Productivity, demand and the home market effect

The causality between international trade and industrialization is still ambiguous. We consider a model of international trade with the Home Market Effect - with differences in income and productivity between sectors and between countries - in order to identify additional channels for determining the effects of international trade on industrialization. Introducing non-homothetic preferences and differences in productivity aids in the interpretation of any apparent paradoxes within international trade, such as the commercial relations between more populated countries like China and India and large economies such as the U.S. Population size, demand composition and productivity levels constitute the three main channels for determining the effects of international trade. Interactions among these channels define the results obtained in terms of industrialization, while welfare levels are always higher in relation to autarky.

Modelling economic returns to plant variety protection in the UK

This paper attempts an empirical assessment of the incentive effects of plant variety protection regimes in the generation of crop variety innovations. A duration model of plant variety protection certificates is used to infer the private appropriability of returns from agricultural crop variety innovations in the UK over the period 1965-2000. The results suggest that plant variety protection provides only modest appropriability of returns to innovators of agricultural crop varieties. The value distribution of plant variety protection certificates is highly skewed with a large proportion of innovations providing virtually no returns to innovators. Increasing competition from newer varieties appears to have accelerated the turnover of varieties reducing appropriability further. Plant variety protection emerges as a relatively weak instrument of protection.

Spatial-temporal aspects of cost-benefit analysis for park management: an example from Khao Yai National Park, Thailand

Using a model calibrated to Khao Yai National Park in Thailand, this paper highlights the importance of generating explicitly spatial and temporal data for developing management plans for tropical protected forests. Spatial and temporal cost-benefit analysis should account for the interactions between different land uses – such as the benefits of contiguous areas of preserved land and edge effects – and the realities of villagers living near forests who rely on extracted resources. By taking a temporal perspective, this paper provides a rare empirical assessment of the importance of quasi-option values when determining optimal management plans.

Non- parametric specification tests for conditional duration models

This paper deals with the estimation and testing of conditional duration models by looking at the density and baseline hazard rate functions. More precisely, we foeus on the distance between the parametric density (or hazard rate) function implied by the duration process and its non-parametric estimate. Asymptotic justification is derived using the functional delta method for fixed and gamma kernels, whereas finite sample properties are investigated through Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, we show the practical usefulness of such testing procedures by carrying out an empirical assessment of whether autoregressive conditional duration models are appropriate to oIs for modelling price durations of stocks traded at the New York Stock Exchange.

Limited attention and investor disagreement: a nowcasting approach

When disagreement in economic models occurs due to different interpretations of public signals, the level of ``marketwide disagreement'' not necessarily decreases upon the arrival of a public signal. We propose an empirical assessment of this phenomenon. By using a measure of attention based on Google Trends, we show that an increase in the attention allocated by the market to a company is associated to a significant increase in disagreement about it.

Se inicia oração com pronome clítico? Atitudes linguísticas, na escola, em relação aos padrões brasileiros de colocação pronominal

Focusing on the empirical assessment issue, proposed by Language change theory (cf. cf. WEINREICH; LABOV; HERZOG, 2006; LABOV, [1972] 2008), this research assists to clarifying Portuguese teacher s attitudes in Natal- RN, regarding (a) to proclisis in three specific contexts: in the beginning of a simple/compound sentence (V1), after the subjects (SV), and proclisis after the secondary verb in complex verbal structures (V1V2); (b) to students who use such patterns in usage. Specific contexts were gathered thanks to their representing of the standard variety, as many studies have proven (Martins, 2012; Schei, 2003; Biazzoli, 2010, 2012). The research aims at: (i) verifying by means of a classroom assessment test, whether Portuguese teachers correct proclisis on referred contexts; (ii) identifying, via attitudinal tests what actions teachers take regarding to the usage of standards above mentioned, as well as students as users of those. Twenty Portuguese teachers, picked at random out of different of public schools in Natal-RN, responded to a classroom assessment test in addition to other two attitudinal ones. Results achieved point to a recurring high proclisis correction index of 50% in simple/compound sentences, even though such variety has been implemented to pronominal usage standards in Brazilian Portuguese. This setting of usage was generally assessed negatively, having no commonality between this assessment and the neutral one used by students. Unlike previous setting, the proclisis after subject did not receive any correction of the twenty teachers, what proves coherence with the positive evaluation both the varieties and the students attained. As for the second verb of complex verbal structures, proclisis correction went negative on presenting single results, despite their proximity, with correction indexes of 20% (infinite structures), 10% (present progressive structures) and 25% (participle structures). The assessment on these contexts of proclisis ranged between positive and neutral, also valid for the one students utilized. It means that proclisis in the beginning of simple/compound sentences are yet seemingly spotted in writing school scenario, much likely due to the negative evaluation, opposite to students . Later to subjects and earlier to secondary verbs in structures, proclisis appears to be acknowledged in writing school scenarios, which reflects on teachers assessment as compared to students who use proclisis in these contexts; being in general either positive or neutral

The Geography of Brazilian External Trade: Right Option for a BRIC?

Words can make a difference sometimes.Brazil is – together with the other ´BRIC´- a large economy, with an increasingly high profile in the international scenario. Large domestic market makes it more likely to obtain ‘growth-led exports’ rather than ‘export-led growth’, which implies a pro-active role in international relations. The option for intensifying regional trade links is a reasonable one and perhaps even inevitable, taking into account the experience elsewhere, but the actual regional conditions raise a number of questions that have to do both with further empirical assessment and to more specific identification of expectations with regard to probable achievements. This article has shown that the road to reach significant progress in this direction is not flat and requires more clear signalling to economic agents, strong political will and a good deal of specific measures. But it has also suggested that it might provide positive results.

Gestão estratégica e otimização de custos de produção: a experiência da COHAB/PA na provisão de infra-estrutura urbana em assentamentos habitacionais da Região Metropolitana de Belém

Este trabalho apresenta o estudo do processo de estruturação organizacional e produtiva de uma empresa pública do setor da habitação, a Companhia de Habitação do Estado do Pará COHAB/PA, visando avaliar a eficiência de seus processos e a eficácia de seus custos de produção, na implantação de serviços de infra-estrutura urbana em assentamentos habitacionais na Região Metropolitana de Belém. A partir de uma abordagem contextual da política pública, produção habitacional e das emergências de novas metodologias organizacionais se estabelece o arcabouço teórico para o estudo da gestão estratégica e para análise dos seus custos de produção. A metodologia utilizada permitiu estabelecer a correlação entre o desempenho organizacional e o produtivo com a construção de indicadores obtidos por meio da análise empírica, qualitativa e avaliativa do objeto. Os resultados obtidos acerca do desempenho organizacional são relevantes, principalmente, por trabalhar no ambiente intra-organizacional, transformações de natureza cultural, além de transparecer a importância do redimensionamento dos processos. Os resultados obtidos acerca do desempenho produtivo mostram os avanços ocorridos no setor produtivo da empresa, entretanto, revela que existe uma defasagem entre o desempenho organizacional e o produtivo, e que se traduz, substancialmente, nos elementos de custos e de projetos dos assentamentos habitacionais providos com os serviços de infra-estrutura urbana.

L'attrazione sessuale: processi psichici e strumenti di indagine. L'adattamento italiano del Cuestionario de Atraccion sexual

The sexual attraction is a complex emotional event, with somatic modifications, that like all the emotions, belongs to the psychic dimension and that, too much simply, can be led back, from a explicative point of view, to biological and psychical causes. The sexual attraction represents a personal experience, that is difficult to record, but of which every adult is able to delineate a correspondence with own “lived”. In the within of biological sciences, many experimental studies were been conducted with the aim to know which chemistries substances and cerebral zones are involved in front of a stimulus assessed like sexually attractive. Contrarily, there are little researches conducted in psychological field, aimed to the understanding the psychical factors, often unconscious, tinged to the subjective processes of sexual attraction: the sexual attraction remains an unexplored psychological event and unprovided of adapted instruments of assessment. The present thesis is oriented in primis to examine the existing scientific literature, in order to provide an exhaustive picture of the sexual attraction and to analyze the instruments of survey available for the empirical assessment of it. Secondly, the thesis is oriented to introduce two studies: the first study is aimed to adapt the Cuestionario de Atracción Sexual - CAS (Fernández ET to, 2006a; 2006b; 2006c) to the Italian language; the second study is aimed to assess the attitudes towards the sexual attraction in a sample of university students, in order to establish if some differences or association with some psychological dimensions (attachment stiles and alexithymia) exist.

Reputation, VC funding, and innovation: Evidence from the UK Micro and Nanotechnology sector

Startups’ contributions on economic growth have been widely realized. However, the funding gap is often a problem limiting startups’ development. To some extent, VC can be a means to solve this problem. VC is one of the optimal financial intermediaries for startups. Two streams of VC studies are focused in this dissertation: the criteria used by venture capitalists to evaluate startups and the effect of VC on innovation. First, although many criteria have been analyzed, the empirical assessment of the effect of startup reputation on VC funding has not been investigated. However, reputation is usually positively related with firm performance, which may affect VC funding. By analyzing reputation from the generalized visibility dimension and the generalized favorability dimension using a sample of 200 startups founded from 1995 operating in the UK MNT sector, we show that both the two dimensions of reputation have positive influence on the likelihood of receiving VC funding. We also find that management team heterogeneity positively influence the likelihood of receiving VC funding. Second, studies investigating the effect of venture capital on innovation have frequently resorted to patent data. However, innovation is a process leading from invention to successful commercialization, and while patents capture the upstream side of innovative performance, they poorly describe its downstream one. By reflecting the introduction of new products or services trademarks can complete the picture, but empirical studies on trademarking in startups are rare. Analyzing a sample of 192 startups founded from 1996 operating in the UK MNT sector, we find that VC funding has positive effect on the propensity to register trademarks, as well as on the number and breadth of trademarks.

Energy Efficient Multimedia Communications in IEEE 802.11 Networks

During the last decade wireless mobile communications have progressively become part of the people’s daily lives, leading users to expect to be “alwaysbest-connected” to the Internet, regardless of their location or time of day. This is indeed motivated by the fact that wireless access networks are increasingly ubiquitous, through different types of service providers, together with an outburst of thoroughly portable devices, namely laptops, tablets, mobile phones, among others. The “anytime and anywhere” connectivity criterion raises new challenges regarding the devices’ battery lifetime management, as energy becomes the most noteworthy restriction of the end-users’ satisfaction. This wireless access context has also stimulated the development of novel multimedia applications with high network demands, although lacking in energy-aware design. Therefore, the relationship between energy consumption and the quality of the multimedia applications perceived by end-users should be carefully investigated. This dissertation addresses energy-efficient multimedia communications in the IEEE 802.11 standard, which is the most widely used wireless access technology. It advances the literature by proposing a unique empirical assessment methodology and new power-saving algorithms, always bearing in mind the end-users’ feedback and evaluating quality perception. The new EViTEQ framework proposed in this thesis, for measuring video transmission quality and energy consumption simultaneously, in an integrated way, reveals the importance of having an empirical and high-accuracy methodology to assess the trade-off between quality and energy consumption, raised by the new end-users’ requirements. Extensive evaluations conducted with the EViTEQ framework revealed its flexibility and capability to accurately report both video transmission quality and energy consumption, as well as to be employed in rigorous investigations of network interface energy consumption patterns, regardless of the wireless access technology. Following the need to enhance the trade-off between energy consumption and application quality, this thesis proposes the Optimized Power save Algorithm for continuous Media Applications (OPAMA). By using the end-users’ feedback to establish a proper trade-off between energy consumption and application performance, OPAMA aims at enhancing the energy efficiency of end-users’ devices accessing the network through IEEE 802.11. OPAMA performance has been thoroughly analyzed within different scenarios and application types, including a simulation study and a real deployment in an Android testbed. When compared with the most popular standard power-saving mechanisms defined in the IEEE 802.11 standard, the obtained results revealed OPAMA’s capability to enhance energy efficiency, while keeping end-users’ Quality of Experience within the defined bounds. Furthermore, OPAMA was optimized to enable superior energy savings in multiple station environments, resulting in a new proposal called Enhanced Power Saving Mechanism for Multiple station Environments (OPAMA-EPS4ME). The results of this thesis highlight the relevance of having a highly accurate methodology to assess energy consumption and application quality when aiming to optimize the trade-off between energy and quality. Additionally, the obtained results based both on simulation and testbed evaluations, show clear benefits from employing userdriven power-saving techniques, such as OPAMA, instead of IEEE 802.11 standard power-saving approaches.

Identificación empírica de beneficios de usabilidad

La usabilidad es un atributo de la calidad del software que se encuentra en la mayoría de las clasificaciones. En este contexto, se entiende por usabilidad la medida en que un producto satisface las necesidades de los stakeholders para alcanzar determinados objetivos de eficacia, eficiencia y satisfacción sin efectos adversos en un contexto específico de uso. En este contexto, no es de extrañar que la usabilidad sea cada vez más reconocida como uno de los factores críticos para la aceptación de un sistema software. En la literatura se encuentran recomendaciones para mejorar la usabilidad de los sistemas software. Sin embargo, no existen datos empíricos que demuestren cómo estas recomendaciones contribuyen positiva o negativamente a cada atributo de usabilidad. En este contexto, el objetivo de la tesis doctoral es la obtención de evidencias empíricas sobre el impacto de la inclusión de mecanismos de usabilidad en un sistema software, más concretamente en los atributos de eficacia, eficiencia y satisfacción-- En esta tesis doctoral se trabaja con mecanismos de usabilidad con gran impacto en la arquitectura software, ya que los mismos deben ser especialmente considerados durante el proceso de desarrollo software. Para obtener evidencias empíricas sobre la inclusión de dichos mecanismos, se ha realizado un experimento piloto y 4 experimentos definitivos utilizando aplicaciones software especialmente desarrolladas para tal fin. Una vez realizada la contrastación empírica de la influencia de estos mecanismos para diferentes sistemas software se pueden realizar las siguientes recomendaciones generales: -La inclusión de cada uno de los mecanismos considerados aumenta considerablemente la satisfacción del usuario en su interacción con las aplicaciones software. -La inclusión de aquellos mecanismos que introducen cuadros de interacción adicionales, disminuye la eficiencia de los usuarios, ya que aumenta el tiempo de duración de las tareas. -Existen una serie de mecanismos que como consecuencia de su ausencia en las aplicaciones resulta imposible la realización de las tareas asociadas a los mismos. Dentro de éste grupo de mecanismos se encuentran aquellos que permiten cancelar o deshacer acciones previamente tomadas y aquellos que provean ayuda en la introducción de información en formularios. Esto implica que su presencia permite la realización exitosa de las tareas y como consecuencia la interacción es mucho más eficaz. En definitiva, se ha encontrado que los distintos mecanismos de usabilidad tienen un impacto diferente en cada atributo, dependiendo su inclusión del/los atributos a potenciar en cada proyecto. Usability is an aspect of software quality that´s found in most classifications. In this context usability is understood as the measure in which a product satisfies the needs of the stakeholders in order to reach certain effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction goals without adverse sideeffects in a specific context of use. It´s no wonder usability is increasingly being recognized as one of the critical factors for the acceptance of a software system. Recommendations are found in literature to improve the usability of software systems. Nevertheless, there is no empirical data that shows how these recommendations contribute positively or negatively to each usability aspect. In this context, the objective of this doctoral thesis is to obtain empirical evidence on the impact of the inclusion of usability mechanisms in a software system, specifically in the attributes of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. This doctoral thesis deals with usability mechanisms of great impact in software architecture, since they have to be considered during the software development process. In order to get empirical evidence on the inclusion of such mechanisms, a pilot experiment and four definitive experiments have been performed through software applications especially developed for this end. Once the empirical assessment of the influence of these mechanisms on different software systems has been performed, the following general recommendations can be made: -The inclusion of each of the considered mechanisms considerably increases the user´s satisfaction in his interaction with software applications. -The inclusion of those mechanisms that introduce additional interaction frames diminishes the efficiency of the users, since it increases task duration time. -As a consequence of being absent in applications, there is a series of mechanisms whose associated tasks are impossible to perform. Within this group we find those mechanisms that allow cancelling or undoing previous actions, and those that provide help with the introduction of information in forms. This implies that their presence allows the successful completion of tasks, and as a consequence, the interaction is much more effective. In summary, it has been found that the diverse usability mechanisms has a different impact on each attribute, and their inclusion depends on the attribute or attributes to enhance in each project.