Endogenous Cycles in Optimal Monetary Policy with a Nonlinear Phillips Curve

There is by now a large consensus in modern monetary policy. This consensus has been built upon a dynamic general equilibrium model of optimal monetary policy with sticky prices a la Calvo and forward looking behavior. In this paper we extend this standard model by introducing nonlinearity into the Phillips curve. As the linear Phillips curve may be questioned on theoretical grounds and seems not to be favoured by empirical evidence, a similar procedure has already been undertaken in a series papers over the last few years, e.g., Schaling (1999), Semmler and Zhang (2004), Nobay and Peel (2000), Tambakis (1999), and Dolado et al. (2004). However, these papers were mainly concerned with the analysis of the problem of inflation bias, by deriving an interest rate rule which is nonlinear, leaving the issues of stability and the possible existence of endogenous cycles in such a framework mostly overlooked. Under the specific form of nonlinearity proposed in our paper (which allows for both convexity and concavity and secures closed form solutions), we show that the introduction of a nonlinear Phillips curve into a fully deterministic structure of the standard model produces significant changes to the major conclusions regarding stability and the efficiency of monetary policy in the standard model. We should emphasize the following main results: (i) instead of a unique fixed point we end up with multiple equilibria; (ii) instead of saddle--path stability, for different sets of parameter values we may have saddle stability, totally unstable and chaotic fixed points (endogenous cycles); (iii) for certain degrees of convexity and/or concavity of the Phillips curve, where endogenous fluctuations arise, one is able to encounter various results that seem interesting. Firstly, when the Central Bank pays attention essentially to inflation targeting, the inflation rate may have a lower mean and is certainly less volatile; secondly, for changes in the degree of price stickiness the results are not are clear cut as in the previous case, however, we can also observe that when such stickiness is high the inflation rate tends to display a somewhat larger mean and also higher volatility; and thirdly, it shows that the target values for inflation and the output gap (π^,x^), both crucially affect the dynamics of the economy in terms of average values and volatility of the endogenous variables --- e.g., the higher the target value of the output gap chosen by the Central Bank, the higher is the inflation rate and its volatility --- while in the linear case only the π^ does so (obviously, only affecting in this case the level of the endogenous variables). Moreover, the existence of endogenous cycles due to chaotic motion may raise serious questions about whether the old dictum of monetary policy (that the Central Bank should conduct policy with discretion instead of commitment) is not still very much in the business of monetary policy.Optimal monetary policy, Interest Rate Rules, Nonlinear Phillips Curve, Endogenous Fluctuations and Stabilization

COVID-19, Work-Related Quality of Life, and Psychosocial Risks through the Lens of Sexual Orientation

Literature often demonstrates disparities and inequalities between sexual orientations at the psychosocial level (Barrientos et al., 2010). This aspect comes from the fact that most socio-political contexts are governed by a mentality based on the domain of heteronormativity and heterosexism, which influences an environment of stigma, discrimination, and disadvantage towards sexual minorities (Weber et al., 2018). The COVID-19 pandemic required adaptations related to global measures to contain the virus, and inevitably the changes and adjustments made had implications for the daily life of the general population (Labrague & Santos, 2020). As a moment of exceptional vulnerability, the pandemic may have had a stronger impact on social groups that already had disadvantages and disparities (Schieman et al., 2020). The objective of this Dissertation was to evaluate and understanding the impacts and psychosocial risks that the COVID-19 pandemic had on sexual minorities that the present work was developed, which was include two scientific studies. The first study has a quantitative methodology and sought to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Work-Related Quality of Life (WRQoL) through sexual orientation. The second study used a qualitative methodology and sought to identify the psychosocial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Both studies had a sample of Portuguese language expression (Portugal and Brazil). The results obtained revealed a disadvantage of sexual minorities in relation to WRQoL during the pandemic, presenting more work stress, and lower levels of general well-being, career satisfaction and overall WRQoL. On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic had psychosocial impacts on gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, namely in terms of mental health, isolation, relationships, work, education, finance, changes, coping and LGBTQI topics. These results agree with the literature, as there are disparities between sexual orientations, with more accentuated psychosocial impacts on sexual minorities during the pandemic. The conclusions of these studies seek to highlight social groups that are more vulnerable during the pandemic, to promote social and community policies to change mentality and that value the integration and equality of minority social group.A atual situação pandémica mundial devido ao novo coronavírus, COVID-19 e a crescente e rápida propagação do vírus fez com que fosse declarado mundialmente como um problema de saúde pública (Velavan & Meyer, 2020). Inevitavelmente, esta situação acarretou impactos significativos em diversas áreas como a política, a economia e a sociedade (Ko et al., 2020; Lima et al., 2020). À semelhança da população em geral, verifica-se que também as minorias sexuais sofreram com consequências psicossociais decorrentes da pandemia (Salerno, Williams, et al., 2020). O domínio da hegemonia heterossexual como o paradigma sexual dominante, frequentemente reduz o acesso das pessoas LGB a recursos básicos, e faz com que habitualmente, as minorias sexuais já padecem de vulnerabilidades e desvantagens, que numa situação inesperada como a pandemia da COVID-19, podem ter sido exacerbadas (Farkas & Romaniuk, 2020; Harkness et al., 2020). Esta Dissertação tem como principal objetivo avaliar o impacto da pandemia COVID-19 na Qualidade de Vida no Trabalho (QVT) e os impactos e riscos psicossociais através de uma perspetiva de orientação sexual, em países de expressão de língua portuguesa. Neste sentido foram desenvolvidos dois estudos científicos. O primeiro estudo procurou avaliar o impacto negativo da COVID-19 na QVT em função da orientação sexual. Esta investigação utilizou a metodologia quantitativa, sendo um estudo transversal, descritivo e comparativo. A recolha de dados foi realizada online, a amostra foi recolhida por conveniência e composta por 1577 participantes de expressão de língua portuguesa (Portugal e Brasil). A média de idades foi de 33,70 e variou entre os 18 e os 74 anos. Maioritariamente a amostra era composta por heterossexuais (N=1396, 88,5%), 95 eram gays ou lésbicas (6,0%) e 87 eram bissexuais (5,5%). Foram utilizados quatro principais instrumentos, primeiramente um questionário sociodemográfico para a caracterização da amostra, um questionário para avaliação do medo da COVID-19 e outro para avaliação do impacto negativo da COVID-19 e por fim um questionário que avaliava a QVT. Através de uma análise de variância ANOVA, verificaram-se diferenças estatisticamente significativas entre orientações sexuais, para as dimensões da QVT e medo e impacto negativo da COVID-19, com principal desvantagem dos participantes bissexuais, os quais foram os que demonstraram mais elevados níveis de medo e impacto negativo da COVID-19 e menor perceção de QVT, bem-estar geral, interface casatrabalho e mais elevados níveis de stress no trabalho Estes resultados vão ao encontro do que era expectável de acordo com a literatura, evidenciando-se a necessidade de se desenvolver políticas organizacionais de igualdade entre orientações sexuais, que diminuam o clima de estigma e discriminação. No segundo estudo, procurou-se através de uma investigação qualitativa identificar os impactos psicossociais da pandemia COVID-19 em pessoas gays, lésbicas e bissexuais numa amostra de expressão de língua portuguesa. A literatura aponta frequentemente diferenças entre orientações sexuais em diversos domínios psicossociais (Pereira & Costa, 2016), verificando-se desvantagens de pessoas LGB, apresentando níveis mais baixos de saúde mental e riscos psicológicos (Gonzales et al., 2020). Os dados foram recolhidos através de uma entrevista online de forma assíncrona, e procurou a resposta à questão aberta “Enquanto uma pessoa que se identifica como gay, lésbica ou bissexual, elabore de que forma a pandemia da COVID-19 impactou a sua vida”. A amostra era composta por 65 participantes LGB, sendo que 32 eram portugueses e 33 brasileiros. A idade média variou entre os 34,48, sendo que metade da amostra (50,7%) se identificou como gay ou lésbica e a restante como bissexuais. Através de uma análise qualitativa de conteúdo foram identificados conceitos emergentes do texto, e foi utilizado um acordo entre negociadores, de forma a organizar e avaliar os temas. Os resultados obtiveram nove temas relevantes e dezoito subcategorias de temas, sendo os principais temas a saúde mental, isolamento, relacionamentos, trabalho, educação, finanças, mudanças de comportamento, coping e tópicos LGBTQI. As principais conclusões deste estudo, vão ao encontro de outras investigações encontradas na literatura, verificando-se que indivíduos LGB tendem a ser afetados de forma mais significativa por stressores psicossociais durante a pandemia (Phillips et al., 2020), o que pode indicar que a vulnerabilidade de grupos sociais minoritários poderá ter sido exacerbada. As conclusões destas investigações tornam evidente o desenvolvimento de fatores de proteção nas minorias sexuais, através da mudança de mentalidade nos contextos sociopolíticos que desenvolvam o sentimento de equidade e igualdade, para que os ambientes de discriminação sejam minimizados, de modo que em situações de vulnerabilidade como a pandemia da COVID-19 não existam impactos psicossociais acrescidos para grupos sociais minoritários

“Falar de poesia? : uma certa perspectiva ou a sonda no espaço extraceleste"

Como falar de poesia? Se as dúvidas impõem maior ou menor grau de descrença, nos diversos âmbitos em que a questão possa ser colocada, elas aumentam quando essa mesma questão se confunde com outra tão próxima: é possível ensinar a ler poesia?Ministério da Cultura. Instituto Português do Livro e das Biblioteca

DEMAND FOR LOCALLY PROVIDED PUBLIC SERVICES WITHIN THE MEDIAN VOTER'S FRAMEWORK: THE CASE OF THE BRAZILIAN MUNICIPALITIES

In this paper we estimated the demand for local public spending for the Brazilian municipalities within a median voter's framework. Results obtained are consistent with the theoretical background thus suggesting that this hypothesis might be useful to describe the demand for local public goods in Brazil. In particular, the use of quantile regression permitted to investigate the impacts of the conditioning variables on local public expenses across different expenditures classes thus allowing for heterogeneity across municipalities. Our results also suggest that the impact of the city size on the quality of club goods shows crowding effects as g is between zero and one. However, in the estimated models, marginal congestion slightly decreases with expenditure. This is a rather surprising result as one is tempted to conclude that the congestion effect should be higher on big cities. Yet, a more careful look shows the drawbacks of such interpretation. The indivisibilities that preclude the provision of certain services in small towns, concentrate their provision on larger cities. Hence, the higher expenditures of those big cities reflect not only a crowding cost but also the fact that these towns offer a wide range of services when compared to the small ones. So, in Brazil, contrary to the traditional results, the reduced congestion effect along the spending classes reflect the predominance of the scale elements measured by the population elasticities over the price effects.

Customer’s perception on effects of Market Liberalization on a Monopolistic Value Proposition in Portuguese Energy Sector

Since 2006, a change occurred in Portugal among energy providers due to the complete transition from a natural monopoly to a free market. The timeliness of the topic justifies a scientific analysis of the change in Energias de Portugal monopolistic strategy, company created in 1976 as result of the merger of key companies operating in the National Electricity System (SEN) and which had been nationalized in the previous years. This organization now operates in a market that is difficult to predict, having as main characteristic the turbulence caused by competition. Using value proposition canvas main concepts and adopting customers’ perception, this thesis will seek to identify the changes in one of the core departments of EDP affected by this change, sales. Whereas, this study has analysed a single company, the data for this research draw on eight qualitative semi-structured interviews with families, which are clients of company in study and information available online in the direction of obtaining the information that answers the topic of this thesis. After analysing value proposition map and customer segment it was confirmed an existence of relationship or fit, where a company manages to satisfy or answers most of customers’ segment sub-division’s needs. After profound investigation, it was possible to confirm that the new requirements of customers forced EDP to change its value proposition configuration in order to be able to survive on this new competitive free market. One of the interesting key findings was that economic values, such as price, were not considered as a major influential factor by the customers when choosing energy supplier, but brand heritage values were perceived as more meaningful.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Sintomatología musculoesquelética en estudiantes de enfermería: un análisis de concepto

Objective: to analyze the musculoskeletal symptomatology concept in undergraduate nursing students through Rodgers' evolutionary method. Method: An integrative review of the literature was performed for the identification and selection of ten articles. A concept analysis was performed according to Rodgers' evolutionary method. Article search was performed using the EBOSCO Host platform, Virtual Health Library and Google scholar for the years from 2004 to 2018. Results: Based on the 3 elements of Rodgers model we found: 1) substitute terms and related concepts, where musculoskeletal disorders and musculoskeletal symptoms were highlighted; 2) as essential attributes of the concept we highlight pain and discomfort, as well as, measurement using the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire; and 3) risk factors were identified as antecedents, and the consequences were the impact on students' lives. Conclusions: This study contributes to the knowledge and clarification of the concept of musculoskeletal symptomatology in nursing students

Surficial sediment texture database for the south-western Iberian Atlantic margin

Assessing the impact of changes on the environment driven by natural or anthropogenic forcers includes the comparison between antecedent and post-event conditions. The latter is particularly relevant in order to better understand to which extent those changes actually impact or alter a particular environment and associated services and to determine the resilience of a system. In this regard, it becomes essential to create or provide databases to inform about baseline conditions. Here, we present a database that integrates surficial sediment samples collected and analysed for textural characterization within the framework of a series of research projects over circa 20 years. Collected samples along the south-western Atlantic margin of the Iberian Peninsula extend from estuaries and beaches to the adjacent continental shelf. For the case of the more dynamic environments, namely coastal sandy barriers, samples were repeated over time in order to capture the intrinsic variability of the system. Examples of the utility of this data set for a variety of purposes and environments are also included within this paper through three examples. Therefore, here we show the added value of the database as it can be used to assess the impact of a particular event or activity at an estuary by providing baseline conditions, evaluate the continental shelf sediment suitability for nourishment activities, or contribute to the understanding of the morphodynamics and classification of beaches. Finally, it is worth stating the importance of such databases to analyse medium- to long-term variability as the one induced by sea level rise, changes in storminess, or human activities.FCT Investigator programme [IF/01047/2014]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio