Are gaming concessions obsolete? A comparative study of Macau and Portugal

Abstract The concept of a concession for the operation of games of chance is the legal basis of the largest casino gaming industry in the world, that of the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. This concept, in its modern form, came to Macau in 1961, from Portuguese law, where it was started in 1927. This paper has two main goals. The first is to sumarize the evolution of concessions of games of chance in Portugal and Macau, covering the common legal and conceptual basis in both systems, highlighting the similarities and differences, especially regarding the separate evolution of concessions in both jurisdictions. The second is a critical analysis of the current relevance of this particular legal tool in today’s gaming landscape. Are concessions still an appropriate tool to achieve a number of regulatory and economic goals? Implications The general conclusion to be reached is that the concept of a concession made sense in a certain time. However, today, for the most part, it presents significant issues and should be replaced. Therefore, fundamental legal reforms should take place. Keywords: gaming law; gaming regulation; casinos; games of chance; Macau; Portugal; concession

Monte Carlo Estimation of Project Volatility for Real Options Analysis

Volatility is a fundamental parameter for option valuation. In particular, real options models require project volatility, which is very hard to estimate accurately because there is usually no historical data for the underlying asset. Several authors have used a method based on Monte Carlo simulation for estimating project volatility. In this paper we analyse the existing procedures for applying the method, concluding that they will lead to an upward bias in the volatility estimate. We propose different procedures that will provide better results, and we also discuss the business consequences of using upwardly biased volatility estimates in real options analysis.

Asymptotic of grazing collisions and particle approximation for the Kac equation without cutoff

The subject of this article is the Kac equation without cutoff. We first show that in the asymptotic of grazing collisions, the Kac equation can be approximated by a Fokker-Planck equation. The convergence is uniform in time and we give an explicit rate of convergence. Next, we replace the small collisions by a small diffusion term in order to approximate the solution of the Kac equation and study the resulting error. We finally build a system of stochastic particles undergoing collisions and diffusion, that we can easily simulate, which approximates the solution of the Kac equation without cutoff. We give some estimates on the rate of convergence.Comment: 37 pages, 6 figure

From profiles to rich tasks : the situated nature of \u27authenticity\u27 in the context of reforming curriculum and assessment practices

Outcome based education that has dominated Australian education in the 1990s is under review in the early years of the twenty first century. The available historical \u27texts\u27 produced during the first half of the 1990s, which include the national Statements and Profiles, and the state Curriculum and Standards Frameworks, provide us with documents that we can engage with not simply for \u27history\u27s sake\u27, but with an opportunity to, in the words of the feminist author Dorothy Smith, \u27displace[s] the analysis from the text as originating in writer or thinker, to the discourse itself as an ongoing intertextual process\u27 bringing into view the social relations in which texts are embedded and which they organise\u27 (1990, p. 161-2). Most Australian states and territories have now commenced significant situated, local curriculum renewal and reform. This renewed interest in curriculum offers insights into the character of recent assessment practices in Australia, recognising the tensions inherent in assessment practices and authentic assessment models. This paper explores, by way of an overview of the broad curriculum and assessment practices adopted in Australia over the past twenty-five years, the situated nature of \u27authenticity\u27 in the context of curriculum and assessment practices and how as teacher educators we are responding through our everyday work. <br /

New tools for classifying Hamiltonian circle actions with isolated fixed points

For every compact almost complex manifold (M,J) equipped with a J-preserving circle action with isolated fixed points, a simple algebraic identity involving the first Chern class is derived. This enables us to construct an algorithm to obtain linear relations among the isotropy weights at the fixed points. Suppose that M is symplectic and the action is Hamiltonian. If the manifold satisfies an extra "positivity condition" this algorithm determines a family of vector spaces which contain the admissible lattices of weights. When the number of fixed points is minimal, this positivity condition is necessarily satisfied whenever dim(M)< 8, and, when dim(M)=8, whenever the S^1-action extends to an effective Hamiltonian T^2-action, or none of the isotropy weights is 1. Moreover there are no known examples with a minimal number of fixed points contradicting this condition, and their existence is related to interesting questions regarding fake projective spaces [Y]. We run the algorithm for dim(M)< 10, quickly obtaining all the possible families of isotropy weights. In particular, we simplify the proofs of Ahara and Tolman for dim(M)=6 [Ah,T1] and, when dim(M)=8, we prove that the equivariant cohomology ring, Chern classes and isotropy weights agree with the ones of C P^4 with the standard S^1-action (thus proving the symplectic Petrie conjecture [T1] in this setting).Comment: 59 Pages; 16 Figures; Please find accompanying software at page http://www.math.ist.utl.pt/~lgodin/MinimalActions.htm

New polytope decompositions and Euler-Maclaurin formulas for simple integral polytopes

We use a version of localization in equivariant cohomology for the norm-square of the moment map, described by Paradan, to give several weighted decompositions for simple polytopes. As an application, we study Euler-Maclaurin formulas.Comment: Revision: changed content of last theorem; corrected typo

Labour Productivity Dynamics in Europe: Alternative Explanations for a Well Known Problem

The study of regional dynamics in employment productivity has been the basis for a large body of literature; the use in cross-section applications of the well known linear relationship between changes in productivity and Output growth first proposed in 1949 by P.J. Verdoorn has allowed greater insights into the dynamic nature of economic systems. Furthermore, it has been shown that a positive Verdoorn coefficient represents the existence of localized increasing returns, which contradicts Neoclassical orthodoxy. In this paper, a dynamic analysis of labour productivity in manufacturing is performed for a sample of 211 European Union regions. Three hypothesis are tested: first, following recent work by Bernard Fingleton (1999 & 2000), two components related to Growth Theory are added to the original Verdoorn relation, the productivity gap between each spatial unit and the leader in the first period and two proxies for human capital. Second, the importance of the Marshallian type externality as well as economies of urbanization is tested. These factors are calculated according to the weighted density of each variable at the NUTS3 level for each of the 211 NUTS2 regions, following the work of Ciccone and Hall (1996). Finally, and following the ideas presented in the seminal paper by Chinitz (1961), the importance of the industrial mix and the level of regional specialization/diversity is taken into account through the use of a spatially weighted specialization measure. Spatial Econometrics methods are used and alternative forms for the spatial weights matrix are tested, based on time distances calculated using a network model built with the existing road network. Legal speed limits permit an accurate calculation of distance between each node.