Housing Policy in the Eurozone Countries: a Multidimensional Contribute to the Analysis of Socio-economic Factors (2010-2014)

The latest global economic and financial crisis translated in adverse social consequences on many aspects, including the income and social situation of households and their living conditions, especially when the housing phenomenon is addressed. This reality of uncertainty as made even more relevant the study of the housing phenomenon, in particular from a perspective of analysis of its evolution. In this context, we revisit EUROSTAT’s databases which contain general economic indicators, housing stock indicators, housing affordability indicators, population and social conditions indicators and housing quality indicators, for twelve Euro Area countries, during 5 years, with a multidimensional perspective, using the HJ -BIPLOT method developed by Galindo (1986).This methodological approach identified and categorized twelve Euro Zone sample countries in latent constructs of reduced dimensionality related to the housing policy problematic. The simultaneous factorial representation identified the most relevant variables to characterize these countries, their trajectories during the period in analysis, and the relations between variables, between countries, and between variables and countries. This approach also made it possible to identify the most significant factors contributing to the countries performances as population at risk of poverty, unemployment rate, overburden rate, share of housing cost in disposable income, tenant and owner with mortgage or loan and also to cluster these countries according to their (dis)similitude. This analysis can be useful for housing research, when studying multivariate data and also, by its visual nature, a potential tool for producing richer information not only for the academia but also for policy makers

A costatis approach to business sustainability in turbulent environments from 2008 to 2014

European countries continue to differ considerably from one another economically, not only in economic growth assessed by GDP growth rates but also in their companies' population by Economic Activities. Nonetheless these regular differences, the occurrence of crisis and other economic events can promote economic turbulence conducing to different responses, conditioned by each country's specificities. The occurrence of the 2008 financial crisis, the subsequent economic and sovereign debt crisis introduced additional factors of turbulence in the business sustainability of the European (EU) companies. This research, supported by the COSTATIS method, analyses the co-structure and measures the discrepancy between the population of EU companies for each NACE and the GDP components in their dynamics from 2008 to 2014. The results detected greater discrepancies between the population of companies and the stability of economic growth for a subset of EU countries with particularities regarding their NACE and GDP components.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A habitação em Portugal (1992-2008): uma visão multidimensional sobre o desempenho do Estado, proprietários e famílias

1.Identificar o posicionamento dos três agentes económicos, no que concerne às variáveis em estudo; 2.Analisar a relação entre Estado, Proprietários e Famílias; 3.Caracterizar o comportamento das variáveis em análise na perspetiva dos três agentes; 4. Averiguar a contribuição do Estado, Proprietários e Famílias para a definição do comportamento anual dos instrumentos para a habitação; 5. Verificar a relação entre as variáveis em estudo e a sua contribuição na identificação das similaridades/dissimilaridades comportamentais do Estado, Proprietários e Famílias; 6. Reconhecer os agentes económicos causadores de divergências e/ou convergências no sector da habitação

Emergency Service of the University Hospital of Algarve in Faro: A Contribution of the DISTATIS Method to Classify and Prioritize its Main Issues and Challenges

Events occurring in hospital emergency services tend to be of a chaotic and complex nature, giving rise to unique challenges, mainly in the fields of finance management, equipment, workloads and human resources. The research here presented addresses the issue, first by determining the top ten problems and challenges facing the Emergency Service of the University Hospital of Algarve in Faro and second by underlining perceptions and associated levels of importance attributed by an in-house group of specialists that assist on the unit's management process. Data was collected in two phases a) a brainstorming exercise with work-shift leaders for generation of opinions and ideas regarding the evaluation of the top ten problems; b) presentation of the top ten issues to a panel of experts who, on an individual basis, classified, categorized and ranked them. Collected data was of a multidimensional nature and it was later analysed using an innovative three-way technique, the DISTATIS method (Abdi et al., 2005; Abdi et al., 2007). In our evaluation of the expert responses, we highlighted experts whose options were characterized by similarities and differences and others with stable and unstable opinions. Final results provided information on opposition and coherence among the experts, identifying common themes and problems relevant to the organization's management and decision processes

The dynamics between economic growth and living standards in EU Countries: A STATICO approach for the period 2006-2014

The rate of economic growth is dissimilar between areas or regions, and these divergences generate potential impact on quality of life. The occurrence of the financial and economic crisis of 2008, can strengthen these gaps. Economic growth in this analysis includes six levels of gross domestic product growth rates (GDPgr) and seven variables with direct implications on the quality of life of families. The observations are fifteen EU countries, organized into three groups: northern, central and southern. The STATICO method (Simier et al., 1999) used in this research is a three-way multivariate analysis supported on a partial triadic analysis (PTA, Thioulose and Chessel, 1987) to find the stable part of the structure of a series of tables from 2006 to 2014, over a common structure resulting from the co-inertia analysis (Doledec and Chessel, 1994) applied to each pair of an economic growth tables and a life standard tables. With this method, it was possible to extract the stable part of economic growth-life standard common relationships and to analyze the influences of the financial crisis of 2008info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Modern innovation challenges to firms and cities: The case of Portugal

Modern competition is tough due to emergent information systems and technologies. Managers must cope with these challenges continuously to keep their businesses sustainable. An important step is to employ strategies based on open innovation. This work analyses where Portugal stands in terms of innovation in general, propensity for open innovation and innovation sustainability. An HJ-Biplot methodology was applied to a valid sample from CIS 2012 (Community Innovation Survey). It suggests that Portuguese firms must cut back on activities that are not leading to the outcomes needed. Also, with the right partners they can have more ideas executed and diffused

Three-Way Analysis of the European Fund for Fisheries in Portugal: the Implementation of PROMAR’s Axis 4

The PROMAR is the Operational Programme for Fisheries, co-financed by the European Fisheries Fund (EFF), which replaced the Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance (FIFG), which mission is to support the fisheries sector in order to ensure sustainable exploitation of living aquatic resources providing sustainable conditions in the economic, environmental and social terms. With information obtained from PROMAR, covering the period 2007-2014, and with regard to operations financed by the measure "Sustainable Development of Fisheries Areas" (Axis 4), we intend to analyze its implementation in Portugal. In this context, this paper aims to analyze the trends of the type of promoters and projects funded under PROMAR Axis 4. Covering the geographical area of intervention of the seven GAC in Portugal and for the period 2007-2014, will be highlighted the conditioning factors of the financed projects by analyzing and diagnosing the type of promoters, the implementation rate of the projects and the investment types, both regional and national level. With the increasing number of applicable areas, the analysis of multiple data through three-way methods has become attractive as an exploratory analysis tool. Within these methods, the Multiple Factor Analysis (MFA) when evaluating various data tables, discovers the existence of joint structures between them and, in comparison to other asymmetric methods, has the advantage of capturing more information, allowing greater interpretability of data. Thus, the use of a set of disaggregated data on the seven GAC in Portugal during the period 2007-2014, allowed the construction of three-dimensional data structures to an MFA, in which not only the national reality of the projects funded under PROMAR Axis 4 is detailed, but also useful information to the monitoring process and the decision on the European Fisheries Fund policies stands out

Three-Way Multiblock Methods for Decision-Making in Health Services: A COSTATIS Approach to Improving Management at a Private Clinical Laboratory

In the last decade, the clinical laboratory sector in Portugal has witnessed an increase in competition through the integration of small private laboratories in multinational organizations. In this competition scenario, it is imperative that decisions related to management are made based on the analysis of varied and detailed information data in order to propose strategies and prioritize management. Thus, the growing need for data analysis, especially in dynamic contexts, to detect, identify and characterize the most relevant issues for a more efficient decision-making process, is essential. This research was based on data for the period 2014-2017, from a private clinical laboratory located in the Algarve. The use of two interrelated information structures, namely 14 collection points and the subsequent 10 clinical tests with the highest billing volume in 2017, led to the application of the COSTATIS method (Thioulouse et al., 2011) in order to capture a common co-structure that analyses the stability or instability of the two data structures. An exploratory three-way multiblock method highlights the relations between two data structures as a whole. Therefore, the interpretation of the influence relationships of the production of clinical tests on the performance of collection points can reveal particularly useful discrepancies and/or coincidences for the management. With this detailed information, it is possible to propose initiatives for improvement or correction and to promote functional strategies with the objective of assisting the laboratory management process and suggesting strategies that are more efficient

Arbitragem no turismo: uma oportunidade de lucro?

Arbitragem no turismo: uma oportunidade de lucro

Global Retinoblastoma Presentation and Analysis by National Income Level.

Importance: Early diagnosis of retinoblastoma, the most common intraocular cancer, can save both a child's life and vision. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that many children across the world are diagnosed late. To our knowledge, the clinical presentation of retinoblastoma has never been assessed on a global scale. Objectives: To report the retinoblastoma stage at diagnosis in patients across the world during a single year, to investigate associations between clinical variables and national income level, and to investigate risk factors for advanced disease at diagnosis. Design, Setting, and Participants: A total of 278 retinoblastoma treatment centers were recruited from June 2017 through December 2018 to participate in a cross-sectional analysis of treatment-naive patients with retinoblastoma who were diagnosed in 2017. Main Outcomes and Measures: Age at presentation, proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma, and tumor stage and metastasis. Results: The cohort included 4351 new patients from 153 countries; the median age at diagnosis was 30.5 (interquartile range, 18.3-45.9) months, and 1976 patients (45.4%) were female. Most patients (n = 3685 [84.7%]) were from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Globally, the most common indication for referral was leukocoria (n = 2638 [62.8%]), followed by strabismus (n = 429 [10.2%]) and proptosis (n = 309 [7.4%]). Patients from high-income countries (HICs) were diagnosed at a median age of 14.1 months, with 656 of 666 (98.5%) patients having intraocular retinoblastoma and 2 (0.3%) having metastasis. Patients from low-income countries were diagnosed at a median age of 30.5 months, with 256 of 521 (49.1%) having extraocular retinoblastoma and 94 of 498 (18.9%) having metastasis. Lower national income level was associated with older presentation age, higher proportion of locally advanced disease and distant metastasis, and smaller proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma. Advanced disease at diagnosis was more common in LMICs even after adjusting for age (odds ratio for low-income countries vs upper-middle-income countries and HICs, 17.92 [95% CI, 12.94-24.80], and for lower-middle-income countries vs upper-middle-income countries and HICs, 5.74 [95% CI, 4.30-7.68]). Conclusions and Relevance: This study is estimated to have included more than half of all new retinoblastoma cases worldwide in 2017. Children from LMICs, where the main global retinoblastoma burden lies, presented at an older age with more advanced disease and demonstrated a smaller proportion of familial history of retinoblastoma, likely because many do not reach a childbearing age. Given that retinoblastoma is curable, these data are concerning and mandate intervention at national and international levels. Further studies are needed to investigate factors, other than age at presentation, that may be associated with advanced disease in LMICs