A Profit Efficiency Perspective on the Future Strategic Positioning of the Portuguese Banks

The Portuguese banking sector has been recently subjected to important structural changes. The diversification of the supply of financial services, the specialization phenomena and the growing importance of new technologies are changing the sector dramatically. A profit perspective is used to investigate the efficiency performance of the commercial banking sector in Portugal in the period 2000-2004 and infer some implications for the banks´ management strategic orientation. The Nerlovian and an alternative profit efficiency measures are used, illustrating the potentialities of the directional distance functions to the profit efficiency analysis. A decomposition of the alternative profit efficiency measure is also proposed.Banking; Nerlovian profit efficiency; alternative profit efficiency; directional distance functions

Cultural Links, Firm Heterogeneity and the Intensive and Extensive Margins of International Trade

It is well known that cultural links between countries increase bilateral trade. In this paper we exploit Portuguese firm-level data on exports to 199 destinations to investigate the questions: How? Do cultural links increase the number of exporters, or the shipments per exporter? What is the role of firm heterogeneity? The results reveal that cultural links, measured by common language/colonial ties and emigrant communities, are significantly associated with a lower incidence of within-firm export zeros and with larger shipments per exporter. Furthermore, they show that the former of these relationships tends to be magnified by firm size, suggesting that firm heterogeneity is key in shaping the interplay between cultural links and the extensive margin of international trade.Colonial ties, migration, firm heterogeneity, intensive and extensive margins

Eliminating Gender Inequalities Reduces Poverty. How?

There are many ways in which gender inequalities are present in society. Those inequalities, like any other, are intrinsically unfair and should be fought against. In this One Pager, we show how gender inequalities in the labour market determine poverty levels. We answer the following question: which aspect of gender inequalities should be considered priority in the design of public policies that seek to reduce gender inequalities and poverty?Eliminating Gender Inequalities Reduces Poverty. How?

Free daily newspapers: too many incentives to print?

We consider a model in which a free daily newspaper distributes news to readers and sells ad-space to advertisers, having private information about its readership. Depending on the type of readers in the market, the newspaper's may have a "plentiful and seeking" audience or a "lacking and avoiding" audience. We find that if the readers are plentiful and seeking, the newspaper prints an excessive number of copies. The rationale for this over-printing strategy lies on the newspaper's need to send a credible signal to the advertisers that there are plentiful and seeking readers in the market. When the readers are lacking and avoiding, the newspaper chooses the socially optimal tirage (does not try to cheat the advertisers).two-sided markets, asymmetric information, free press

International Competition, Returns to Skill and Labor Market Adjustment

This paper examines whether increased import competition induces domestic workers to skill upgrade and/or switch industries. The analysis makes use of a large unique longitudinal matched employer-employee dataset that covers virtually all workers and firms in Portugal over the 1986-2000 period. Our identification strategy uses two exogenous changes in the degree of international competition. First, we exploit the strong appreciation of the Portuguese currency in 1989-1992 and pre-existing differences in trade exposure across industries in a differences-in-differences estimation. Second, we make use of changes in industry-specific (source-weighted) real exchange rates. A bivariate probit model is used to analyse the impact of increased international competition on skill-upgrading and/or industry switching. Based on both empirical strategies, and on two different skill definitions, we find strong confirmation for the hypothesis that increased international competition increases the returns to skill and induces skill upgrading.International trade, Skill-upgrading, Labour market adjustment

The Role of Gender Inequalities in Explaining Income Growth, Poverty and Inequality: Evidence from Latin American Countries

This Working Paper investigates the possible link between gender inequalities in the labour market and significant economic outcomes such as income growth, poverty and inequality indicators. Our analysis is based on microsimulations for eight Latin American countries. We consider four aspects of gender inequalities: differences in labour market participation, differences in occupational status, wage discrimination and differences in characteristics. Our findings highlight the relevance of gender equality, especially an increase in women?s access to the labour market, in bringing about a reduction in poverty and inequality.The Role of Gender Inequalities in Explaining Income Growth, Poverty and Inequality: Evidence from Latin American Countries

Costly horizontal differentiation

We study the effect of quadratic differentiation costs in the Hotelling model of endogenous product differentiation. The equilibrium location choices are found to depend on the magnitude of the differentiation costs (relatively to the transportation costs supported by consumers). When the differentiation costs are low, there is maximum differentiation. When they are intermediate, there is partial differentiation, with a degree of differentiation that decreases with the differentiation costs. When they are above a certain threshold, there is no equilibrium. In any case, the socially optimal degree of differentiation is always lower than the equilibrium level. We also study the case of collusion between firms. If firms can combine locations but not prices, they locate asymmetrically when differentiation costs are high and choose maximum differentiation when they are low. When collusion extends to price setting, there is partial differentiation.Costly product differentiation, Spatial competition, Hotelling model

The financial sustainability of Microcredit in Portugal

Microcredit and microfinance emerged in the 1970’s in Bangladesh and other developing countries and expanded rapidly worldwide as a business model financially sustainable and able to fight poverty and social exclusion. Empirical evidence confirms microcredit ability to mitigate poverty but its financial sustainability is controversial. Using 2006-2009 Portuguese micro-level data, we estimate the failure rate of Portuguese micro-credit projects as 20,6%/year that, to be financially sustainable, would require a real interest rate by 25%/year. Using a territorial variable on a discrete Cox proportional hazard model with censured data, we estimate that the failure rate of those micro-credit projects located in the worst-case NUTS II Portuguese regions (Alentejo and Centro) and promoted by lower schooling people is significantly higher than best-case.Microcredit, Firms failure rate, Poverty, Financial sustainability

Caso clínico bioquímico

Bisalbuminemia is a qualitative albumin variation defined by coexistence of two types of serum albumin with different electrophoretic mobilities in the same individual. It can be of two different types: hereditary (or permanent) and acquired (or transient). Herein is described a rare case of hereditary bisalbuminemia in a healthy infant, incidentally found during elevated aminotransferase study. Despite not having pathological significance, acknowledgement of this analytical alteration is key for adequate management of these patients.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Growth performance, biochemical composition and sedimentation velocity of Tetraselmis sp. CTP4 under different salinities using low-cost lab- and pilot-scale systems

Biomass harvesting is one of the most expensive steps of the whole microalgal production pipeline. Therefore, the present work aimed to understand the effect of salinity on the growth performance, biochemical composition and sedimentation velocity of Tetraselmis sp. CTP4, in order to establish an effective low-cost pilot-scale harvesting system for this strain. At lab scale, similar growth performance was obtained in cultures grown at salinities of 5, 10 and 20 g L-1 NaCl. In addition, identical settling velocities (2.4-3.6 cm h-1) were observed on all salinities under study, regardless of the growth stage. However, higher salinities (20 g L-1) promoted a significant increase in lipid contents in this strain compared to when this microalga was cultivated at 5 or 10 g L-1 NaCl. At pilot-scale, cultures were cultivated semi-continuously in 2.5-m3 tubular photobioreactors, fed every four days, and stored in a 1-m3 harvesting tank. Upon a 24-hour settling step, natural sedimentation of the microalgal cells resulted in the removal of 93% of the culture medium in the form of a clear liquid containing only vestigial amounts of biomass (0.07 ± 0.02 g L-1 dry weight; DW). The remaining culture was recovered as a highly concentrated culture (19.53 ± 4.83 g L-1 DW) and wet microalgal paste (272.7 ± 18.5 g L-1 DW). Overall, this method provided an effective recovery of 97% of the total biomass, decreasing significantly the harvesting costs.Agência financiadora Portuguese national budget P2020 Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) CMAR/Multi/04326/2013 ALGARED+ 1398 EP - INTERREG V-A Espana Portugal project ALGACO2 project 023310 COST Action 1408 - European Network for Bio-products FCT SFRH/BD/105541/2014info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio