Agglomeration externalities and 1981-2006 regional growth in Brazil

This paper focuses on manufacturing employment growth across the 26 states of Brazil. We employ the Glaeser et al. (1992) approach to identify the role played by knowledge externalities in growth and convergence. To assess robustness of the results, we compare cross-section models, dynamic panel models and pooled-periods fixed-effect models. We find that cross-section models confirm the positive impact of Porter’s and Jacobs’ competition externalities on growth, whereas dynamic panel models and pooled-periods fixed-effect models are consistent with the predictions of Marshall-Arrow-Romer and Porter regarding the role of specialisation in manufacturing vis-à-vis other employment. The results provide new insights into the rapid growth since 1981 in particularly the North and Centre West of Brazil

A century of the evolution of the urban system in Brazil

In this paper, we study the hitherto unexplored evolution of the size distribution of 185 urban areas in Brazil between 1907 and 2008. We find that the power law parameter of the size distribution of the 100 largest urban areas increases from 0.63 in 1907 to 0.89 in 2008, which confirms an agglomeration process in which the size distribution has become more unequal. A panel fixed effects model pooling the same range of urban size distributions provides a power law parameter equal to 0.53, smaller than those from cross-sectional estimation. Clearly, Zipf’s Law is rejected. The lognormal distribution fits the city size distribution quite well until the 1940s, but since then applies to small and medium size cities only. These results are consistent with our understanding of historical-political and socio-economic processes that have shaped the development of Brazilian cities

Regional Socio-Economic Transformation in Brazil

The regional income disparities in Brazil are well-known. Since the 1930s, such income disparities have declined only slightly. This thesis combines traditional economic theory with insights from regional science and economic geography to explain the development pattern in Brazil throughout the 20th century, using a wide range of data sets. It contributes to the consolidation of the field of New Economic Geography because some tools employed in this thesis have not yet had widespread use in the literature. The thesis also brings new insights for the understanding of Brazil’s development process. The key finding of the thesis is that there has been almost time-invariant spatial autocorrelation in Brazil’s growth process that impedes the lagging regions from catching up. The reason for this is that there is a clear cluster of contiguous rich regions (Southeast and South) – i.e. the core - characterised not only by high real income levels and high market potential, but also by the fact that they have the largest markets and are the platform of the global economy in Brazil. In contrast, there is another cluster of contiguous poor regions (North and Northeast) – the periphery - that has low real income levels, low market potential and low market access. The agglomeration of population and economic activity explains the observed concentration pattern. Although there were some efforts made through regional development policy to narrow the gaps amongst the regions, the agglomeration forces are very strong in Brazil. The creation of Brasília did not offset these agglomeration forces, partially because place-based policies matter. The creation of Brasilia obviously had major implications for Brasilia itself, but did not offset the agglomeration forces that led to the dominance of São Paulo. Similarly, investment in other lagging regions may not offset the advantages of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but they may improve economic conditions in the lagging regions themselves if income transfers or subsidies are done for efficient industries

Iterated-greedy-based algorithms with beam search initialization for the permutation flowshop to minimize total tardiness

The permutation flow shop scheduling problem is one of the most studied operations research related problems. Literally, hundreds of exact and approximate algorithms have been proposed to optimise several objective functions. In this paper we address the total tardiness criterion, which is aimed towards the satisfaction of customers in a make-to-order scenario. Although several approximate algorithms have been proposed for this problem in the literature, recent contributions for related problems suggest that there is room for improving the current available algorithms. Thus, our contribution is twofold: First, we propose a fast beam-search-based constructive heuristic that estimates the quality of partial sequences without a complete evaluation of their objective function. Second, using this constructive heuristic as initial solution, eight variations of an iterated-greedy-based algorithm are proposed. A comprehensive computational evaluation is performed to establish the efficiency of our proposals against the existing heuristics and metaheuristics for the problem.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2013-44461-PMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación DPI2016-80750-

Real-Time Passive Acoustic Tracking of Underwater Vehicles

Com o crescente interesse na exploração oceânica, sistemas de localização subaquática têm sido largamente usados pela industria e comunidade cientifica. Neste trabalho foi desenvolvido um sistema de localização acústica passiva em tempo real, com uma topologia idêntica ao do ultra-short baseline. Este sistema calcula a posição a duas dimensões de uma fonte acústica submersa conhecida, com base na integração de medições da direção do som ao longo do tempo. O ângulo de chegada da onda sonora é estimado pelo atraso de fase entre os sinais adquiridos por dois hidrofones colocados perto um do outro. Esta configuração permite atenuar as diferenças nos sinais recebidos devidas a perturbações do canal acústico subaquático. Este algoritmo foi implementado em tempo real numa plataforma SoC reconfigurável (CPU ARM + FPGA), e validado com ensaios de campo realizados no mar

Impact of a detailing restriction policy on prescription behavior

In the pharmaceutical industry, physicians control more than four fifths of health care expenditures, situation leading to a high investment of the pharmaceutical companies in marketing, aiming to influence phsyicians in their prescription behavior. Marketing-related factors influencing prescription behavior include detailing and detailing ceilings are a form of government-imposed regulation on companies’ promotion. Counterfactual simulations made by previous researchers suggest that a detailing ceiling may have a negative effect on drugs sales. Our thesis focuses on the impact of detailing ceilings on physicians’ prescription behavior, contributing to this stream of research. We used a mixed method approach, starting with a quantitative phase using a time series of drug sales and promotion investments (IQVIA). We used four models applied by Leeflang & Wieringa (2010) and applied seven other models to 18 products in four markets. We performed a series break test on detailing elasticities (before and after the ceiling). We then made 20 in-depth interviews with officers from the pharmaceutical market, to understand the quantitative results

Acordeão de concertos em Portugal : perceções e expectativas

Dissertação apresentada ao Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Música.O presente estudo incide sobre perceções e expectativas relativamente ao acordeão de concerto em Portugal. Tem como principais objetivos (1) conhecer a origem e a evolução do acordeão enquanto instrumento musical; (2) conhecer a história do acordeão de concerto em Portugal; (3) coligir repertório português para acordeão de concerto; (4) descrever as duas obras a executar no recital de apresentação do trabalho de projeto, Suite n.º 1 “Imagens Pac-Chen”, de Paulo Jorge Ferreira, e Concerto para acordeão e orquestra, de Cristóvão Silva e (5) compreender até que ponto o acordeão de concerto está integrado no meio musical português. Os objetivos delineados justificam-se pelo facto de o investigador, um instrumentista de acordeão de concerto, se sentir motivado para aprofundar o conhecimento na sua área de estudo e de trabalho, para além de dar um contributo para o conhecimento e a afirmação deste instrumento musical em Portugal. Apresenta-se uma fundamentação teórica que incide sobre a origem e a evolução do acordeão, sobre a história do acordeão de concerto em Portugal e, ainda, sobre o repertório português para este instrumento. Descrevem-se e fundamentam-se as opções metodológicas subjacentes a este estudo, relevando o estudo de caso e o inquérito por entrevista. Os resultados apresentados fundamentam-se na análise do conteúdo de entrevistas feitas a oito compositores portugueses