While the crisis proceeds: A world redistribution of economic power?

The crisis has drawn attention to the fact that not only emerging powers but other regions of the world as well may be offering different development models and may constitute into alternative, in some dimensions more positive agents, in the conduct of the present stage of globalisation. Notwithstanding, the traditional western powers have not lost a large amount of control of the world economy. And the crisis proceeds, reallocating world power as in a Hobbesian anarchy. It is difficult to foresee smooth developments in the near future. On the contrary, multilateralism seems to be losing ground to unilateral action or bilateral arrangements. More or less disguised currency wars may lead to serious disequilibria, and turf wars may become more frequent, with motives ranging from securing captive markets to control of specific commodities and energy goods, or targeted regulatory frameworks. As economic policy becomes even more involved with defence and security affairs, the feedbacks from each side to the other seem likely to keep dissent and animosity high, rather than contributing to peaceful and constructive approaches. A more trouble-prone world may be easily expected.

Context costs and comparative advantages in the telecommunications sector in Portugal and China

This Work Project aims to discuss the Context Costs and Comparative Advantages of the Telecommunications sector both in Portugal and China. The work was built mostly on primary research by interviews with relevant people (business persons, University Professors and Agencies directors), and by economic data publicly available. A list of context costs and comparative advantages was drawn for each country and possible resolutions suggestions were made in the end. The context costs depend heavily on the economic situation of the countries and it should be taken into account when assessing the degree of magnitude of each cost of context. The competitive advantages of each country were drawn in comparison with one another. Some key results stand out: firstly, Portugal’s costs of context depend mainly on governmental decisions, uncertainties and instability and China’s cost of context depend primarily on cultural norms, mainly the Guanxi; second, the telecommunications sector shares most of its context costs and advantages with other sectors; third, China as an economic power could use the telecommunications sector as a way to further develop and boost its economy.

Impact of social economic indicators on RSI incidence and success

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

Microstructural changes befor macroeconomic announcements: Predictability of economic surprises in the U.S. market

Flow of new information is what produces price changes, understanding if the market is unbalanced is fundamental to know how much inventory market makers should keep during an important economic release. After identifying which economic indicators impact the S&P and 10 year Treasuries. The Volume Synchronized Probability of Information-Based Trading (VPIN) will be used as a predictability measure. The results point to some predictability power over economic surprises of the VPIN metric, mainly when calculated using the S&P. This finding appears to be supported when analysing depth imbalance before economic releases. Inferior results were achieved when using treasuries. The final aim of this study is to fill the gap between microstructural changes and macroeconomic events.

The sociological perspective on the knowledge-based society: assumptions, facts and visions

The paper will present the central discourse of the knowledge-based society. Already in the 1960s the debate of the industrial society already raised the question whether there can be considered a paradigm shift towards a knowledge-based society. Some prominent authors already foreseen ‘knowledge’ as the main indicator in order to displace ‘labour’ and ‘capital’ as the main driving forces of the capitalistic development. Today on the political level and also in many scientific disciplines the assumption that we are already living in a knowledge-based society seems obvious. Although we still do not have a theory of the knowledge-based society and there still exist a methodological gap about the empirical indicators, the vision of a knowledge-based society determines at least the perception of the Western societies. In a first step the author will pinpoint the assumptions about the knowledge-based society on three levels: on the societal, on the organisational and on the individual level. These assumptions are relied on the following topics: a) The role of the information and communication technologies; b) The dynamic development of globalisation as an ‘evolutionary’ process; c) The increasing importance of knowledge management within organisations; d) The changing role of the state within the economic processes. Not only the differentiation between the levels but also the revision of the assumptions of a knowledge-based society will show that the ‘topics raised in the debates’ cannot be considered as the results of a profound societal paradigm shift. However what seems very impressive is the normative and virtual shift towards a concept of modernity, which strongly focuses on the role of technology as a driving force as well as on the global economic markets, which has to be accepted. Therefore – according to the official debate - the successful adaptation of these processes seems the only way to meet the knowledge-based society. Analysing the societal changes on the three levels, the label ‘knowledge-based society’ can be seen critically. Therefore the main question of Theodor W. Adorno during the 16th Congress of Sociology in 1968 did not loose its actuality. Facing the societal changes he asked whether we are still living in the industrial society or already in a post-industrial state. Thinking about the knowledge-based society according to these two options, this exercise would enrich the whole debate in terms of social inequality, political, economic exclusion processes and at least the power relationship between social groups.

Services innovation and economic performance: An analysis at the firm

In this paper we estimate a model linking innovation effort and economic performance, along the lines of the Mairesse and Mohnen (2003) model. We examine this relationship in the context of services sectors instead of Research and Development intensive manufacturing sectors. Much effort has already been made to explore the innovation-performance relationship for manufacturing sectors but it is still much understudied for services, particularly for Portugal. In this paper we aim to take a step in fulfilling this gap. We use new firm level data for ten services sectors from the Second Community Innovation Survey of Portugal, to estimate the model.

Renewable Power Sources

Of all of the sources of renewable energies available one can argue that the most abundant and accessible are solar power, radiation, and the energy of the tides (70 % of the earth surface is covered by water). The tidal wave energy hasn’t seen a widespread distribution yet, mainly due to the lack of interest of the governments, most of the coastal areas of the world are exclusive responsibility of the governments, thus not easily open for private venture. Considering solar power, there exist two main fields of application, land based systems and space based systems. The former systems are still in a very embryonic phase, with Japan being the lead researcher in the field, with an experimental satellite-power station to be launched before 2010. Land based systems, on the other hand, are well studied, with major research and application programs in all known forms of solar power production. Given a minimum value of incident radiation, and applying the appropriate system, (i.e. power plant type), for any given area the solar power becomes an income-producing industry.

Assessment of climate change statistical downscaling methods: Application and comparison of two statistical methods to a single site in Lisbon

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente

A contribuição da informática para o desenvolvimento sustentável: o exemplo do conceito de grid computing

Este trabalho foi realizado sob orientação do Prof. António Brandão Moniz para a disciplina “Factores Sociais da Inovação” do Mestrado Engenharia Informática realizado na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal)

Low-voltage low-power CMOS analogue circuits for Gaussian and uniform noise generation

IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, MAY 25-28, 2003, Bangkok, Thailand. (ISI Web of Science)

Integrated ecological-economic modelling and assessment aproach for coastal ecosystem management

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Sciences and Technology, New University of Lisbon, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental Sciences

Economic ideas and policies in nineteenth-century Portugal

Luso-Brazilian Review Vol.38 Issue 2, p1-15

Power-and-area efficient 14-bit 1.5 MSample/s two-stage algorithmic ADC based on a mismatch-insensitive MDAC

IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, pp. 220 – 223, Seattle, EUA

Low-power 6-bit 1-GS/s two-channel pipeline ADC with open-loop amplification using amplifiers with local-feedback

IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, pp. 2258 – 2261, Seattle, EUA

New low-power 1.5-bit time-interleaved MDAC based on MOS capacitor amplification

15th IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, Malta