Using data envelopment analysis to assess the efficiency of retail stores in Portugal

O mercado de retalho está cheio de concorrência feroz e clientes cada vez mais exigentes. Esses são alguns dos fatores que levaram a uma crescente preocupação com a eficiência no setor do retalho. Esta dissertação aplica a metodologia Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), seguindo uma orientação de output, para 34 lojas de uma empresa mundial do setor de retalho não-alimentar que opera em Portugal, a fim de avaliar a eficiência relativa das mesmas. Os resultados mostram que a maioria das lojas são tecnicamente ineficientes e devem aprender com as poucas consideradas eficientes. Também apresentam que muitas lojas não são eficientes do ponto de vista da escala, sendo que a maioria delas são demasiado grandes. O estudo ilustra a utilidade do DEA para avaliar a eficiência relativa das lojas de retalho dado o contexto do estudo.The retail marketplace is packed with fearful competition and more and more demanding customers. These are some of the factors that lead to an ever-increasing preoccupation with efficiency in the retail sector. This dissertation applies the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology, following an output orientation, to 34 stores of a non-food worldwide retail company operating in Portugal in order to assess their relative efficiency. The results show that most of the stores are technically inefficient and should learn from the few efficient ones. It also identifies that many stores are not scale efficient, being most of them too big. The study illustrates the usefulness of DEA to evaluate the relative efficiency of the retail stores given the context of the study

Economic Transformation and Real Exchange Rates in the 2000s: The Balassa-Samuelson Connection

This paper discusses the relevance of the Balassa-Samuelson effect for the transition economies since 1990. Their experience is consistent with this hypothesis and the further implications of this are discussed especially in regard to EMU targets for exchange rate stability and inflation.EU enlargement, EU new member states, euro, transition economies, Balassa-Samuelson

Dynamic Pricing, Advanced Metering, and Demand Response in Electricity Markets

Presents an overview and analysis of the possible approaches to bringing an active demand side into electricity markets. Part of a series of research reports that examines energy issues facing California

Understanding Performance Inefficiencies In Native And Managed Languages

Production software packages have become increasingly complex with millions of lines of code, sophisticated control and data flow, and references to a hierarchy of external libraries. This complexity often introduces performance inefficiencies across software stacks, making it practically impossible for users to pinpoint them manually. Performance profiling tools (a.k.a. profilers) abound in the tools community to aid software developers in understanding program behavior. Classical profiling techniques focus on identifying hotspots. The hotspot analysis is indispensable; however, it can hardly diagnose whether a resource is being used in a productive manner that contributes to the overall efficiency of a program. Consequently, a significant burden is on developers to make a judgment call on whether there is scope to optimize a hotspot. Derived metrics, e.g., cache miss ratio, offer slightly better intuition into hotspots but are still not panaceas. Hence, there is a need for profilers that investigate resource wastage instead of usage. To overcome the critical missing pieces in prior work and complement existing profilers, we propose novel fine- and coarse-grained profilers to pinpoint varieties of performance inefficiencies and provide optimization guidance for a wide range of software covering benchmarks, enterprise applications, and large-scale parallel applications running on supercomputers and data centers. Fine-grained profilers are indispensable to understand performance inefficiencies comprehensively. We propose a whole-program profiler called LoadSpy, which works on binary executables to detect and quantify wasteful memory operations in their context and scope. Our observation, which is justified by myriad case studies, is that wasteful memory operations are often an indicator of various forms of performance inefficiencies, such as suboptimal choices of algorithms or data structures, missed compiler optimizations, and developers’ inattention to performance. Guided by LoadSpy, we are able to optimize a large number of well-known benchmarks and real-world applications, yielding significant speedups. Despite deep performance insights offered by fine-grained profilers, the high overhead keeps them away from widespread adoption, particularly in production. By contrast, coarse-grained profilers introduce low overhead at the cost of poor performance insights. Hence, another research topic is how we benefit from both, that is, the combination of deep insights of fine-grained profilers and low overhead of coarse-grained ones. The first effort to do so is proposing a lightweight profiler called JXPerf. It abandons heavyweight instrumentation by combining hardware performance monitoring units and debug registers available in commodity CPUs to detect wasteful memory operations. Compared with LoadSpy, JXPerf reduces the runtime overhead from 10x to 7% on average. The lightweight nature makes it useful in production. Another effort is proposing a lightweight profiler called FVSampler, the first nonintrusive profiler to study function execution variance

Giving Technology the Place It Deserves in Creative Problem Solving

This project explores the potential for using artificial intelligence (AI) in Creative Problem Solving (CPS) to facilitate a creative process. It invites members from the technology and CPS communities to see the opportunities for AI-augmented creative problem solving, and to join forces to turn those opportunities into reality. To this end the author looks at creativity through a knowledge-centered lens. He proposes a model based on how the human brain makes connections, to enable AI developments that help transform the knowledge residing in a team and/or from external resources into creative solutions. A vision of how AI could be leveraged in specific CPS tools and the facilitation of an unconference session are some of the other outcomes presented

Traceability and tracing of pharmaceutical distribution through Blockchain and Smart Contracts

[Abstract]: Pharmaceutical supply chains require a large number of actions and resources to track products circulating there. However, the appearance of Blockchain implies a substantial advance in identifying products since it adapts perfectly to the conditions imposed by the sector. Therefore, this Bachelor’s thesis investigates technologies such as Blockchain to reinforce the mechanisms and guarantee security in the traffic of products throughout the pharmaceutical supply chain. The developed system allows users to interact with it, facilitating a graphical interface with all the functionalities offered to add, update and view information on both medicines and workers. In addition, this system offers great reliability when it comes to ensuring the integrity of the information assigned to medicines, where data is accessible throughout the supply chain, ensuring total transparency between members of the chain and end users. Therefore, in terms of security, this system makes great strides to offer a solution against falsifications in the supply of medicines and their subsequent sale.[Resumo]: As cadeas de suministro farmacéuticas requiren un gran número de accións e recursos para poder realizar o seguimento dos produtos que por alí circulan. Sin embargo, a aparición de Blockchain implica un avance substancial á hora de identificar os produtos que se amolda perfectamente ás condicións impostas polo sector. Por ello, este Traballo Fin de Grao investiga en tecnoloxías como Blockchain para reforzar os mecanismos e garantir a seguridade no tráfico de produtos ao longo da cadea de suministro farmacéutico. Desenvolveuse un sistema co que os usuarios poden interactuar facilitando unha interface gráfica con todas as funcionalidades ofrecidas para engadir, actualizar e visualizar información tanto de medicamentos como dos traballadores. Ademais, este sistema ofrece unha gran fiabilidade á hora de garantir a integridade da información asignada aos medicamentos, onde os datos son accesibles en toda a cadea de suministro, garantindo a total transparencia entre os membros da cadea e os usuarios finais. Por iso, en materia de seguridade, o sistema dá grandes avances para ofrecer unha solución contra as falsificacións na subministración de medicamentos e a súa posterior venda.Traballo fin de grao (UDC.FIC). Enxeñaría Informática. Curso 2021/202

Efficiency analysis of a retail stores chain of fashion & accessories

Mestrado em EconomiaO objetivo deste estudo é a avaliação da eficiência de uma cadeia de lojas de retalho que representa várias marcas internacionais de prestígio no mercado Português e a identificação dos determinantes que influenciam a eficiência. O estudo compara o desempenho das lojas compostas por 3 diferentes marcas do segmento Brand Equity e propõe melhorias no âmbito da melhoria da performance. Para avaliar a eficiência e os seus determinantes a análise é realizada em duas fases: na primeira fase a metodologia Análise Envoltória de Dados (DEA) é usada para determinar os níveis de eficiência e na segunda fase, os resultados obtidos na primeira fase são estimados através de uma regressão linear quantile de forma a determinar os determinantes da eficiência. Os principais resultados revelam que o número de lojas eficientes aumenta quando estamos perante retorno variável à escala e quando a variável renda é inserida no modelo DEA. As marcas e a localização comercial das lojas são os determinantes da eficiência.This study aims to assess efficiency of a retail stores chain of Fashion & Accessories that represents several international prestigious brands in the Portuguese market and to identify the driving forces that influence efficiency. The study compares the performance among the stores of 3 different brands of the Brand equity market and provides insights into ways of improving performance. To evaluate the efficiency and its determinants we use a two-approach methodology: first Data Envelopment Analysis methodology (DEA) is used to determine the efficient scores and then a Quantile linear regression to determine the efficiency drivers. Main results show that the number of efficient stores increase under variable return to scale and when the variable rent is included in the DEA model. The brands and the retail commercial location are the factors that explain efficiency

Consumer Interest in Corporate Law

This Article provides a comprehensive assessment of the consumer interest in dominant theories of the corporation and in the fundamental doctrines of corporate law. In so doing, the Article fills a void in contemporary corporate law scholarship, which has failed to give sustained attention to consumers in favor of exploring the interests of other corporate stakeholders, especially shareholders, creditors, and workers. Utilizing insights derived from the law and behavioralism movement, this Article examines, in particular, the limitations of the shareholder primacy norm at the heart of prevailing nexus of contracts and team production theories of the firm. The Article concludes that fundamental reforms in corporate governance may be needed in order to vindicate the consumer interest in corporate enterprise

Towards a balanced contribution of household credit to the economy. CEPS-ECRI Task Force Report, May 2015

While policy-makers are creating conditions to strengthen recovery, the debate on the role that retail finance should play in this respect focuses on corporate loans rather than on household credit. The improvement of financing conditions for firms in order to support further investment spending is certainly essential to ensuring sustainable growth. However, a significant part of EU growth will depend on the behaviour of households and on their ability to secure funding for their consumption and investment. It is therefore essential to place further emphasis on the different options available to stimulate household credit, in particular consumer loans. Nevertheless, in order to avoid past mistakes, regulators should continue to develop a framework where consumer loans (and by extension household credit) contributes to the economy in a balanced way. To achieve this, five main issues need to be addressed further