Eastern European migration to Portugal: from an unexpected migration to an uncertain future

In Portugal, Eastern European immigrants only become numerically significant at the end of the 1990s. Until that time, the Portuguese immigration landscape was mainly characterized by the presence of citizens from former Portuguese colonies in Africa and from Brazil. The study of this phenomenon is particularly interesting because it allows to analyse the constitution and development of a new immigration flow and of new immigrant communities in the country and, since the 2008 crisis, to investigate the strategies that immigrants use to face an economic situation that seems to hinder the fulfilment of their initial motivations for migration. Considering the importance of economic motives, it should be expected that, if the reason that justified migration can no longer be satisfied in Portugal,migrants would adopt strategies to attain their economic wellbeing elsewhere. By focusing on the possibilities that migrants consider when planning their future trajectories in a context marked by an economic downturn, this analysis intends to shed light on some of the factors that could impact on these possibilities. It will be shown that these are not limited by the dichotomy of staying or returning, but are spread over a continuum of mobility options in-between the two extreme options (staying or returning). The objective of this article is twofold. First, it presents the evolution of immigration in Portugal giving special attention to the inflow of Eastern European immigrants at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Second, it intends to analyse the effects of the 2008 economic crisis on this immigration flow and the various options that immigrants could follow in their response to a downturn in the economic situation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

How far are Portuguese prisons inefficient? A non-parametric approach

In Portugal, as worldwide, especially in the past decades, crime has become an issue of increasing interest both for society and researchers. The global growth of criminality had several repercussions in the prison system. The most direct one was the overcrowding of prisons. This situation required a great amount of investment to increase the capacity of Portuguese prisons. Simultaneously, the value for money associated with the prisons’ budget has turned itself more and more relevant. These circumstances together emphasize the importance of assessing the prisons’ performance. This study measures the efficiency of Portuguese prison facilities by means of the non-parametric benchmarking approach of data envelopment analysis (DEA). However, due to the limitations of this technique, a bootstrap methodology is also applied in order to add more robustness to the results. Furthermore, a recent procedure is computed to evaluate congestion. The results show relevant levels of inefficiency in the Portuguese prison facilities, which represent an excess of several millions of Euros spent inadequately in this sector.Bootstrap; Congestion; DEA; Efficiency; Portugal; Prison facilities

Academic rankings: an approach to a Portuguese ranking

The academic rankings are a controversial subject in higher education. However, despite all the criticism, academic rankings are here to stay and more and more different stakeholders use rankings to obtain information about the institutions’ performance. The two most well-known rankings, The Times and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings have different methodologies. The Times ranking is based on peer review, whereas the Shanghai ranking has only quantitative indicators and is mainly based on research outputs. In Germany, the CHE ranking uses a different methodology from the traditional rankings, allowing the users to choose criteria and weights. The Portuguese higher education institutions are performing below their European peers, and the Government believes that an academic ranking could improve both performance and competitiveness between institutions. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the advantages and problems of academic rankings and provide guidance to a new Portuguese ranking.Academic rankings; CHE; higher education; performance evaluation; Portugal; Shanghai; THES

Proportion in school mathematics textbooks: A comparative study

This paper analyses how proportion is introduced and developed in selected mathematics textbooks for middle school students of Portugal, Spain, Brazil, and USA. The analysis focuses on the nature of the approach and on the cognitive demand, structure, and context of the tasks. The results show that the textbooks tend to present tasks at an intermediate level of cognitive demand and with a closed structure. Nonmathematical contexts predominate in three of the four textbooks. However, there are marked differences in the way textbooks approach the conceptual and procedural aspects of proportion. The way the students are addressed also varies, ranging from a questioning/problem solving style, to an explaining/practicing style, each of these styles supporting a rather different kind of activity.Este artigo analisa como proporção é introduzida e desenvolvida nos livros didáticos matemática para alunos do ensino médio (Ensino Fundamental II) em Portugal, Espanha, Brasil e EUA. A análise incide sobre a natureza da abordagem e na demanda cognitiva, estrutura e contexto das tarefas. Os resultados mostram que os livros didáticos tendem a apresentar as tarefas em um nível intermediário de demanda cognitiva e com uma estrutura fechada. Contextos não-matemáticos predominam em três dos quatro livros didáticos analisados. No entanto, há diferenças marcantes no modo como os livros abordam os aspectos conceituais e procedimentais de proporção. A forma didática de tratar o assunto também varia, indo de um estilo de questionamento / resolução de problemas, a um modo explicativo/prático; cada um deles ampara-se em um tipo diferente de atividade

Performance and Congestion Analysis of the Portuguese Hospital Services

The health care services have been characterised by a growing demand by the citizens leading to the need of more and more resources. Population aging, new pathologies and drugs as well as new treatments are some of the major factors for this. However, in hospitals, for example, consumption of a large number of inputs frequently has not corresponded to the production of the same or more proportion of outputs. Sometimes, the outputs even decline with the increase of inputs due to the influence of the congestion effect on efficiency. The heavy burden of the health sector on the state budget brings about the interest of research over its efficiency. This paper aims to assess the performance of the Portuguese hospitals and particularly the contribution of the congestion effect. We use the non-parametric technique of data envelopment analysis (DEA) for this purpose and a double-bootstrap procedure to take into account the influence of operational environment on efficiency. Afterwards, by comparing three different approaches we determine the importance of congestion in efficiency measurement and discuss its computation methodologically. The results suggest significant levels of inefficiency in 68 major Portuguese hospitals for the year 2005 and more than half of them were found to be congested.Hospitals; congestion; efficiency; DEA; Portugal

Artinian algebras and Jordan type

The Jordan type of an element $\ell$ of the maximal ideal of an Artinian k-algebra A acting on an A-module M of k-dimension n, is the partition of n given by the Jordan block decomposition of the multiplication map $m_\ell$ on M. In general the Jordan type has more information than whether the pair $(\ell,M)$ is strong or weak Lefschetz. We develop basic properties of the Jordan type and their loci for modules over graded or local Artinian algebras. We as well study the relation of generic Jordan type of $A$ to the Hilbert function of $A$. We introduce and study a finer invariant, the Jordan degree type. In our last sections we give an overview of topics such as the Jordan types for Nagata idealizations, for modular tensor products, and for free extensions, including examples and some new results. We as well propose open problems.Comment: 53 pages. Added results, examples for Jordan degree type (Section 2.4) and Jordan type and initial ideal (Section 2.5

Stability of syzygy bundles

We show that given integers $N$, $d$ and $n$ such that ${N\ge2}$, ${(N,d,n)\ne(2,2,5)}$, and ${N+1\le n\le\tbinom{d+N}{N}}$, there is a family of $n$ monomials in $K[X_0,\ldots,X_N]$ of degree $d$ such that their syzygy bundle is stable. Case ${N\ge3}$ was obtained independently by Coand\v{a} with a different choice of families of monomials [Coa09]. For ${(N,d,n)=(2,2,5)}$, there are $5$ monomials of degree~$2$ in $K[X_0,X_1,X_2]$ such that their syzygy bundle is semistable.Comment: 16 pages, to appear in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Societ

Consumer Expenditure and Cointegration

In this paper we estimate the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) for the Portuguese economy. The budget shares and real per capita income are found to be integrated of order one, I(1), but prices seem to be better classified as I(2). This raises new problems, as it is not possible to test for homogeneity and symmetry in a straightforward way. As cointegration is not rejected after the imposition of homogeneity and symmetry restrictions, we conclude that the AIDS is an acceptable characterisation of the Portuguese data on consumer expenditure.

Impact of Black-Scholes assumptions on Delta Hedging

In this work we are going to evaluate the different assumptions used in the Black- Scholes-Merton pricing model, namely log-normality of returns, continuous interest rates, inexistence of dividends and transaction costs, and the consequences of using them to hedge different options in real markets, where they often fail to verify. We are going to conduct a series of tests in simulated underlying price series, where alternatively each assumption will be violated and every option delta hedging profit and loss analysed. Ultimately we will monitor how the aggressiveness of an option payoff causes its hedging to be more vulnerable to profit and loss variations, caused by the referred assumptions

From toys to automobiles: foreign investment, firm heterogeneity and intermediaries in a Portuguese industry

[EN] In the literature on territorial innovation systems there is a constant tension between the effect of endogenous and exogenous factors and their relative importance. In order to address this tension several approaches have sought to conceptualize the relational and multi-scalar dimension of innovation and to explain how external knowledge and economic flows in conjunction with regional contexts combine to produce regional growth, stagnation or decline. This paper will contribute to this debate, while also highlighting that even at the local level there is substantial heterogeneity between firms. It will also shed light on the role of intermediary organizations that can help address information and power asymmetries between multinational corporations and less competitive local firms. Empirically it will draw on the case study of the Portuguese moulds industry, which has successfully adapted to shifts in the global economy by drawing on local resources while also remaining integrated into global value chains.Research for this article was supported by the fellowship SFRH/BD/27431/2006 from the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portugal). This fellowship programme is funded by the Programa Operacional Potencial Humano and the European Social Fund.Marques, P. (2017). From toys to automobiles: foreign investment, firm heterogeneity and intermediaries in a Portuguese industry. European Planning Studies. 25(8):1375-1393. doi:10.1080/09654313.2017.1303822S1375139325