The law of corporate groups in Portugal

After the pioneering German “Aktiengesetz” of 1965 and the Brazilian “Lei das Sociedades Anónimas” of 1976, Portugal has become the third country in the world to enact a specific regulation on groups of companies. The Code of Commercial Companies (“Código das Sociedades Comerciais”, abbreviately hereinafter CSC), enacted in 1986, contains a unitary set of rules regulating the relationships between companies, in general, and the groups of companies, in particular (arts. 481° to 508°-E CSC). With this set of rules, the Portuguese legislator has dealt with one of the major topics of modern Company Law. While this branch of law is traditionally conceived as the law of the individual company, modern economic reality is characterized by the massive emergence of large-scale enterprise networks, where parts of a whole business are allocated and insulated in several legally independent companies submitted to an unified economic direction. As Tom HADDEN put it: “Company lawyers still write and talk as if the single independent company, with its shareholders, directors and employees, was the norm. In reality, the individual company ceased to be the most significant form of organization in the 1920s and 1930s. The commercial world is now dominated both nationally and internationally by complex groups of companies”. This trend, which is now observable in any of the largest economies in the world, holds also true for small markets such as Portugal. Although Portuguese economy is still dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises, the organizational structure of the group has always been extremely common. During the 70s, it was estimated that the seven largest groups of companies owned about 50% of the equity capital of all domestic enterprises and were alone responsible for 3/4 of the internal national product. Such a trend has continued and even highlighted in the next decades, surviving to different political and economic scenarios: during the 80s, due to the process of state nationalization of these groups, an enormous public group with more than one thousand controlled companies has been created (“IPE - Instituto de Participações do Estado”); and during the 90s until today, thanks to the reprivatisation movement and the opening of our national market, we assisted to the re-emergence of some large private groups, composed of several hundred subsidiaries each, some of which are listed in foreign stock exchange markets (e.g., in the banking sector, “BCP – Banco Comercial Português”, in the industrial area, “SONAE”, and in the media and communication area, “Portugal-Telecom”)

PLC training based on a 3D virtual maquette control: an educational experience in automation

A virtual automation laboratory is usually used as a stand-alone application aiming an educational experience of process simulation and control where students have no contact with hardware. A better way to let students practice in a real PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) achieving the automation class programming skills is to use a maquette. This paper describes a PC application, behaving as a Virtual Maquette that emulates a three-dimensional real world where an external PLC controls its behavior receiving feedback from the plant. The developed interface connects the PLC to the PC through the parallel port. The Virtual Maquette is composed by a car parking where user requests gate open order while PLC supervises gate open/close command, traffic lights and night lighting. Cars movements captivate student’s attention and increases motivation to learn. The Virtual Maquette supports different ways of control allowing several simultaneous student groups to work in different solutions

Production sharing in Latin American trade: a research note

The recent literature on industry globalisation and global production sharing has called attention to the changing nature of world trade with the predominance of trade in manufactures, the fragmentation of the production process and contractual relations between firms. Even when those changes do not question the most fundamental notion of trade and production specialisation according to factor services endowments, the literature points to a specialisation within a narrow set of activities and likely to be more fragmented. Enterprises may select labour intensive activities from a number of predominantly labour as well as from capital intensive industries initially located in industrial countries to relocate them in developing countries. Nevertheless, those activities can be reconverted to industrial countries if and when technological change makes their consolidation more profitable. Mexico has a history of integrating its economy with that of the United States and of full adoption of production sharing as a strategy of integrating its economy into the world economy. On the other extreme, Brazil has been oriented towards its domestic market and more recently towards the regional market. Even though imported inputs have increased after trade liberalisation, proportion to domestically produced inputs is still moderate. The contrasting experience of the two countries is an open field for research.Product sharing: International trade: vertical specialisation: trade patterns

Causality and Cointegration in Stock Markets: The Case of Latin America

This paper analyzes causality and cointegration relationships among stock markets for Latin America and the United States. Within a simple framework causality and cointegration is tested for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and the US. We found no evidence of cointegration among these stock markets but short-run causality could not be rejected. Furthermore, we use impulse response functions to analyze the relative impact of shocks in the US stock index (Dow Jones) on Latin American indexes. Evidence suggests that the responses differ significantly among these countries. These findings imply that there are valuable opportunities to international investors from diversifying in US and Latin American stocks.

The Effects of the Brazilian ADRs Program on Domestic Market Efficiency

This paper examines the impact on Brazilian stocks following American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) listing in the U.S. stock markets. Evidence suggests that a systematic change has taken place in the post-listing period as the multivariate variance ratio statistics have significantly decreased if compared to the pre-listing period, which indicates a move toward a more efficient domestic stock market. This empirical evidence is robust to the use of dollar and local currency-denominated returns. These results add to the literature that finds evidence on changes in domestic volatility and abnormal returns around listing dates.

Exchange Rate Dynamics and the Relationship between the Random Walk Hypothesis and Official Interventions

This paper examines the empirical evidence that official interventions are associated with periods of high predictability in exchange rate markets. We employ a block bootstrap methodology to build critical values for the Variance Ratio statistics and test for predictability within moving windows of fixed length sizes for major developed countries currencies. Empirical results suggest that interventions are indeed associated to periods of increase in predictability and that time varying risk premium may, at least partially, explain such results.

Building Confidence Intervals with Block Bootstraps for the Variance Ratio Test of Predictability

This paper compares different versions of the multiple variance ratio test based on bootstrap techniques for the construction of empirical distributions. It also analyzes the crucial issue of selecting optimal block sizes when block bootstrap procedures are used, by applying the methods developed by Hall et al. (1995) and by Politis and White (2004). By comparing the results of the different methods using Monte Carlo simulations, we conclude that methodologies using block bootstrap methods present better performance for the construction of empirical distributions of the variance ratio test. Moreover, the results are highly sensitive to methods employed to test the null hypothesis of random walk.

Experimental Analysis of the Reputational Incentives in a Self Regulated Organization

Self regulation is a mechanism of quality vigilance that is frequently used in credence good industries. The providers in these markets generally form a Self Regulated Organization (SRO), composed by some members of the industry, whose main job is to convince consumers through an active surveillance of her members that they will receive goods or services with high standards of quality. The SRO main objective is to create confidence among consumers about the quality they are receiving from the market. Hence, consumers expects that an SRO: a) effectively watch her members, controlling their quality provision; and b) punish and publicly denounce those members found providing a bad quality service, as a credible signal of her level of surveillance and the quality the consumers may expect from other members. However, self regulation imply by definition a situation of regulatory capture, hence the following questions naturally appear: ¿Does the SRO has the correct incentives to do her job?, and ¿where do those incentives may come from?. The main objective of this work is to analyse in the lab how consumers interpret or learn to interpret the exposure that receive from an SRO, and given this interpretation if the SRO behaviour is consistent with the presence or absence of a reputational incentive to denounce. A full run of the experimental sessions is conducted from March to May 2004 at the University of ChileCredence Good, Self-Regulated Organization, Sender-Receiver Games, Reputational Incentives

Jaceguai Reis Cunha e o ensino de desenho em Roraima

Disponível em:http://www.histemat.com.br/index.php/HISTEMAT/article/view/66O texto apresenta um estudo sobre o ensino de desenho em Roraima, tomando como fio condutor o livro denominado “Apontamentos de Educação Artística para o Curso Básico do 2.º Grau”. A pesquisa tem motivação no Projeto “A Constituição dos Saberes Elementares Matemáticos: a aritmética, a geometria e o desenho no curso primário em perspectiva histórico-comparativa, 1890- 1970”, e busca responder a questão: Como se caracteriza o livro didático “Apontamentos de Educação Artística para o Curso Básico do 2.º Grau” em relação aos saberes do Desenho na formação do professor dos anos iniciais? O percurso teórico-metodológico se desenvolve seguindo a perspectiva da história cultural da educação matemática de Valente (2003) e algumas ferramentas conceituais de Chartier (1990). Os instrumentos dados à ler, são: o livro já citado acima, considerando sua estrutura, aspecto físico, público-alvo, prefácio, conteúdos e a bibliografia; a Proposta Curricular do 2.º Grau, de 1975, para analisar os programas; o manuscrito de Jaceguai Reis Cunha servindo de apoio as análises. O desenho na formação do professor comparece como elemento básico da Educação Geral, sendo que o livro preserva a perspectiva dos saberes do ensino de Desenho estarem mais voltados ao desenho geométrico, do que em outros conteúdos, configurando esses outros, como apêndice, ou mantendo a presença por conta da obrigação ao cumprimento de um programa oficial