Airport’s Profit Sharing: Effects on Investment Incentives, Competition and Social Welfare

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of airport’s profit sharing on the incentives to invest, market competition and social welfare. The analysis is developed under two frameworks, one with a single airport and one with two competing airports, and both with airline competition. We conclude that airport’s profit sharing may display the highest incentive to invest when compared to alternative vertical relations. Also, we found that airport’s profit sharing excludes the independent airline, as long as the profit airport participation is not below 60%. Moreover, airport’s profit sharing does not allow the elimination of double marginalization and thus the effects on social welfare are ambiguous

Regulatory design under asymmetric information about demand

In this paper we compare the costs of two regulatory policies about the entry of new firms. We consider an incumbent firm that has more information about the market demand than the regulator. Then, the incumbent firm can use this advantage to persuade the regulator to make entry more difficult. With the first regulatory policy the regulator uses the incumbent price pre-regulation to get information about the demand. With the second regulatory policy the regulator design a mechanism to motivate the incumbent firm to price truthfully. We conclude that, for enough high values of the probability of low demand, the welfare is higher with the second (more active) regulatory policy.asymmetric information, entry regulation, signalling, adverse selection

Next Generation Access Networks: The Effects of Vertical Spillovers on Access and Innovation

The model that we develop here considers that an upstream firm sells a vital input to downstream firms. There are vertical spillovers and two different regulatory policies of the input price: cost oriented regulation and no-regulation. We also admit two alternative market structures: vertical integration and vertical separation. With this setting we study the effects of the spillovers on foreclosure and on the investment of the upstream firm with and without access price regulation in the two market structures. We conclude that in this setting foreclosure is not a necessary outcome and that the investment of the upstream firm depends on the values of the spillovers of each firm. The increase of the investment with regulation is more likely with vertical separation but it can also happen with vertical integration although this is not a typical result.access price regulation, vertical integration

Formação de Treinadores Desportivos

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Escoamento laminar e perdas de carga em condutas bidimensionais com derivação

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Mecânica. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

Mergers and acquisitions : case study of Portucel and Altri

The Portuguese pulp and paper market has currently two main players which are Altri (on the pulp side) and Portucel (on the paper side), however this is a small market if we compare it with others like the Scandinavian or the North American ones. This makes the global pulp and paper market a very competitive one with companies that are much larger than the ones at study, nonetheless both Altri and Portucel are recognized by their high quality products and brands. Not only that, both these two firms are always aiming at being more competitive and efficient by lowering their costs, and currently they are one of the most operationally efficient companies in the industry. This paper will aim to provide arguments for the merger between Altri and Portucel, the main one analyses the added value that could be created through this merger by consolidating the strengths of these two Portuguese players. In this way, literature in valuation and in M&A will be reviewed and used to give strong arguments to the standalone valuation and the synergies that may occur in from this merger. Altri’s has been found to be undervalued along 2011 with a 13% upside potential, with synergies amounting to EUR 29,73 million. Hence this gives a premium of 25% over Altri’s share price at 31-12-2013, the acquisition is expected to be paid entirely with cash

Characterization of insulin-loaded alginate nanoparticles produced by ionotropic pre-gelation through DSC and FTIR studies

Insulin-loaded nanoparticles were prepared by ionotropic pre-gelation of alginate with calcium chloride followed by complexation between alginate and chitosan. The influence of the pH and stoichiometry relationship between polyelectrolytes providing individual particles with a nano-scale size was assessed by photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Insulin-polyelectrolyte interactions at varying pH and polyelectrolytes stoichiometry were assessed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) studies. Individual and smaller sizing nanoparticles, around 800 nm, were obtained at pH 4.7 with an alginate:chitosan mass ratio of 6:1. Thermograms of insulin-loaded nanoparticles originated shifts on same unloaded nanoparticle peaks and suggested polyelectrolytes-protein interactions at pH around 4.5-5.0. FTIR spectra of insulin-loaded nanoparticles showed amide absorption bands characteristic of protein spectra and revealed the formation of new chemical entities.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TFD-4JKYTNH-1/1/f2878177436b8ca802aa251efe948a9

Nutrição e hidratação em fim de vida: questões éticas

The last decades brought huge advances in medical technology and pharmacology. One area that reflects this progress has been the administration of nutrition and hydration. These are controversial therapies at the end of life, especially when administered by artificial means. The objective of this review was to discuss and comprehend the current and global knowledge about ethical issues related to food, nutrition and hydration in the end-of-life care. The problematic situations analyzed include: advanced directives, the concept of basic human care or treatment, the meaning of food and fluids, the withholding and withdrawing of nutrition and hydration, risks and benefits of nutritional support and the concept of voluntary stopping eating and drinking.As últimas décadas originaram inúmeros avanços na tecnologia médica e farmacológica. Uma das áreas que reflete esse progresso tem sido a administração de alimentação, nutrição e hidratação. Representam áreas controversas do cuidar em fim de vida, especialmente se administradas pela via artificial. O objetivo desta revisão foi discutir e compreender o conhecimento atual e global relativamente às questões éticas relacionadas com a alimentação, nutrição e hidratação no fim de vida. As situações problemáticas analisadas incluíram: diretivas antecipadas de vontade, o conceito de cuidado humano básico ou tratamento, o significado da alimentação e hidratação, a suspensão e abstenção de nutrição e hidratação, riscos e benefícios do suporte nutricional e o conceito da cessação voluntária de nutrição e hidratação.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Credit scoring: a management methodology for the prevention and reduction of bad credit

Classificação JEL: G17, G21, G32 e C13.O crescimento do crédito malparado ou crédito de cobrança duvidosa tem merecido das instituições financeiras uma atenção permanente na melhoria do controlo do risco de crédito. Este controlo visa regular a concessão de crédito segundo práticas que minimizem a probabilidade de incumprimento. Quando a gestão do risco de crédito adopta políticas de crédito mais liberais, a probabilidade de ocorrerem créditos de cobrança duvidosa aumenta. Uma parte do crédito malparado converte-se em incobrável, provocando prejuízos avultados. A constatação deste problema há muito que foi reconhecida e consagrada pelo Acordo de Basileia II (Anexo 1) que entre várias recomendações sugeriu aos Bancos formas mais rigorosas de controlar o risco de crédito. Segundo o European Payment Index (Anexo 3) o risco de pagamento na Europa evidenciou em 2008 um agravamento dos incobráveis, situando-se em 2% do total do crédito concedido. De acordo com este estudo, “Portugal, Grécia e Chipre são os países onde se demora mais tempo a pagar” (EPI 2008, p.4, Anexo 3). Para mitigar este problema têm sido propostas diversas práticas, entre elas a quantificação probabilística do incumprimento traduzida por uma pontuação de risco, cuja identificação na gíria do discurso financeiro se designa por scoring ou credit scoring. Neste contexto, o objectivo deste estudo é identificar factores explicativos capazes de prever a probabilidade de um devedor ser no futuro um Bom ou Mau pagador e avaliar a robustez preditiva do modelo utilizado para este efeito. O projecto de investigação incidiu sobre o crédito ao consumo tendo a identificação daqueles factores explicativos sido feita através da utilização de uma base de dados de 4000 utilizadores de cartões de crédito, cujos hábitos de pagamento se conhecem a priori. A metodologia de investigação empírica seguida neste projecto consistiu na aplicação do modelo de regressão logística binária aos dados em análise, por ser especialmente adequado ao estudo em causa e devido à sua simplicidade. A identificação dos factores explicativos (atributos) mais relevantes foi realizada através do método iterativo forward stepwise (Likelihood Ratio) e que consiste em seleccionar entre as variáveis independentes aquelas cuja capacidade preditiva do comportamento de Bom ou Mau pagador é estatisticamente significativa. A presente tese está estruturada em cinco capítulos: o Capítulo 1 faz a introdução da investigação; o Capítulo 2 trata a Revisão da Literatura; o Capítulo 3 descreve o referencial metodológico; o Capítulo 4 apresenta os resultados da metodologia aplicada; e o Capítulo 5 fecha o estudo com conclusões, contribuições esperadas e sugestões.The increasing of bad debts or credits of doubtful collection has deserved a constant attention from financial institutions in order to improve credit risk control. This control aim to guide credit granting process in accordance with practices that can minimize the probability default (PD). When credit risk management reduces the appraisal risk methods the probability to get more credits of doubtful collections increases. Part of bad debts turns into loans loss provoking huge damages to lenders. The observation of such problem was recognized by Basel II Accord (Attached 1) who among several recommendations, was suggested to Banks to be more accurate in credit granting process and its risk control. According to European Payment Index (Attached 3) the non-payment risk in Europe shown in 2008 an increase of loans losses getting 2% of total credit granting. In that survey “Portugal, Greece and Cyprus are the countries where it (payment) take longest to be paid…” (EPI 2008, p.4, Attached 3). The mitigation of this problem will apply on several practices among them the quantification of a probability default translated by a risk measure, whose identification among financial institutions is known by scoring or credit scoring. In this particular context, the aim of this study is to identify explanatory factors which are able to predict the likelihood of a borrower to be in a near future a Good or Bad payer and to evaluate the predictive robustness of the model used in this application. The research project was focused on consumer credit segment and the identification of above explanatory factors was made through 4000 credit card users data base, whose payment behavior is a priori known. The research methodology followed in this project lay in the application of the binary logistic regression model once this is especially suitable to this study and also due to its simplicity. The identification of the explanatory factors (attributes) has been carried out by forward stepwise (Likelihood Ratio) iterative method. This consists in selecting among the independent variables the most powerful predictive attribute, adding afterwards the following attributes according to their predictive power until no more attributes under certain level of significance were found. The study comprises five chapters: Chapter 1 introduces the subject of the research presenting a review of the work done; Chapter 2 shows the Literature Review presenting some researches using statistical methods on credit scoring methodology; Chapter 3 describes the state of the art of credit scoring processes; Chapter 4 presents the Results of the study and the applied methodology; Chapter 5 makes the Conclusions and Suggestions for further woks. The second part is divided into two chapters dealing with the empirical side: the fourth chapter reports the way how the data was collected, how this was analyzed and transformed in order to be integrated in the statistical model; the fifth chapter deals with the application of logistic regression algorithm in the in-sample set data and a holdout sample was used as a final test of model performanc