“Private label products: A category analysis”

The presented dissertation was developed within a partnership between Nova School of Business and Economics and the Portuguese retailer Sonae MC. The main objective of the study was to develop an analysis for the confectionary category to identify potential development opportunities for new Private Label products. In order to do so, the starting point was to understand how the confectionery market was behaving, followed by and understanding of Continente’s performance in that market. Aiming to point out development opportunities, the analysis was split between the subcategories – Chocolate, Chewing Gums and Sweets. The Subcategory performance was assessed in terms of sales, number of SKU’s, Private Label weight and it market position in terms of share. For the potential development opportunities a comparison between the top selling Branded Product and the competitors’ position was developed, in order to establish a reasonable size and retail price for such products. Key Word: Private Label, Branded Products, Continente, Sonae MC, Retail, SKU’s, Sales, Price, Market Share,

Comparateive analysis: Public and private school management systems

The Portuguese educational system has counted, for many years, with the co-existence of both public and private schools. In fact, the country’s growth and development led, in the past, to an increasing demand for free of charge public education that could only be matched through the creation of “publicly-subsidized and privately owned and managed schools”. Still, the demographic evolution of Portugal recently generated a decrease on the demand for public educational services. This situation has raised doubts about the true contribution of this type of school for the public education system. This paper aims at answering this question by isolating the impact of different property and management schemes on the performance of students, resorting to cross-section data on 9th grade students from 2010. The results corroborate the well known result on the relevance of the family socio-economic background for students’ performance, but do also sustain the existence of a significant positive impact of private ownership and management schemes on the overall performance of students. These results suggest that there might be gains associated with the expansion of such schemes within the public education system.

Supplementary private health insurance: The characteristics of subscribers

Despite the fact that public medical care has being heavily subsidized through a statutory national health system there has been a growing number of people who opt to enroll in extra private coverage. Using a two part model to infer the insurance decision and subsequent amount of insurance chosen we found out that people’s decision over private health coverage is not related with their health. The pattern of consumption of medical care that is not available in the public sector and a good socio economic background were found significant modeling the demand for private health insurance.

Generalized Dasymetric Mapping Algorithm for Accessing Land-Use Change

Contém resumo

Measuring the effects of price movements on private consumption

This paper studies how shocks in the prices of Food, Energy and Financial Assets affect private consumption using a VAR Model. Then, the total effects are broken into direct and indirect effects, using the coefficients taken from the previous model. We use quarterly data for the Portuguese economy from the last 20 years. We found that energy prices and financial assets have a strong connection with consumption, suggesting that the economy may be too exposed to shocks in these markets.

`When I'm sixty-four': old age, family values, and private financial transfers

Private financial transfers are becoming more and more important as ageing levels increase in Europe, with elders acting as both givers and receivers. Our study is divided in two main parts. In the first part we analyse the determinants of private financial transfers, using the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). In the second part we analyse the importance of family values for these transfers, combining SHARE with European Values Study. We show that family functions as the main agent of private transfers. We conclude that family values drive financial transfers, mainly gifts provided by elderly individuals. We find that receipts by old-aged people are more related with need cases, such as illness and poorness; moreover, for these particular cases, family network plays a very important role, working as a safety net.

Land of the rising soy an internationalization plan for nutre to the Japanese Soy milk market

The present work project studies the next step in the internationalization process of Shoyce, the soy milk products brand of Nutre. In order to select the best target market in the Asia-Pacific for Nutre to export, a sequential screening process was developed using two complementary approaches: preliminary country screening and country ranking, followed by an in-depth analysis of the country ranking first. The analysis revealed Japan as the most attractive country for Shoyce’s international expansion. Potential entry modes in the Japanese soy milk market were then evaluated, whereby direct exporting via a local distributor was found to be the most appropriate.

How to invest as a private equity

This work project presents a road map for making deals under the umbrella support of a private equity investor. Fundraising, investment analysis, asset monitoring, and divestment are stages in the process that are covered in-depth and clarified in terms of action plan and procedures. Moreover, private equity brings tangible and intangible efficiency to the economy and companies, not only by providing finance to grow and expand but also by forcing superior organizational organics that foster sustainable business positions. In a world domain, Europe as been a second liner as compared to US in terms of size within the private equity sector, but it is quickly maturing and converging to US numbers. In this sense, Portugal has been improving in both numbers and regulations in order to leverage on its strategic location and position itself as a key player to address future business challenges coming from emerging markets such as Africa and Latin America.

Innovative medicines in the portuguese private health sector

The present dissertation aims at contributing to a strategic view over the use of innovative medicines in the portuguese private health sector, as a way of being complementary to public system that nowadays finances most of the innovative medicines. With the rationalization of expenses in the public health sector, pharmaceutical companies tend to look for opportunities of expansion to the private sector. The creation of innovative financial models for the private sector to cover innovative treatments is the proposed way of surpassing the restriction on the NHS sales of innovative medicines. This can be both for differentiating private health providers from the NHS or for the creation of premium services that can be differentiated from other private providers of the portuguese market.

Assessment of NDVI, land surface temperature and precipitation anomalies for drought monitoring in Bayankhongor province, Mongolia

During the last decade Mongolia’s region was characterized by a rapid increase of both severity and frequency of drought events, leading to pasture reduction. Drought monitoring and assessment plays an important role in the region’s early warning systems as a way to mitigate the negative impacts in social, economic and environmental sectors. Nowadays it is possible to access information related to the hydrologic cycle through remote sensing, which provides a continuous monitoring of variables over very large areas where the weather stations are sparse. The present thesis aimed to explore the possibility of using NDVI as a potential drought indicator by studying anomaly patterns and correlations with other two climate variables, LST and precipitation. The study covered the growing season (March to September) of a fifteen year period, between 2000 and 2014, for Bayankhongor province in southwest Mongolia. The datasets used were MODIS NDVI, LST and TRMM Precipitation, which processing and analysis was supported by QGIS software and Python programming language. Monthly anomaly correlations between NDVI-LST and NDVI-Precipitation were generated as well as temporal correlations for the growing season for known drought years (2001, 2002 and 2009). The results show that the three variables follow a seasonal pattern expected for a northern hemisphere region, with occurrence of the rainy season in the summer months. The values of both NDVI and precipitation are remarkably low while LST values are high, which is explained by the region’s climate and ecosystems. The NDVI average, generally, reached higher values with high precipitation values and low LST values. The year of 2001 was the driest year of the time-series, while 2003 was the wet year with healthier vegetation. Monthly correlations registered weak results with low significance, with exception of NDVI-LST and NDVI-Precipitation correlations for June, July and August of 2002. The temporal correlations for the growing season also revealed weak results. The overall relationship between the variables anomalies showed weak correlation results with low significance, which suggests that an accurate answer for predicting drought using the relation between NDVI, LST and Precipitation cannot be given. Additional research should take place in order to achieve more conclusive results. However the NDVI anomaly images show that NDVI is a suitable drought index for Bayankhongor province.

Does companionate love express itself unequally in different organizational forms (private companies, hybrid and non-governmental organizations)?

Although, the word “Love” in organizations is seen as a rare concept, but it has gained importance in management theoretical foundation. This study seeks to explore the companionate love in distinct of organizational forms (Private companies; Social organizations; NGO and IPSS) through interviews. The results propose that it is a tensional concept with a complex dynamic: tension of personal behavior, tension of professional behavior; tension of individual impact and tension of community impact. The love dynamic has common points to all organizations, but its expression depends on the specific form of the organization.