Manifold-Marketing:a new marketing archetype for the information age, applied to the adoption of oral contraceptives and other drugs by end-users

Taking into account the new communication paradigm of Social Media this paper proposes an original marketing archetype for the information age named by the authors as “ManifoldMarketing”. The conducted study explores the contribution of participating in social networks on the Internet for the adoption process of oral contraceptives (OCs) and other drugs by their end users. Empirical data for this research was collected from a sample of 1162 respondents of a target population formed by Portuguese women, current or potential users of OCs who had reached a level of college education. The results obtained after applying a package of statistical techniques involving descriptive statistics, nonparametric tests and multivariate analysis show that the use of the Internet as well as the participation in the social network Facebook can contribute to the adoption process of OCs. Market segments which are relevant to pharmaceutical marketing were identified based on criteria that associate the information and communication technologies (ICT) with the adoption process of OCs carried out by the consumers themselves. This study also demonstrates that the adoption model and segmentation proposed can be generalized to other markets in the health sector. Considering the obtained results and the proposed "Manifold Marketing", innovative pharmaceutical marketing guidelines are presented.N/

Construction and economic growth in developing countries of Africa : evidence from data of the last thirty years

The role of construction in economic growth and development has been addressed by various writers and international bodies, many of whom have focused in developing countries. The main aspect derived from a seminal work in this field (Bon, 1992) is that there is a changing development pattern of the construction industry based on the stage of development of a country’s economy. That is in the early stages of the economic development, the share of construction in gross domestic product (GDP) increases but ultimately decreases in industrially advanced countries. That finding was consistent with the classical approach in growth theory in which physical capital formation is the main engine of economic growth and development. Using most recent data spanning the last thirty years or so drawn from the United Nations (Yearbook of National Account Statistics: Main Aggregates and Detailed Tables) and World Bank publications (World Development Report and Africa Development Indicators), the results of the study corroborate, in the main, the assumptions of a previous work that posit that in the developing countries of Africa, the positive relationship between construction and the national economy concerns only a downturn economy, and an in an economic upward trend the pattern of the construction sector (measured as a share of value added in national output) tends to follow pari passu that of the rest of the economy

Investment in construction and economic growth: a long-term perspective

The role of construction in economic growth and development has been addressed by various writers and international bodies, many of whom have focused in developing countries (Turin, 1973; World Bank, 1984; Wells, 1986; Bon, 1990). Bon (1992), analysed the changing role of the construction sector at various stages of economic development and presented a development pattern for the industry based on the stage of development of a country’s economy. The main aspects of the proposition were that, in the early stages of the economic development, the share of construction in gross domestic product (GDP) increases but ultimately decreases in industrially advanced countries. Turin and Wells, using cross-country comparisons, both found an association between construction investment and economic growth. That finding was consistent with the classical approach in growth theory in which physical capital formation is the main engine of economic growth and development. In the aftermath of the !979-980 oil-shock and the international financial crisis that followed in 1981, most of Sub- Saharan African countries experienced until the mid-1990s a decreasing growth in per capita national income, despite heavy investment in construction and other physical capital over the preceding decade

Valuation of local government assets in Portugal

The questions regarding the elaboration of a register of the State assets, comprising both public and private domain goods, has been a major concern from national official bodies. Indeed, an updated register of State goods allows the possibility of producing, inter alia, a comprehensive national balance sheet of public assets and liabilities. After some failed attempts throughout the last decades, a profound reform in the public financial administration has been recently implemented in Portugal. The publication of the Official Plan for Public Accounting (POCP), from which stems one for the local government level, and the Cadastre and Register of State Goods (CIBE) constitutes a fundamental step for drawing up a register and valuation of public sector assets. The main objective of this study is to critically analyse the methodology used in the valuation of the State assets in Portugal, with a particular focus on the local government level. This is done through a review of the national legislation and the relevant international literature on this issue. In addition, a survey conducted on specific local authorities to ascertain the way they produce the balance sheet is also used in the analysis. The results of the study show that there are measurement problems in the elaboration of the financial statements, and there is a need for a clarification in definitions, particularly in what concerns the distinction between public and private domain of State assets. The study also suggests that a better account on the State assets, particularly on construction stock, has great implications for the management, repair and maintenance of the existing physical infrastructures

Effect of noise in open chaotic billiards

We investigate the effect of white-noise perturbations on chaotic trajectories in open billiards. We focus on the temporal decay of the survival probability for generic mixed-phase-space billiards. The survival probability has a total of five different decay regimes that prevail for different intermediate times. We combine new calculations and recent results on noise perturbed Hamiltonian systems to characterize the origin of these regimes, and to compute how the parameters scale with noise intensity and billiard openness. Numerical simulations in the annular billiard support and illustrate our results.Comment: To appear in "Chaos" special issue: "Statistical Mechanics and Billiard-Type Dynamical Systems"; 9 pages, 5 figure

Indefinite theta functions and black hole partition functions

We explore various aspects of supersymmetric black hole partition functions in four-dimensional toroidally compactified heterotic string theory. These functions suffer from divergences owing to the hyperbolic nature of the charge lattice in this theory, which prevents them from having well-defined modular transformation properties. In order to rectify this, we regularize these functions by converting the divergent series into indefinite theta functions, thereby obtaining fully regulated single-centered black hole partitions functions.Comment: 35 pages; v2: various comments added; v3: a few typos correcte

MCMC Bayesian Estimation in FIEGARCH Models

Bayesian inference for fractionally integrated exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (FIEGARCH) models using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods is described. A simulation study is presented to access the performance of the procedure, under the presence of long-memory in the volatility. Samples from FIEGARCH processes are obtained upon considering the generalized error distribution (GED) for the innovation process. Different values for the tail-thickness parameter \nu are considered covering both scenarios, innovation processes with lighter (\nu2) tails than the Gaussian distribution (\nu=2). A sensitivity analysis is performed by considering different prior density functions and by integrating (or not) the knowledge on the true parameter values to select the hyperparameter values