Labour productivity in state-owned enterprises

In the aftermath of the Global and Financial Crisis (GFC), between 2013 and 2015, the Portuguese government revoked four holidays for both public sector and private employees. We test whether the revocation had an effect on labour productivity in State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Portugal. Moreover, we also study whether such effects are different taking into account the SOEs managed by the Central Government or the Local and Regional Governments. Our results show that revocation of holidays did not impact labour productivity for either central or local and regional government managed SOEs. Though revocation of holidays espoused to improve productivity, the policy seems to have served a ceremonial purpose, but not an economic oneinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Tracking the US Business Cycle With a Singular Spectrum Analysis

The monitoring of economic developments is an exercise of considerable importance forpolicy makers, namely, central banks and fiscal authorities as well as for other economic agents such as financial intermediaries, firms and households. However, the assessment of the business cycle is not an easy endeavor as the cyclical component is not an observable variable. In this paper we resort to singular spectrum analysis in order to disentangle the US GDP into several underlying components of interest. The business cycle indicator yielded through this method is shown to bear a resemblance with band-pass filtered output. As the end-of-sample behavior is typically a thorny issue in business cycle assessment, a real-time estimation exercise is here conducted to assess the reliability of the several filters. The obtained results suggest that the business cycle indicator proposed herein possesses a better revision performance than other filters commonly applied in the literature.

Gestão sustentável de recursos naturais: interesses privados e públicos

Muitos dos recursos naturais que há trinta ou quarenta anos eram considerados inesgotáveis são hoje considerados escassos, ameaçando mesmo tornar a vida impossível em muitas regiões do globo. O crescimento da população mundial e o aumento generalizado do poder de compra têm multiplicado o impacto da humanidade sobre os recursos naturais essenciais à vida do Homem. Acresce que como a população não se distribuiu uniformemente pela superfície terrestre, há regiões, consideradas das mais ricas em espécies animais e vegetais, onde a preservação dos recursos naturais corre sérios riscos porque, sendo das mais densamente povoadas, estão ameaçadas pelas actividades do homem. Tendo alcançado cerca de 7,1 mil milhões, em 2013, a população humana continua a crescer. As Nações Unidas estimam para o ano 2050 uma população no intervalo entre 8 e 10,9 mil milhões, indicando, este intervalo, a medida em que o Homem pode influenciar o seu futuro. O objectivo deste trabalho é o de mostrar que a sustentabilidade dos recursos naturais é fortemente condicionada pelas decisões tomadas e que estas são, em última análise, influenciadas por variáveis de natureza económica

Valor económico do solo: perspectivas pública e privada

Having in mind that the majority of human beings do not take consciousness how fundamental soil is for their survi - val, nor how men action can lead to soil dilapidation, this works tries to call attention for its real value. Concisely, the main objectives of this paper are: to show clearly the most relevant soil functions; to analyze how soil management can influence positive or negatively soil capacity of production; to present a methodology for private soil assessment , making clear that privates valuate almost exclusively the soil capacity to produce market goods and ser - vices; to stress that many goods and services have global public effects; to emphasize that society ought to recognize soil multifunctionality and must try to impute some value to all those goods and services although some of them have no market value, at present. The paper concludes that: (1) without productive soil life on earth, as we know it, would be impossible; (2) although it is almost impossible to assess the real value of all goods and services produced by the soil, it is of great importance to develop appropriate methodologies to do so, in order to improve cost-benefit analysis helping to take correct decisions regarding the sustainable use of the soil

Avaliações e indemnizações em propriedades rústicas

The main objective of this paper is to present the peculiarities of rural properties evaluation, to clarify some important aspects and to explain a simple methodology to evaluate the compensation due to rural property owners’ for land expropriation and for rights-of-way

Unfair agricultural prices cause hunger and resources dilapidation

The main objective of this paper is to present facts and arguments trying to prove that unfair prices are the most important cause for the dilapidation of human and natural resources. In many poor countries farmers sell their products at prices below their real cost. In these countries, most often, family labour and equipment depreciation are not accounted as real costs. Although the huge technical progress occurred in the last fifty years, or because of it, many thousands of farmers in undeveloped countries went bankruptcy and many millions of people are starving. The expected increase in world population will demand for levels of production much higher than those that are been produced. So, if we want to feed the world in a sustainable way, maintaining the production potential of human and natural resources, a new set of trade and rural development policies have to be implemented across the world, based on regional common markets. To promote these policies, regional organizations (that include several countries) and a new international trade organization must be created

Cognição e comunicação no âmbito da pedagogia – uma reflexão à luz da relevance theory

Artigo científicoPartindo do pressuposto defendido pela Relevance Theory, de que os processos cognitivos humanos são orientados por um mecanismo de otimização da relevância, procurando obter os máximos efeitos contextuais ao menor custo de processamento, este artigo tenta delinear a aplicação à prática pedagógica de alguns princípios da referida teoria, tendo como objetivo, o desencadear de uma reflexão individual acerca das implicações pedagógicas aqui demonstradas, nomeadamente em termos da escolha da linguagem e dos conteúdos, assim como em termos das intenções comunicativa e informativa da comunicação humana

Molecular dynamics simulations of ballistic annihilation

Using event-driven molecular dynamics we study one- and two-dimensional ballistic annihilation. We estimate exponents $\xi$ and $\gamma$ that describe the long-time decay of the number of particles ($n(t)\sim t^{-\xi}$) and of their typical velocity ($v(t)\sim t^{-\gamma}$). To a good accuracy our results confirm the scaling relation $\xi + \gamma =1$. In the two-dimensional case our results are in a good agreement with those obtained from the Boltzmann kinetic theory.Comment: 4 pages; some changes; Physical Review E (in press

Social and parental support as moderators of the effects of homophobic bullying on psychological distress in youth

The aim of this study was to explore homophobic bullying in Portugal, including its forms, prevalence, and consequences, and to verify whether parental and social support moderated the effects of homophobic bullying for victims. An online questionnaire was completed by 211 female and male students, aged 12 to 20 years. Results showed that psychological violence prevailed, male students were more often victims than female students were, and lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents were victims more often than their heterosexual peers were. The emotional impact on victims was higher when social support was low, including suicidal ideation and school difficulties. Furthermore, a main effect of parental support was found for emotional and behavioral distress indices experienced by adolescents.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio