Structured finance and the boundaries of the firm: the case of project finance

We examine the factors that influence public firms’ choice between project finance over internally organized investment projects. Using a large sample of syndicated deals closed between 2000 and 2020 in conjunction with Datastream data, we find that economies of scale, agency costs of debt, and information asymmetry arguments affect the choice of on- versus off-balance-sheet funding. As project finance deals have higher borrowing costs than comparable corporate financing deals, we show that other firm-level countervailing benefits play a key role in the sponsoring firms’ choice: borrowers choose project over corporate financing when they are relatively larger, less profitable and creditworthy, and seek long-term financing; and switchers resorting to project finance tend be more levered and to have larger growth opportunity sets.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

HERITAGE OR MODERN TOURISM

As referred by Umberto Eco there must be a dialog between the subject and the object. (Eco, 1989) Tourism could give a push into the maintenance of architecture quality, and preserving of architectonic historical zones. So what is the purpose of the tourism realm in the 21st century

Growing-up in Family – The Permanence in Foster Care

Foster care offers a life environment to the child withdrawal fromhis biological family, during an undefined time period that can be prolonged, in the limit, until adulthood or independence.Astable family environment allows the development of security and belonging feelings associated to the possibility of maintaining the contacts with his biological family. In most of the situations, child can and must remain with his foster parents, and the acknowledgement of this parent role is a step that can contribute to avoid ambiguities and uncertainties that are prejudicial to the systemand for the practices that itwill be configuring.Nevertheless, in Portugal, foster care is a temporary charactermeasure,whose application depends on the predictability of the return of the child or young person to the family of origin. The purpose of this article is to, after a brief characterization of the Portuguese children and youth protection system, analyze the foster care permanence between 2006 and 2011, based on the characterization report of the situation of foster children and youth. Following is presented and discuss, the collected data from a study developed in Porto district, including 289 foster children in May 2011, representing 52% of all children in Portuguese foster care system. The results were achieved using a data acquisition form filled with official information of each foster child, and 52 interviews with carers. Among the principal results is to highlight the long lasting placements, the permanence of the child with his first foster care family, and the global positive evaluation of the achieved results, thus we can identify several challenges to the near future of the Portuguese foster care.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Attitudes and decision-making in the child protection system: a comparison of students and professionals

In the contexts of family neglect or maltreatment, the State intervenes by safeguarding the development and well-being of the child or young person in danger. In more severe situations, the intervention may lead to the child’s removal from the family. The Portuguese Law on the Protection of Children and Young People in Danger (Law 142/2015 of September 8th) favours the placement of the child in a family environment, especially for children up to the age of six. Despite this, in Portugal, in 2015, 8 600 children were in out-of-home care, only 3.5% of which were placed in foster care, while the remaining children were in residential care. Therefore, one of the fundamental rights of the child – living in a family environment – is compromised in practice. This study aims to understand the decision-making process of 200 higher education students in domains related to child protection, and those of 200 professionals who are responsible for providing case assessments and recommendations for intervention in the Portuguese child protection system. Using the Child Welfare Attitudes Questionnaire (Davidson-Arad & Benbenishty, 2008, 2010), the study aimed to identify the participants’ attitudes regarding removal of at-risk children from home, reunification and optimal duration of alternative care, children’s and parents’ participation in the decision-making process, and assessment of foster care and residential care, with the purpose of promoting children’s development and well-being. We concluded that both sets of participants (professionals and students) can be divided in two groups, one which is pro-removal and the other, which is less so. In comparison with students, professionals less often favour the removal of the child and more often defend reunification. There are no significant differences among participants regarding their opinion about the role of foster and residential care, and the participation of the child in the decision-making process. However, professionals tend to support parents’ participation in the decision-making process more than students do. Finally, we present some implications of our findings for the practice of child protection

A performance comparison between different industrial real-time indoor localization systems for mobile platforms

The flexibility and versatility associated with autonomous mobile robots (AMR) have facilitated their integration into different types of industries and tasks. However, as the main objective of their implementation on the factory floor is to optimize processes and, consequently, the time associated with them, it is necessary to take into account the environment and congestion to which they are subjected. Localization, on the shop floor and in real time, is an important requirement to optimize the AMRs’ trajectory management, thus avoiding livelocks and deadlocks during their movements in partnership with manual forklift operators and logistic trains. Threeof the most commonly used localization techniques in indoor environments (time of flight, angle of arrival, and time difference of arrival), as well as two of the most commonly used indoor localization methods in the industry (ultra-wideband, and ultrasound), are presented and compared in this paper. Furthermore, it identifies and compares three industrial indoor localization solutions: Qorvo, Eliko Kio, and Marvelmind, implemented in an industrial mobile platform, which is the main contribution of this paper. These solutions can be applied to both AMRs and other mobile platforms, such as forklifts and logistic trains. In terms of results, the Marvelmind system, which uses an ultrasound method, was the best solution.This work is co-financed by Component 5-Capitalization and Business Innovation, integrated in the Resilience Dimension of the Recovery and Resilience Plan within the scope of the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (MRR) of the European Union (EU), framed in the Next Generation EU, for the period 2021–2026, within project Produtech_R3, with reference 60.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Bank relationships and corporate governance : a survey of the literature from the perspective of SMEs

The aim of this work is to review and systematise the literature on how bank relationships, corporate governance and the interdependence between them can influence corporate performance. The banks and the enterprises establish relationships which enable them to overcome problems of asymmetrical information thereby alleviating difficulties felt in obtaining financial resources.In addition, the specificities that SMEs face, namely their ownership structure, as they are often owned and controlled by families, lead us to study the role played by corporate governance and the various control mechanisms in achieving corporate objectives. These features confer an important supervisory role on credit institutions which stem from the information they hold

Decisão, risco e incerteza: retirada ou reunificação de crianças e jovens em perigo?

This study aims to better understand what influences and determines decisions in contexts characterized by complexity and uncertainty, and contributes to the development of recommendations for practice. Based on the work of Davidson-Arad and Benbenishty (2008, 2010), we intended to understand how students from higher education, in scientific areas related to professions involved in decision making processes of children and young people at risk individual care plan, would decide in the presence of a specific case with different scenarios. Participated in the study 200 university students from different regions of Portugal. We used a factorial design (2×2) that involved a questionnaire vignette with four versions. The questionnaire describes the case of a child suspected of being a victim of violence and requires the students to make a decision about the kind of intervention that should be applied in that moment. In addition they must also decide, if the child was removed from her home, whether or not the child should be reunited with the biological family after two years. Among the key findings we highlight the fact that students recognized the risk posed to the child as suffering significant physical and emotional harm. Nevertheless, most decided in favour of an intervention with the biological family, avoiding the removal of the child from their life context. However, in the case of a decision favouring foster care, the majority of the students considered that the child should remain with the foster family when they were asked to reassess the case after two years. It is noted, with statistical significance, that the decision was influenced at first by the agreement or not of the mother to withdrawal and secondly by the child’s desire to be reunited or not with the birth family. We concluded that the development of professional evaluation criteria and decision making should be addressed by including in the curriculum of higher education programmes in the field of child protection, the study of the criteria for the withdrawal, the conditions for the reunification and the advantages of involving the child and the biological family in the intervention.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Real-time tracking system for a moored oil tanker: a kalman filter approach

This paper presents a tracking system developed to study the behavior of an oil tanker moored at the Berth "A" of the Leixões oli terminal, Porto, Portugal

How banks price loans for LBOs: an empirical analysis of spread determinants

This paper examines which factors determine the pricing of loans for LBOs, using a worldwide sample of 11,111 loans closed in the 2000–2016 period. Our findings are consistent with the hypotheses that loans for LBOs extended to borrowers in market- versus bank-based financial systems are differently priced, and that law and institutional characteristics are important determinants of spreads for deals closed in market-oriented countries. Despite LBO loan pricing differing significantly in normal versus crisis times, loans extended to borrowers in market-based financial systems have higher spreads than those where banks play a major role. Our results also support the hypothesis of tranching as a mechanism of reducing spreads by completing financial markets and mitigating informational asymmetries. Finally, a robust convex relationship between spread and maturity is found, suggesting higher market competition by banks and investors for standard, medium-term maturities.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio