta tese busca as ligações culturais entre os dois continentes, tendo como pano de fundo uma época muito agitada o pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial. Um grande número de académicos já anteriormente se debruçou sobre este tópico, em especial Ellen Pifer, que no seu ensaio Nabokov's Novel Offspring argumenta que o nome de Lolita está hoje irreversivelmente ligado à noção de juventude americana sexualizada, enquanto Humbert, por sua vez, é conectado com o langor e nostalgia de uma sociedade europeia em colapso.A questão do abismo intercontinental é recorrentemente associada às diferenças intrínsecas presentes nos dois protagonistas de Lolita. Esta suposição não é de todo desprovida de sentido, afinal os personagens principais deste romance são verdadeiramente díspares a primeira é uma vivaça adolescente americana, enquanto o segundo é um melancólico académico europeu. Assim, estabelece-se um dos pontos-chave que permeará toda esta tese: a relação de contrastes entre Lolita e Humbert, bem como aquilo que Pifer apelidou da divisão entre o mundo das crianças e o mundo dos adultos (85). Tal dialéctica será correlacionada com a fascinação americana pela relação familia

Corruption and firm behavior

This paper investigates how corruption affects firrm behavior. Firms can engage in two types of corruption when seeking a public service: cost-reducing "collusive" corruption and cost increasing "coercive" corruption. Using an original and unusually rich dataset on bribe payments at ports matched to firrm-level data, we observe how firms respond to each type of corruption by adjusting their shipping and sourcing strategies. "Collusive" corruption is associated with higher usage of the corrupt port, while "coercive" corruption is associated with reduced demand for port services. Our results suggest that firms respond to the opportunities and challenges created by different types of corruption, organizing production in a way that increases or decreases demand for the public service. Understanding how firms respond to corruption has important implications for how we conceptualize, identify and measure the overall impact of corruption on economic activity

High-tech human capital: Do the richest countries invest the most?

Research and Development (R&D) endogenous growth models predict and most evidence show that investment in R&D increase with economic development. We consider the type of human capital mainly used in research labs and show that the richest countries are investing proportionally less than middle income countries in engineering and technical human capital. We generalize this result, controlling for other explanatory variables, cross-time error correlations, heteroskedaticity and endogeneity bias. Thus, we establish a stylized fact (about human capital composition) that is a puzzle to economic theory: the ratio of high-tech to low-tech human capital presents an inverted U-shaped relationship with GDP per capita.human capital composition, high-tech human capital, R&D, Development

The Iberian Tigers versus The Celtic Tiger: Economic Growth Paths in an Economic History Perspective

The years following the Second World War were those of the greatest economic growth that Europe had ever seen. If the countries of the Iberian Peninsula, neutral in the conflict and ruled by dictatorial regimes, enjoyed that growth and had participated in the convergence phenomenon, Ireland, also neutral but democratic, was not able to converge to the developed world. Since 1973, with petroleum crashes, the process of growth has slowed down in Europe, but it was only after 1985 that Ireland began to grow at impressive rates. We review, in an economic history perspective, the implications of the institutional environment and the economic policy decisions. We also address the consequences and plausible explanations for the different growth paths of those countries and revisit the puzzle of slow Irish growth until middle eighties.Second World War, Economic Growth, Convergence, Europe, Ireland, Portugal, Spain

Modified theories of gravity with non-minimal curvature-matter coupling

In this contribution one examines the generalization of the $f(R)$ theories of gravity where one introduces a non-minimal coupling between curvature and matter. This model has new and interesting features. %, specially concerning the energy exchange between the matter fields and the curvature. However, as any modified gravity theories, these may give origin to anomalies which might turn the theory physically meaningless. In this respect, one undertakes a study on the energy conditions and the Dolgov-Kawasaki criterion specific of this new model.Comment: 6 pages, 1 table. Talk present by O. B. at the "Invisible Universe International Conference", Paris, Palais de l'UNESCO June 29- July 3. To appear in the Proceeding

Zygoparity and sex steroid hormone profiles in bluemouth Helicolenus dactylopterus

Two hundred and seven individuals (103 females and 104 males) of bluemouth Helicolenus dactylopterus (Scorpaeniformes, Sebastidae), a commercially important deep-water species with an unusual reproductive strategy, from the eastern Atlantic Ocean ranging from 139 to 375 cm total length (L-T) were analysed from September 2011 to October 2012. The analysis included gonad maturity phases and blood-plasma levels of oestradiol-17 (E-2), 11-ketotestosterone (11-KT) and 17,20-dihydroxypregn-4-en-3-one (17,20-P). Results confirmed the existence of an annual reproductive cycle with asynchrony between females and males and a spawning season from January to May. A pronounced peak in 17,20-P in October for both sexes was associated with possible mating behaviour and recent copula. Levels of E-2 increased preceding the elevation of the gonado-somatic index during ovarian growth and were lower during regression and regeneration. The frequency distribution of oocyte-embryonic stages and variation of hormone levels suggest the existence of daily rhythms. Fertilization was detected between 2000-0000 and 0800-1200 h and spawning took place throughout the day peaking between 2000 and 0000 h. The cyclic pattern of sex steroids and ovarian recruitment provides a new insight into the reproductive strategy of this species.Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia SFRH/BPD/108917/2015, SFRH/BD/92769/2013info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Mortality Rate and Property Rights in a Model with Human Capital and R&D

We use a set of established growth models, which simultaneously include human capital and R&D, to show that the effect of mortality rate in human capital accumulation is quantitatively more important than the effect of perfectly guaranteed patents on research. First, we show that the effect of mortality rate on human capital accumulation productivity may explain differences in growth paths and development levels across countries, accounting for the main features of economic development of the industrialized world in the last two centuries. Then, we explicitly compare the two types of expropriation (mortality rate and uncertainty in property rights).Institutions, Incentives, Economic Growth, Economic Development, Industrial Revolutions

High-Tech Human Capital: Do The Richest Countries Invest the Most? (working-paper)

Research and Development (R&D) endogenous growth models predict and most evidence show that investment in R&D increases with economic development. We consider the type of human capital mainly used in research labs and show that the richest countries are investing proportionally less than middle income countries in engineering and technical human capital. We generalize this result, controlling for other explanatory variables, cross-time error correlations, heteroskedasticity and endogeneity bias. Thus, we establish a stylized fact (about human capital composition) that is a puzzle to economic theory: the ratio of high-tech to low-tech human capital presents an inverted U-shaped relationship with GDP per capita.Human Capital Composition, High-Tech Human Capital, R&D, Development

Revisiting business cycle synchronisation in the European Union

We assess the business cycle synchronization features of aggregate output in the 27 EU countries using annual data for the period 1970-2009. In particular, we compute measures of synchronisation for private consumption, government spending, gross fixed capital formation, exports and imports. Our results show a rise in synchronization over the full period, and although private consumption is the biggest component of GDP, external demand tends to be a more important determinant of business cycle synchronization.EU, business cycle synchronization.

Existence of optimal boundary control for the Navier-Stokes equations with mixed boundary conditions

Variational approaches have been used successfully as a strategy to take advantage from real data measurements. In several applications, this approach gives a means to increase the accuracy of numerical simulations. In the particular case of fluid dynamics, it leads to optimal control problems with non standard cost functionals which, when constraint to the Navier-Stokes equations, require a non-standard theoretical frame to ensure the existence of solution. In this work, we prove the existence of solution for a class of such type of optimal control problems. Before doing that, we ensure the existence and uniqueness of solution for the 3D stationary Navier-Stokes equations, with mixed-boundary conditions, a particular type of boundary conditions very common in applications to biomedical problems