Environmental remediation project of Cunha Baixa mining area cost benefit analysis

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Economics from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Leveraging facebook’s open graph to develop an environmental persuasive application

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

Urban containment: An effective tool for environmental protection?

This paper examines the effectiveness of urban containment policies to protect forestland from residential conversion and to increase the provision of forest public goods in the presence of irreversible investments and policy uncertainty. We develop a model of a single landowner that allows for switching between competing land uses (forestry and residential use) at some point in the future. Our results show that urban containment policies can protect (even if temporarily) forestland from being developed but must be supplemented with policies that influence the length and number of harvesting cycles if the goal is to increase nontimber benefits. The threat of a development prohibition creates incentives for preemptive timber harvesting and land conversion. In particular, threatened regulation creates an incentive to shorten rotation cycles to avoid costly land-use restrictions. However, it has an ambiguous effect on forestland conversion as the number of rotation cycles can also be adjusted to maximize the expected returns to land. Finally, in the presence of irreversibility, forestland conversion decisions should be done using real option theory rather than net present value analysis

Industrial symbiosis potential of the Sines oil refinery – environmental and economic evaluation

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente – Perfil Gestão e Sistemas Ambientais

Innovation and environmental policy: Clean vs. dirty technical change

We study a two sector endogenous growth model with environmental quality with two goods and two factors of production, one clean and one dirty. Technological change creates clean or dirty innovations. We compare the laissez-faire equilibrium and the social optimum and study first- and second-best policies. Optimal policy encourages research toward clean technologies. In a second-best world, we claim that a portfolio that includes a tax on the polluting good combined with optimal innovation subsidy policies is less costly than increasing the price of the polluting good alone. Moreover, a discriminating innovation subsidy policy is preferable to a non-discriminating one.

Optimização do processo de devolução de medicamentos fora do prazo de validade

RESUMO - Durante todo o seu ciclo de vida, o medicamento está sujeito a padrões de qualidade, segurança e eficácia, alicerçados numa atuação conjunta dos responsáveis pela sua colocação no mercado, das autoridades competentes nacionais e comunitárias. Os diferentes intervenientes estão sujeitos a um conjunto de obrigações e procedimentos que englobam também a sua fase final de retirada do mercado, devolução, recolha e valorização ou reciclagem. Neste trabalho é caracterizada a cadeia de distribuição do medicamento assim como o seu fluxo físico no sentido inverso, ou seja, o processo de devolução e de tratamento ambientalmente adequado para os resíduos de medicamentos. A maioria da literatura a respeito das devoluções de medicamentos enfatiza a vertente ecológica do sistema de logística inversa. Neste trabalho, as questões ambientais são discutidas , mas o objectivo primário focaliza questões económicas relacionadas com o processo de devoluções. São apresentadas as possíveis vantagens teóricas da criação de um sistema centralizado de gestão de devoluções, por oposição ao atual sistema de circuitos dispersos. Com a aplicação de um inquérito a armazenistas com larga responsabilidade no processo de devoluções, pretendeu-se avaliar os custos inerentes ao atual modelo. Os resultados obtidos indicam que existe margem potencial para reduzir custos neste processo, para a grande maioria dos armazenistas. Na área específica dos medicamentos fora de prazo de validade, o crescente desenvolvimento e aperfeiçoamento dos processos de devolução poderá direcionar-se no sentido da criação de centrais de devolução centralizadas.

Web Processing Services for Forestry and Environmental Applications

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.

Corporate social responsibility levels and firm performance: Evidence from countries in crisis

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Finance from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Essays in environmental and happiness economics

A PhD Dissertation, presented as part of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the NOVA - School of Business and Economics

Corporate social responsibility: How internal and external CSR perceptions influence employee outcomes

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

InnovationCity Ruhr: a prime example for social and technological innovation

The project “InnovationCity Ruhr” deals with the reconstruction of the city of Bottrop with regard to energy saving measures. The aim is to make the city more environmental friendly in order to create a model for other industrial cities. Until the conclusion of the project in the year 2020, it is planned to change the surface of Bottrop in several positive ways. This paper focuses on the description of the project to give the reader an example of what exactly is done within the scope of InnovationCity Ruhr. Besides that, the link to the subject of sociology shall be given in order to show that the project is a prime example for social innovation.

Genomic and environmental factors influence Wolbachia-Drosophila symbiosis

Intracellular, vertically transmitted bacteria form complex and intimate relationships with their hosts. Wolbachia, maternally transmitted α- proteobacteria, live within the cells of numerous arthropod species. Wolbachia are famous master manipulators of insect reproduction: to favour their own spread they can induce male killing, parthenogenesis or cytoplasmic incompatibility. Wolbachia can also protect various insects from pathogens, which makes them a promising tool for the control of vector-borne diseases. Mosquitoes with Wolbachia have already been released in the wild to eliminate dengue. Yet, how Wolbachia manipulate their hosts remains largely unknown.(...)

Relationship between national culture, democracy and environmental performance: A panel data analysis

This paper demonstrates the significance of culture in examining the relationshipbetween democratic capital and environmental performance.The aim is to examine the relationship among scores on the Environmental Performance Index and the two dimensions of cross cultural variation suggested by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel. Significantional interrelationships among democracy, cultural and environmental sustaintability measures could be found, following the regression results. Firstly, higher levels of democratic capital stock are associated with better environmental performance. Secondly importance to distinguish between cultural groups could be confirmed.

Impact of corporate social responsibility in the European pharmaceutical market

The objective of this master thesis is to evaluate the impact of CSR measures in the financial performance of the European pharmaceutical industry. By definition, CSR measures is quantified as corporate social disclosure considering the published CSR keywords on the annual reports of the selected companies, over four fiscal years (2010-2013). The financial performance of the companies were measured as return on assets (ROA) and Tobin’s Q. In order to defend the hypothesis developed, a multivariate regression is performed. The results obtained show no significant impact on the financial performance of a company nor in the short-time, nor in the long-time. Moreover, by comparison with other studies, it was possible to conclude that the financial performance is differently affected when considering different industries.

The effect of social and environmental sustainability on firm resilience

Double degree