NSP work project investment styles

This paper analyzes the Nova Student Portfolio (NSP) with the objective to understand performances of the fund. Each investment style has been analyzed (growth, value and momentum) in order to highlight what style allocation contributed positively and which had a negative impact. The results show that the team mainly invested in value stocks, which contributed positively but that its growth investments had a negative impact on the stock picking performance. The stock selection shows a major influence of the value investment style. A statistical approach shows that the market factor was the one explaining the most the NSP returns.

As necessidades e redes de apoio de famílias de pessoas com perturbação do espectro do autismo

RESUMO: O objectivo do presente estudo consistiu em avaliar as necessidades de apoio de 63 pais com filhos (crianças, jovens ou adultos) com Perturbação do Espectro Autista (PEA), no que diz respeito a: (1) necessidades de apoio identificadas pelos pais, (2) redes de suporte destes pais e (3) relação entre necessidades de apoio e características dos pais e filhos. Todos os pais tinham participado no 1º nível do projecto nacional intitulado “Oficinas de Pais/Bolsas de Pais” – o Grupo de Apoio Emocional (GAE). No sentido de verificar se ocorreram mudanças nas suas necessidades de apoio, avaliou-se o antes (momento I) e o depois do GAE (momento II). Utilizou-se a Escala de Funções de Apoio Social (Dunst, Trivette, & Deal, 1988) para avaliar as necessidades de apoio e a Escala de Apoio Social (Dunst, Trivette, & Deal, 1988) para avaliar as redes de apoio social. Os resultados demonstram que os pais de pessoas com PEA apresentam (tanto antes como após a frequência nas oficinas do GAE) sobretudo necessidades de apoio de carácter emocional e profissional, e menos necessidades de carácter prático. Para suprir as necessidades de apoio, antes e após o GAE, estes pais recorreram, numa primeira opção, ao cônjuge, aos profissionais e posteriormente aos amigos. Os vizinhos constituíram a rede de apoio social a quem menos recorreram. Apesar de algumas diferenças observadas entre o momento I e momento II, estas não foram estatisticamente significativas nem para as necessidades de apoio, nem para as redes de apoio social.------------------------- ABSTRACT: The study aimed to evaluate the support needs of 63 parents of children, adolescents and adults with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), concerning three aspects: (1) support needs that parents identified as major target, (2) social support network of these parents, and (3) the relationship between support needs and parent and children characteristics. All parents had participated in the first level of the national project “Oficinas de Pais/Bolsas de Pais” - the Emotional Support Group (ESG). In order to verify if any changes occurred in the needs of support, evaluation was carried before (moment I) and after (moment II) the ESG. In this context, parents filled the Supports Function Scale (Dunst, Trivette, & Deal, 1988), which evaluated their different needs of support, and also the Social Supports Scale (Dunst, Trivette & Deal, 1988) which in turn evaluated their social support network. The results showed that parents of children with ASD, both before and after the ESG, revealed emotional and professional needs and, in a less extent, also practical needs. To address the referred needs (before and after the ESG) these parents seek in the first place the support of their spouse, then that of professionals and, later on, that of friends. Neighbours are the support that parents least address. Despite some observed differences in support needs and social support networks between the two moments, these were, however, not statistically significant.

Using artificial neural networks to generate trading signals for crude oil, copper and gold futures

In this thesis, a feed-forward, back-propagating Artificial Neural Network using the gradient descent algorithm is developed to forecast the directional movement of daily returns for WTI, gold and copper futures. Out-of-sample back-test results vary, with some predictive abilities for copper futures but none for either WTI or gold. The best statistically significant hit rate achieved was 57% for copper with an absolute return Sharpe Ratio of 1.25 and a benchmarked Information Ratio of 2.11.

Economics consulting project for the Iberian Marketing Oil department of Galp Energia: Strategy and Marketing guidelines for Galp Energia’sconvenience business in the Iberian market

Field lab: Consulting lab

Consulting project for the Iberian marketing Oil department of Galp Energia: Strategy and marketing guidelines for Galp Energia's convenience business in the Iberian market

Field lab: Consulting lab

Consulting project for Câmara Municipal de Cascais street vending in Portugal- creation and development of a new sales channel

Field lab: Consulting lab

Travestis brasileiras em Portugal : percursos, identidades e ambiguidades

Os séculos XX e XXI corresponderam ao agudizar de processos globalizantes potenciados pelas novas tecnologias, quer no âmbito comunicacional, quer industrial, sublinhando dinâmicas de desruralização e de construção de tecidos urbanos densos onde o anonimato se tornou possível na vivência de experiências, outrora reconduzidas ao silêncio do sujeito socialmente isolado. A diferença, enquanto experiência vivida, tornou-se comunitariamente possível, surgindo grupos que delimitam geograficamente determinadas áreas urbanas a que correspondem afinidades eróticas ou de práticas sexuais, inicialmente de gays e lésbicas. Quebra-se na prática a uni-direccionalidade entre sexo e género, entre sexo e sexualidade, questionando-se esquemas de relações assimétricas e modelos de pensamento enraizados (heterossexualidade, patriarcado, machismo, etc.). Rubin (1975 in Lewin 2006, in Vance, 1984) propõe a existência de dois sistemas diferenciados de sexo e género que tornam plausível, sob o ponto de vista analítico, a não correspondência entre sexo, género e sexualidade. O paradigma máximo desta autonomia sistémica alcança-se na construção de uma identidade travesti. Esta identidade mutante, mutável e instável parece acompanhar um mundo de fluxos intensos e interdependências múltiplas. É na sociedade global que as travestis encontram espaço para a vivência comunitária da sua experiência, constituindo-se como um grupo com práticas transnacionais, marcado pela mobilidade de género e geográfica, primeiramente dentro das fronteiras brasileiras e depois para a Europa. Cidade, prostituição e migração surgem como factores chave da disseminação geográfica e identitária desta comunidade. Este projecto tomado sob uma perspectiva global mantêm ou reinventa relações com a estrutura, que aparentemente as apaga enquanto actores sociais e da qual, aparentemente, se auto-excluem.

An essay on agile project management practices

The main goals for the current dissertation is to research on how practices and concepts from Agile Project Management can be applied in a non-IT context and to discover which aspects should be considered when deciding if whether an Agile approach should be implemented or not. Previous studies reflect on the adoption for the identified context. However, the recognition of these practices and concepts by the Project Management field of studies still remains unresolved. The adoption of Agile Project Management emerges as a manifestation against traditional approaches, mainly due to their inability of accepting requirements’ changes. Therefore, these practices and concepts can be considered in order to reduce the risks concerning the increase of competition and innovation – which does not apply to the IT sector solely. The current study reviews the literature on Agile Project Management and its adoption across different sectors in order to assess which practices and concepts can be applied on a non-IT context. Nine different methods are reviewed, where two of these show a higher relevance – Scrum and Extreme Programming. The identified practices and concepts can be separated into four different groups: Cultural and Organizational Structures, Process, Practices, and Artefacts. A framework based on the work by Boehm & Turner in 2004 is developed in order to support the decision of adopting agile methods. A survey intended for project managers was carried in order to assess the implementation of the identified practices and concepts and to evaluate which variables have the highest importance on the developed decision support framework. It is concluded that New Product Development is the project type with the highest potential to implement an agile approach and that the Project Final Product’s Innovativeness, Competitiveness, and the Project Member’s Experience and Autonomy are the most important aspects to consider an implementation of an Agile approach.

Assessing the role of social networks on migrant labor market outcomes: Evidence from a representative immigrant survey

What role do social networks play in determining migrant labor market outcomes? We examine this question using data from a random sample of 1500 immigrants living in Ireland. We propose a theoretical model formally predicting that immigrants with more contacts have additional access to job offers, and are therefore better able to become employed and choose higher paid jobs. Our empirical analysis confirms these findings, while focusing more generally on the relationship between migrants’ social networks and a variety of labor market outcomes (namely wages, employment, occupational choice and job security), contrary to the literature. We find evidence that having one more contact in the network is associated with an increase of 11pp in the probability of being employed and with an increase of about 100 euros in the average salary. However, our data is not suggestive of a network size effect on occupational choice and job security. Our findings are robust to sample selection and other endogeneity concerns.

Improving retail banking staff incentive systems

This Work Project seeks to analyze the viability, utility and best way of implementing mechanisms of double accounting and of insertion of low (or null) sales objectives in an incentives program. The main findings are that both processes are possible and to a certain extent advisable, although in very specific ways and with some limitations. Double accounting processes are especially effective between different segments and networks and should have a greater impact in the first evaluation periods of each case and the null objectives, albeit usable, are recommended to be always substituted by positive objectives, even if quite small. Moreover, it is concluded that the formal structure of the incentives program influences significantly these concepts, namely concerning the duration of the evaluation periods and the interaction of the objectives of different entities for both the vertical (hierarchic) and horizontal (individual and collective) levels.

A new credit monitoring framework for agents' networks

The purpose of this work is to develop a practicable approach for Telecom firms to manage the credit risk exposition to their commercial agents’ network. Particularly it will try to approach the problem of credit concession to clients’ from a corporation perspective and explore the particular scenario of agents that are part of the commercial chain of the corporation and therefore are not end-users. The agents’ network that served as a model for the presented study is composed by companies that, at the same time, are both clients and suppliers of the Telecommunication Company. In that sense the credit exposition analysis must took into consideration all financial fluxes, both inbound and outbound. The current strain on the Financial Sector in Portugal, and other peripheral European economies, combined with the high leverage situation of most companies, generates an environment prone to credit default risk. Due to these circumstances managing credit risk exposure is becoming increasingly a critical function for every company Financial Department. The approach designed in the current study combined two traditional risk monitoring tools: credit risk scoring and credit limitation policies. The objective was to design a new credit monitoring framework that is more flexible, uses both external and internal relationship history to assess risk and takes into consideration commercial objectives inside the agents’ network. Although not explored at length, the blueprint of a Credit Governance model was created for implementing the new credit monitoring framework inside the telecom firm. The Telecom Company that served as a model for the present work decided to implement the new Credit Monitoring framework after this was presented to its Executive Commission.

On project finance and the first road concession in Portugal

In broad sense, Project Financing1 as a mean of financing large scale infrastructural projects worldwide has had a steady growth in popularity for the last 20 years. This growth has been relatively unscathed from most economic cycles. However in the wake of the 2007 systemic Financial Crisis, Project Financing was also in trouble. The liquidity freeze and credit crunch that ensued affected all parties involved. Traditional Lenders, of this type of financial instrument, locked-in long-term contractual obligations, were severely hit with scarcity of funding compounded by rapidly increasing cost of funding. All the while, Banks were “rescued” by the concerted actions of Central Banks and other Multi-Lateral Agencies around the world but at the same time “stressed” by upcoming regulatory effort (Basel Committee). This impact resulted in specific changes to this type of long-term financing. Changes such as Commercial Banks’ increased risk aversion; pricing increase and maturities decrease of credit facilities; enforcement of Market Disruption Event clauses; partial responsibility for project risk by Multilateral Agencies; and adoption of utility-like availability payments in other industrial sectors such as transportation and even social infrastructure. To the extent possible, this report is then divided in three parts. First, it begins with a more instructional part, touching academic literature (theory) and giving the Banks perspective (practice), but mostly as an overview of Project Finance for awareness’ sake. The renowned Harvard Business School professor – Benjamin Esty, states2 that Project Finance is a “relatively unexplored territory for both empirical and theoretical research” which means that academic research efforts are lagging the practice of Project Finance. Second, the report presents a practical case regarding the first Road Concession in Portugal in 1998 ending with the lessons learned 10 years after Financial Close. Lastly, the report concludes with the analysis of the current trends and changes to the industry post Financial Crisis of the late 2000’s. To achieve this I’ll reference relevant papers, books on the subject, online articles and my own experience in the Project Finance Department at a major Portuguese Investment Bank. Regarding the latter, with the signing of a confidentiality agreement, I’m duly omitting sensitive and proprietary bank information.

Valuing an offshore exploration project through real options analysis

This thesis applied real options analysis to the valuation of an offshore oil exploration project, taking into consideration the several options typically faced by the management team of these projects. The real options process is developed under technical and price uncertainties, where it is considered that the mean reversion stochastic process is more adequate to describe the movement of oil price throught time. The valuation is realized to two case scenarios, being the first a simplified approach to develop the intuition of the used concepts, and the later a more complete cases that is resolved using both the binomial and trinomial processes to describe oil price movement. Real options methodology demonstrated to be capable of assessing and valuing the projects options, and of overcoming common capital budgeting methodologies flexibility limitation. The added value of the application of real options is evident, but so is the method's increased complexity, which adversely influence its widespread implementation.

"Virar a Sala de Aula”: centrar a aprendizagem no aluno recorrendo a ferramentas cognitivas

Relatório de projeto de mestrado em Ensino de Informática

The encore project: sustainable solutions for cementitious materials

Since concrete is the most widely utilized construction material, several solutions are currently being developed and investigated for enhancing the sustainability of cementitious materials. One of these solutions is based on producing Recycled Concrete Aggregates (RCA) from existing concrete members resulting by either industrial processes or demolitions of existing structures as a whole. Moreover, waste resulting from industrial processes other than the building construction (i.e., tire recycling, production of steel, powders resulting from other depuration processes) are also being considered as possible low-impact constituents for producing structural concrete and Fiber-Reinforced Cementitious Composites (FRCC). Furthermore, the use of natural fibers is another option for producing environmentally-friendly and cost-effective materials, depending on the local availability of raw materials. To promote the use of concretes partially composed of recycled constituents, their influence on the mechanical and durability performance of these concretes have to be deeply investigated and correlated. This was the main goal of the EnCoRe Project (www.encore-fp7.unisa.it), a EU-funded initiative, whose activities and main findings are summarized in this paper.