Are Decision Makers Rational in Ambiguous Situations?

This research work analyzes human behavior in complex situations and explains how decisions makers act in ambiguous situations. The objective of this research work is to study the sunk cost effect and the completion percentage effect of an investment project in a decision-making process. This research work uses a “retrospective rationality” approach to justify irrational behaviors such as the sunk cost effect, the completion percentage effect of an investment project and the irrational escalation since decision-makers are repeatedly affected by the decisions on past irreversible investments. This research work evaluates three sunk cost levels, and three completion percentage levels of an investment project, besides three neutral situations in a business environment and a personal decision situation. Graduate students in three Portuguese Management Schools responded to the questionnaires. Model results show that the value of resources invested is crucial for understanding the students’ rational behavior, who participated in this research work. These results disclose statistical evidence that the information on sunk costs and completion percentage of an investment project determines human behavior under irrational escalation in ambiguous situations. As a consequence, decision makers have the opportunity to interpret their decisions, since the scenarios do not allow a unique definition of rational choice, it is not correct to judge the irrational decision makers that decide to continue to invest in ambiguous situations. Keywords: Human Behavior, Sunk costs Effect, Completion Percentage Effect of an Investment Project, Irrational Escalation, Ambiguous Situations

The Influence of Investors’ Behavior on Setting Coffee Futures Prices

The great challenge for this research work is to show that the biases of investors’ behavior can affect the formation of coffee futures prices. This research work uses auto-regressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) models to analyze results that show that the volatility has an impact on the formation of coffee futures prices. The positive volatility asymmetry coefficient of the TARCH model shows the presence of the leverage effect, where negative shocks have a greater impact on the volatility of returns in coffee futures prices than positive shocks. The presence of the leverage effect includes information related with investors’ behavior which has influence on the formation of coffee futures prices and corroborates the Prospect Theory. Model results also show that investors’ reactions to bad news are statistically significant in the coffee futures market and suggest that Behavioral Finance can contribute to the understanding of the formation of coffee futures prices

Simão Rodrigues em Roma. A influência do oratorio del crocifisso na pintura maneirista Portuguesa

O Oratorio da Confraternità del Crocifisso constitui um dos mais significativos empreendimentos da arte romana do tempo de Gregorio XIII Boncompagni (1572-1585), um dos primeiros papas da Contra-Reforma. Originado pela devoção suscitada por uma miraculosa imagem de Cristo Crucificado conservada na próxima igreja de San Marcello al Corso, a cuja intervenção se atribuía a salvação da cidade durante o último surto pestífero que assolara Roma, o templete desde cedo se constituíu como sede de concorridas procissões e palco de uma seleccionada actividade musical, que explica o refinado gosto áulico com que foi decorado

Impact of Public Debt on Economic Growth in Advanced Economies

This paper examines the impact of public debt on the economic growth in advanced economies over a period of 1946 to 2009, using an econometric approach. The findings suggested an inverse relationship between public debt and economic growth in advanced economies. These relationships were found to be significant as well. Model results also show that the real GDP growth rate does not decline sharply whether the public debt-to-GDP ratio is lower than 220%. The public debt-to-GDP ratio elasticity of the real growth rate shows that an increase of 1% in public debt/GDP category above 120% decreases the real GDP growth rate in 1.13%. The negative effect of public debt is only stronger on the real GDP growth rate in advanced economies when the public debt-to-GDP ratio is above 220%. Finally, these findings lead us to reassess the austerity agenda, and the governments should devise new strategies for public debt management in advanced economies, taking into account their economic and financial performance

Carbon Management for the Agricultures in European Union

This paper uses a nontraditional DEA approach to modeling carbon emissions from the agriculture in each one of European Union countries as an undesirable output. We proposed a zero sum gains DEA model with hybrid returns to scale to reallocate carbon emissions from the agriculture in each one of European Union countries using efficiency measures. Model results suggest that agriculture, which has already exceeded their limits, must reduce pollution or negotiate a quota with others. This reallocation strategy creates a carbon management,, without changing the total sum of carbon emissions from the agriculture in European Union countries

Music-4you.com - digital music e-commerce case study

During the past couple of years a new business has arise on the Internet – digital music e-commerce. Web-sites such as Apple iTunes, Real Rhapsody and most recently the renewed version of Napster with Microsoft support have attracted a lot of attention to this new business. This paper introduces and describes an example of a digital music e-commerce web-site – Music-4You.com – developed in the framework of a European project called MOSES. However, Music-4you isn’t just another digital music e-commerce site. It introduces some new concepts in the electronic trading of digital music, such as the negotiation of rights licensing conditions, the usage of new media formats and the possibility of music providers add their own music to the web-site and to define their own business models and rights management.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Open secure infrastructure to control user access to multimedia content

This paper will start by describing OpenSDRM an open-source framework developed for the IST project MOSES., OpenSDRM is used to control the multimedia content consumption in conjunction with the new IPMPX MPEG-4 proposed standard. This architecture, composed by several building blocks, protects the content flow from creation to final user consumption on a specific device. This paper devotes a special attention to the security aspects of the OpenSDRM processes and functions, describing its communication protocols and message exchanges as well as it introduces the security details about the user's digital wallet.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

All islands are mountains

We live in the age of multi-tabs, binge-watching, and immediatism. We have instant coffee, instant messaging, expressways, and speedy boarding. Travelling and arriving faster than ever, we no longer have the time to understand what we are slowly losing along the way. If all journeys are made of comfortable shortcuts, what happens to the questions that arise from discomfort and uncertainty? I faced this while observing the contrasts of the gradually evolving Madeira landscape, where natural and constructed spaces are progressively being transformed by a new Europe attempting to keep up with modern life. This five million-year-old volcanic mountain that grew from a depth of around 4000 meters is now in its penumbra period, as it is neither slow and traditional nor modern and fast enough to face this century’s challenges. That dichotomy is most evident in the rural areas where, for instance, at the base of the new brutalist express-ways whose speed prevented population exodus, we find old roads that wind around the same landscape slowly and sinuously, keeping tradition in. Knowing that I could be facing a perspective bias resulting from the correlation between depth perception and the speed we travel through time, I decided to slow down and equipped with a medium-format analogue camera, wander and wonder about the power of stillness and what happens when we lose those questions that can answer what remains unanswered. The result is a visual exploration of the contrasts and complexities of these topics, inviting the audience to slow down and reflect on the human condition and the impact of speed and progress on our environment and humanity.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Using Java and Linux to crack the DES challenge

DES has been used for a long time to guarantee the privacy of transactions in open communication environments, especially in inter-banking and financial ones. Nevertheless, the security level offered by this algorithm is not the same that was before. The DES working conditions have been shifting with the exponential growth of the Internet, and what was considered as being safe a decade ago is not safe anymore. What this article intends to show is how weak the actual DES strength is, and how and what a determined attacker can do to break it using the new Java programming language and the Linux operating system