Double coverage and demand for health care: Evidence from quantile regression

An individual experiences double coverage when he bene ts from more than one health insurance plan at the same time. This paper examines the impact of such supplementary insurance on the demand for health care services. Its novelty is that within the context of count data modelling and without imposing restrictive parametric assumptions, the analysis is carried out for di¤erent points of the conditional distribution, not only for its mean location. Results indicate that moral hazard is present across the whole outcome distribution for both public and private second layers of health insurance coverage but with greater magnitude in the latter group. By looking at di¤erent points we unveil that stronger double coverage e¤ects are smaller for high levels of usage. We use data for Portugal, taking advantage of particular features of the public and private protection schemes on top of the statutory National Health Service. By exploring the last Portuguese Health Survey, we were able to evaluate their impacts on the consumption of doctor visi

The effect of demand information sharing in a supply chain under demand uncertainty: a simulation study

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial

Energy efficiency in energy policy: Empirical evidence of direct rebound effect in Portuguese households' demand for electricity

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

Do hospitals react to random demand pressure by early discharges?

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

Estimating demand for primary health care services

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

Hospital costs and random demand

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

The fitting of the German yield curve: A dynamic approach using latent, macroeconomic and stock market variables

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

Protesting or justifying? A latent class model for contingent valuation with attitudinal data

This article develops a latent class model for estimating willingness-to-pay for public goods using simultaneously contingent valuation (CV) and attitudinal data capturing protest attitudes related to the lack of trust in public institutions providing those goods. A measure of the social cost associated with protest responses and the consequent loss in potential contributions for providing the public good is proposed. The presence of potential justification biases is further considered, that is, the possibility that for psychological reasons the response to the CV question affects the answers to the attitudinal questions. The results from our empirical application suggest that psychological factors should not be ignored in CV estimation for policy purposes, allowing for a correct identification of protest responses.

The Future of services: Uncovering latent needs through trend analysis

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

(Non) - Demand driven servitization: strategic implications for suppliers from incorporating their customers up front

Double Degree. A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Master’s Degree in Management from NOVA – School of Business and Economics and a Masters Degree in International Business, Strategy and Innovation from Maastricht University

Hotel industry: An answer to the emerging trends on the global demand side of tourism

This dissertation studies essentially how Millennials are changing the hotel industry, in the sense that new trends are emerging with this generation and hotels need to respond accordingly, in order to survive within their competitive industry. Emphasis is also given to Asian travellers, as the enlargement of these countries’ middle class populations is predicted, therefore making Asian travellers a valuable target for the hotel industry. To successfully target this segment, hoteliers need also to consider the cultural differences and aspirations that come together with the Asian travellers, and appropriately adapt their offer to them. I will then redirect this study to the city of Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, to analyse if Lisbon’s four and five-star hotel managers are aware of the new market trends, and to understand how they are changing their hotels in order to make them more attractive to Millennials and Asian travellers. Using a sample of 12 hotels (four and five-stars ratings), I have concluded that, although there is a notable undergoing process of adaptation to these guests, there is a long way ahead in order for Lisbon’s hotels to entirely please and retain millennial guests.

Energy efficiency in energy policy: Empirical evidence of direct rebound effect in Portuguese household's demand for electricity

This project the direct rebound effect for the electricity demand in Portugal. While we find evidence of such an effect, the estimations also reflect the institutional arrangement that has characterized the electricity market in the country. Also, issues related to energy efficiency promotion are addressed in general putting into context the case study developed.

Do hospitals react to random demand pressure by early discharges?

This project tries to assess whether hospitals react to random demand pressure by discharging patients earlier than expected. As a matter of fact, combining an unpredictable demand for medical services with limited and, to some extent, fixed medical resources, generates strong incentives to discharge patients earlier than expected when demand is high − increasing the risk of readmission and decreasing the benefit from treatment. This work was conducted as a way to determine whether those incentives actually affect discharging decisions. Analysis of Portuguese hospitals data shows that hospital utilization levels at the time of admission, prior to the admission and post admission do have a negative impact over the length of stay in hospital, although this impact is quantitatively irrelevant. More than that, larger utilization levels have a positive impact over the probability of being discharged at certain days of the week, indicating that an early discharges problem may exist.

Estimating demand for primary health care services

Primary health services exist with the purpose of providing basic health care to every person at a cost they can afford. But is it fully available to everyone? The objective of this work project is to estimate the demand for primary health care services having into account that in some regions the citizens are not using as much health care as they would like due to supply side constraints. Using the number of consultations as proxy for demand, and applying an econometric tool called switching regression, the demand for primary health care services will be estimated.

Control in distribution networks with demand side management

The way in which electricity networks operate is going through a period of significant change. Renewable generation technologies are having a growing presence and increasing penetrations of generation that are being connected at distribution level. Unfortunately, a renewable energy source is most of the time intermittent and needs to be forecasted. Current trends in Smart grids foresee the accommodation of a variety of distributed generation sources including intermittent renewable sources. It is also expected that smart grids will include demand management resources, widespread communications and control technologies required to use demand response are needed to help the maintenance in supply-demand balance in electricity systems. Consequently, smart household appliances with controllable loads will be likely a common presence in our homes. Thus, new control techniques are requested to manage the loads and achieve all the potential energy present in intermittent energy sources. This thesis is focused on the development of a demand side management control method in a distributed network, aiming the creation of greater flexibility in demand and better ease the integration of renewable technologies. In particular, this work presents a novel multi-agent model-based predictive control method to manage distributed energy systems from the demand side, in presence of limited energy sources with fluctuating output and with energy storage in house-hold or car batteries. Specifically, here is presented a solution for thermal comfort which manages a limited shared energy resource via a demand side management perspective, using an integrated approach which also involves a power price auction and an appliance loads allocation scheme. The control is applied individually to a set of Thermal Control Areas, demand units, where the objective is to minimize the energy usage and not exceed the limited and shared energy resource, while simultaneously indoor temperatures are maintained within a comfort frame. Thermal Control Areas are overall thermodynamically connected in the distributed environment and also coupled by energy related constraints. The energy split is performed based on a fixed sequential order established from a previous completed auction wherein the bids are made by each Thermal Control Area, acting as demand side management agents, based on the daily energy price. The developed solutions are explained with algorithms and are applied to different scenarios, being the results explanatory of the benefits of the proposed approaches.