Coincident and Leading Indicators for the Euro Area: A Frequency Band Approach

In the context of a common monetary policy, tracking euro area economic developments becomes essential. The aim of this paper is to build monthly coincident and leading composite indicators for the euro area business cycle. However, instead of looking at the overall comovement between the variables as it is standard in the literature, we show how one can resort to both time and frequency domain analysis to achieve additional insight about their relationship. We find that, in general, the lead/lag properties of economic indicators depend on the cycles periodicity. Following a frequency band approach, we take advantage of this in the construction of the coincident and leading composite indicators. The resulting indicators are analysed and a comparison with other composite indicators proposed in the literature is made.

Keynesian and schumpeterian efficiency in a BOP-constrained growth model

The paper aims to contribute to the debate on specialization and growth in two forms. Firstly, it develops a North-South model in which the ratio between the income elasticity of exports and imports in the South (that gives the rate of growth compatible with external equilibrium) depends on the Keynesian and Schumpeterian efficiency of the pattern of specialization, as defined by Dosi et al (1990). The model draws on key insights of the technology gap literature to discuss how these efficiencies are related to the dynamics of technological learning. Secondly, the model is tested including the variables Keynesian and Schumpeterian efficiency in a Keynesian growth regression. Several estimation procedures are used to test the model, among which Finite Mixture Estimation, which allows for estimating the parameters for homogenous groups of countries.Schumpeterian efficiency, keynesian efficiency, balance-of-payments-constrained growth, Thirlwall's Law

International comovement of stock market returns: a wavelet analysis

The assessment of the comovement among international stock markets is of key interest, for example, for the international portfolio diversification literature. In this paper, we re-examine such comovement by resorting to a novel approach, wavelet analysis. Wavelet analysis allows one to measure the comovement in the time-frequency space. In this way, one can characterize how international stock returns relate in the time and frequency domains simultaneously, which allows one to provide a richer analysis of the comovement. We focus on Germany, Japan, UK and US and the analysis is done at both the aggregate and sectoral levels.

Forecasting Euro Area Aggregates with Bayesian VAR and VECM Models

This paper focuses on Bayesian Vector Auto-Regressive (BVAR) models for the euro area. A modified hyperparameterization scheme based on the Minnesota prior that takes into account the economic nature of the variables in the model is used. The merits of incorporating long-run relationships are also discussed. Alternative methods to estimate eventual cointegrating relations in the variables are considered, and the problem of choice of appropriate prior distributions for BVAR with Error Correction Mechanism (BECM) models is addressed. Results show that using a flat prior on factor loadings can seriously endanger the forecasting performance of BECM models. Overall, the BVAR model in levels outperforms all other models across variables and forecasting horizons. This is in contrast with other empirical studies where some gains could be obtained when incorporating long-run relationships in the model.

‘Lending a hand’: the well-intentioned work of a non-profit organisation on the outskirts of neoliberal Lisbon

This paper focuses on the mental health of two immigrants supported by a non-profit organisation on the outskirts of Lisbon, Dona Lígia and Albino1. The ethnography sets out the discourse of these users who are also residents of Terraços da Ponte, a social housing neighbourhood, and the workers who try to help them in the context of the non-profit organisation’s endeavours. Using semi-directive interviews, life stories and data collected during eleven months of intensive ethnographic fieldwork, the intersections between the non-profit’s users and its employees are presented and critically discussed in this article. The space and conditions which these individuals inhabit, as well as the history of the old Quinta do Mocho (the slum where they used to live before being rehoused in the new neighbourhood), are central in the analysis of how local subjectivities are formed and negotiated. The paper shows that interventions merely focused on trying to ‘lend a hand’ may do more harm than good to the communities, because the efforts employed by these non-profits disregard the causes producing illness and suffering in the first place.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

“I Don’t Have the Nerve to Tell These People That I Cannot Help Them!”: Vulnerability, Ethnography, and Good Intentions

The nonprofit organization where this ethnography took place, driven by the maxim ”lending a hand”, was forced to reduce its e orts to what it considered essential, at a time when austerity was beginning to take shape in Portugal. The analysis of the logics employed to distribute food to the neediest proved to be critical to the understanding of the consequences of apparent beneficial actions in this context. The concept of ”vulnerable” is, therefore, discussed considering how it was produced by a legal instrument and how it was reproduced by a local institution, what were the consequences for the subjects involved in this research and also for the vulnerable ethnographer. This investigation was based on several months of intense fieldwork where di erent ethnographic methodologies were employed in order to grasp the complexities of vulnerability and good intentions, such as participants’ observations and semi-directive interviews. Although this paper focuses on the analysis of the distribution of food support during a later visit to the fieldwork site, it is not the purpose of this paper to discuss issues of food shortage, but to contribute to the debate of care in the context of deprivation and precariousness, anchored in an ethnography where these concepts intertwine with real situations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Nowcasting an Economic Aggregate with Disaggregate Dynamic Factors: An Application to Portuguese GDP

This paper consists of an empirical study comparing a dynamic factor model approach to estimate the current quarter aggregate GDP with the alternative approach of aggregating the forecasts obtained from specific dynamic factor models for each major expenditure disaggregate. The out-of-sample forecasting performance results suggest that there is no advantage in aggregating the disaggregate forecasts.Forecasting; Dynamic Factor Model; Temporal Disaggregation

Análise de proveniência das contas verdes dos Perdigões

A variscite é um mineral raro que oferece uma excelente opotunidade de estudo dos padrões de comércio e troca na Europa durante a Pré- História através da determinação da sua fonte de proveniência. No presente texto será discutida a proveniência das contas de colar verdes com base em análises de XRF e XRD, através das quais se criou uma identidade geoquímica passível de ser comparada com as das fontes de variscite conhecidasVariscite is a rare mineral that offers an excellent opportunity to study trade and exchange patterns in prehistoric Europe through proveniencing of source material. In this paper we discuss the provenance of Perdigões’ green beads by means of XRF and XRD analyses, thus creating a geochemical baseline that is compared with that of the known variscite source

How can Impresa increase the traffic of expresso website?

This report aims at describing the project developed in the Customer Relationship Management Field Lab, under a partnership established between Nova SBE and the group IMPRESA. The major goal was to elaborate on possible initiatives to increase the traffic on the website of Expresso, which were supported by evidences found through structured interviews and the company’s internal data. As the main findings are the increasing role of mobile devices and social media on the news’ consumption habits. These encourage an integrated improvement of the overall digital offer of Expresso, in a perspective of brand and audience development that should be a goal for the whole company

Perceção háptica: propriedades físicas e funcionais de raquetas de ténis de mesa e badminton em crianças e idosos

A perceção háptica é uma capacidade não visual que permite determinar propriedades físicas e funcionais de um objeto que é sustentado. (Turvey, 1996). Esta capacidade depende da resistência que o objeto oferece (Kloos & Amazeen, 2002), seja qual for a densidade do meio em que o objeto é sustentado ativamente (e.g., Pagano & Donahue, 1999; Pagano & Cabe, 2003). A consistência percetiva, i.e., a tendência para a perceção se manter constante, embora as mudanças na estimulação, sustenta a hipótese e a importância do conceito de invariante percetiva (Gibson, 1966), i.e., uma variável de estimulação que se mantem constante. No entanto, há constrangimentos intrínsecos que condicionam a capacidade afinada de detetar tais invariantes. Costa, Catela e Barreiros (2008) verificaram que crianças com 5 anos foram mais sensíveis que crianças de 4 anos ao peso de uma haste na estimativa do seu comprimento (cf., Kloos & Amazeen, 2002), estimando a mais leve como mais curta, e que a correção na identificação de qual a haste mais pesada estava diretamente associada à idade (cf., Kloos & Amazeen, 2002, sobre ilusão tamanho-peso). Também verificaram que na haste leve, os dados tendiam a não ter distribuição normal; talvez porque o menor peso do objeto dificultasse a determinação do seu comprimento.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio