Determinants of entrepreneurship: Are women different?

In this paper we investigate, for the first time, how individual determinants of entrepreneurship - such as age, income, education, work status, skills, access to networks and fear of failure - differ between males and females. We conduct our exercise using individual data provided by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), available for 46 countries, between 2001 and 2004. The literature on entrepreneurship has uncovered differences in the rate of entrepreneurship between men and women, with women generally displaying lower entrepreneurial activity than men. This is important since, as we show, entrepreneurial activity is positively related across countries with the female to male entrepreneurial ratio. We examine total entrepreneurship rates, as well as entrepreneurship driven by opportunity and by need. We find that indeed entrepreneurial activity rates are lower for females across all but one of the countries in the sample. Looking at categorical groups – by age interval, education, work status, etc. – we find that female entrepreneurial rates are significantly lower than for males. For the first time we test for differences in the characteristics of female and male entrepreneurs and find that female entrepreneurs are slightly older, more frequently at home or not working, lower income and lower educated, and less access to business networks than their male counterparts. AS to the determinants of entrepreneurial rates themselves, the main differences across genders are the lower impact of secondary education and the larger impact of skills and fear of failure in female entrepreneurial rates relative to males. Results for entrepreneurship by opportunity and by necessity confirm the larger importance of specific skills for women creating new businesses,. Our results suggest that facilitating access to business networks and specific business skills are the most powerful instruments to increase the rates of female entrepreneurship.

Determinants of exchange rates: An empirical analysis

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

Determinants of the Portuguese government bond yield spread

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

Determinants of Portuguese trade: 1986-2010

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

Molecular determinants of nonaqueous biocatalysis

Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D degree in Biochemistry

Determinants of mother-baby relationship evaluated during pregnancy

ABSTRACT Background Mental health promotion is supported by a strong body of knowledge and is a matter of public health with the potential of a large impact on society. Mental health promotion programs should be implemented as soon as possible in life, preferably starting during pregnancy. Programs should focus on malleable determinants, introducing strategies to reduce risk factors or their impact on mother and child, and also on strengthening protective factors to increase resilience. The ambition of early detecting risk situations requires the development and use of tools to assess risk, and the creation of a responsive network of services based in primary health care, especially maternal consultation during pregnancy and the first months of the born child. The number of risk factors and the way they interact and are buffered by protective factors are relevant for the final impact. Maternal-fetal attachment (MFA) is not yet a totally understood and well operationalized concept. Methodological problems limit the comparison of data as many studies used small size samples, had an exploratory character or used different selection criteria and different measures. There is still a lack of studies in high risk populations evaluating the consequences of a weak MFA. Instead, the available studies are not very conclusive, but suggest that social support, anxiety and depression, self-esteem and self-control and sense of coherence are correlated with MFA. MFA is also correlated with health practices during pregnancy, that influence pregnancy and baby outcomes. MFA seems a relevant concept for the future mother baby interaction, but more studies are needed to clarify the concept and its operationalization. Attachment is a strong scientific concept with multiple implications for future child development, personality and relationship with others. Secure attachment is considered an essential basis of good mental health, and promoting mother-baby interaction offers an excellent opportunity to intervention programmes targeted at enhancing mental health and well-being. Understanding the process of attachment and intervening to improve attachment requires a comprehension of more proximal factors, but also a broader approach that assesses the impact of more distal social conditions on attachment and how this social impact is mediated by family functioning and mother-baby interaction. Finally, it is essential to understand how this knowledge could be translated in effective mental health promoting interventions and measures that could reach large populations of pregnant mothers and families. Strengthening emotional availability (EA) seems to be a relevant approach to improve the mother-baby relationship. In this review we have offered evidence suggesting a range of determinants of mother-infant relationship, including age, marital relationship, social disadvantages, migration, parental psychiatric disorders and the situations of abuse or neglect. Based on this theoretical background we constructed a theoretical model that included proximal and distal factors, risk and protective factors, including variables related to the mother, the father, their social support and mother baby interaction from early pregnancy until six months after birth. We selected the Antenatal Psychosocial Health Assessment (ALPHA) for use as an instrument to detect psychosocial risk during pregnancy. Method Ninety two pregnant women were recruited from the Maternal Health Consultation in Primary Health Care (PHC) at Amadora. They had three moments of assessment: at T1 (until 12 weeks of pregnancy) they filed out a questionnaire that included socio-demographic data, ALPHA, Edinburgh post-natal Depression Scale (EDPS), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and Sense of Coherence (SOC); at T2 (after the 20th weeks of pregnancy) they answered EDPS, SOC and MFA Scale (MFAS), and finally at T3 (6 months after birth), they repeated EDPS and SOC, and their interaction with their babies was videotaped and later evaluated using EA Scales. A statistical analysis has been done using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, univariate logistic regression and multiple linear regression. Results The study has increased our knowledge on this particular population living in a multicultural, suburb community. It allow us to identify specific groups with a higher level of psychosocial risk, such as single or divorced women, young couples, mothers with a low level of education and those who are depressed or have a low SOC. The hypothesis that psychosocial risk is directly correlated with MFAS and that MFA is directly correlated with EA was not confirmed, neither the correlation between prenatal psychosocial risk and mother-baby EA. The study identified depression as a relevant risk factor in pregnancy and its higher prevalence in single or divorced women, immigrants and in those who have a higher global psychosocial risk. Depressed women have a poor MFA, and a lower structuring capacity and a higher hostility to their babies. In average, depression seems to reduce among pregnant women in the second part of their pregnancy. The children of immigrant mothers show a lower level of responsiveness to their mothers what could be transmitted through depression, as immigrant mothers have a higher risk of depression in the beginning of pregnancy and six months after birth. Young mothers have a low MFA and are more intrusive. Women who have a higher level of education are more sensitive and their babies showed to be more responsive. Women who are or have been submitted to abuse were found to have a higher level of MFA but their babies are less responsive to them. The study highlights the relevance of SOC as a potential protective factor while it is strongly and negatively related with a wide range of risk factors and mental health outcomes especially depression before, during and after pregnancy. Conclusions ALPHA proved to be a valid, feasible and reliable instrument to Primary Health Care (PHC) that can be used as a total sum score. We could not prove the association between psychosocial risk factors and MFA, neither between MFA and EA, or between psychosocial risk and EA. Depression and SOC seems to have a clear and opposite relevance on this process. Pregnancy can be considered as a maturational process and an opportunity to change, where adaptation processes occur, buffering risk, decreasing depression and increasing SOC. Further research is necessary to better understand interactions between variables and also to clarify a better operationalization of MFA. We recommend the use of ALPHA, SOC and EDPS in early pregnancy as a way of identifying more vulnerable women that will require additional interventions and support in order to decrease risk. At political level we recommend the reinforcement of Immigrant integration and the increment of education in women. We recommend more focus in health care and public health in mental health condition and psychosocial risk of specific groups at high risk. In PHC special attention should be paid to pregnant women who are single or divorced, very young, low educated and to immigrant mothers. This study provides the basis for an intervention programme for this population, that aims to reduce broad spectrum risk factors and to promote Mental Health in women who become pregnant. Health and mental health policies should facilitate the implementation of the suggested measures.

Determinants of success of Nova SBE’s undergraduate students

Applied Policy Analysis major

Determinants of social security pensions expenditure in Portugal

In most European countries Social Security (SS) systems are characterized as Pay-asyou- go systems. Their sustainability is being challenged with demographic changes, namely population ageing. Portugal’s population is ageing rapidly being one of the countries where this problem is more critical. With the growing debate on this topic several public choice models have been developed so as to explain SS size. In this work project there is an attempt to understand whether these models contribute to better explain Social security expenditure with pensions (SSEP) and to establish the need of finding ways to reduce present commitment with pension expenditure in Portugal.

Determinants of reelection in Portuguese municipal elections

This Work Project investigates the determinants of reelection using data on the 278 Portuguese mainland municipalities for the period 1976-2009. We implement a logit fixed effect model to control for the municipalities’ unobserved characteristics that remain constant over time. Political variables, such as the vote share of the incumbent’s party in previous election, the number of mayor’s consecutive mandates and abstention rate, are found to be relevant in explaining incumbent’s reelection. Moreover, as to the mayor’s individual characteristics, age and education contribute to explain reelection prospects. We also provide weak evidence that a higher degree of fiscal autonomy increases political turnover and that the good economic prospects of the municipality positively affect reelection. Finally, the residents’ level of education and the size of the municipal population have an explanatory power on mayor’s reelection. We perform several robustness checks to confirm these results.

The determinants of Foreign Direct Investments attraction in Portugal and Spain: A comparative analysis

Double Degree. A Work Project presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Master Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics and a Master Degree in Business Engineering from Louvain School of Management

Determinants of Portuguese bank’s provisioning policies: Discretionary behaviour of generic and specific allowances

In this paper we test for the impact of the regulatory environment on a bank’s discretionary provisioning practices. We develop a model that structures the dynamics of the provision policy for the two classes of provisions: generic provisions and specific provisions. The model is tested using a comprehensive database of all financial institutions operating in Portugal for 1990-2000. This unique dataset comprises banks subject to the Portuguese rules as well as bank subsidiaries subject to their home-country regulation and we were able to identify distinct behaviours between them. Our results show the importance of handling he two types of provisions separately. They support the hypothesis that banks have a discretionary behaviour in setting up their provisions, and find evidence of income smoothing and capital management. We also find that the regulatory regime impacts on discretionary provisioning policies because banks when forced to increase one type of provision react by reducing the iscretionary component of the other, a finding we designated as a substitution effect.

Macro determinants of nonperforming loans in Portugal

This study uses a VAR methodology to evaluate the impact of the macroeconomic conditions and money supply in the fluctuation of nonperforming loans for the Portuguese economy. Additionally, the feedback effect of nonperforming loans growth to the economy and specially to the credit supply is analised. The study is motived by the hypothesis that loan quality is procyclical and that the fast growth of credit supply has a positive relation with the growth of nonperforming loans. The hypothesis that nonperforming loans reinforce economic fragilities and credit market frictions is also tested. Empirical results corroborate both hypothesis presented. Hence, it was possible to establish that the macroeconomic conditions measured by GDP and unemployment and the fast growth of credit supply contribute to the development of nonperforming loans. Furthermore, the growth of nonperforming loans reinforces the economic cycle, as it contributes to the deterioration of macroeconomic conditions and creates frictions in the credit market that may results in a credit crunch.

Demographic determinants of survival of people living with HIV attending an outpatient reference unit in the city of Três Lagoas, state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, in the period 1984-2009

INTRODUCTION: While the incidence of HIV infection and AIDS is increasing in small Brazilian cities, epidemiological studies are often conducted in large urban centers. METHODS: Our group conducted a retrospective analysis of survival determinants among 358 patients who attended a reference unit in a small city. RESULTS: Death risk was lower among men that had sex with men, patients with an HIV-seropositive partner, and those admitted after highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) was available. CONCLUSIONS: The study documents the striking beneficial effect of HAART. The finding of other groups with improved survival may aid in the development of programmatic strategies.

The determinants of mutual fund performance: A cross-country study

We use a new data set to study the determinants of the performance of open–end actively managed equity mutual funds in 27 countries. We find that mutual funds underperform the market overall. The results show important differences in the determinants of fund performance in the USA and elsewhere in the world. The US evidence of diminishing returns to scale is not a universal truth as the performance of funds located outside the USA and funds that invest overseas is not negatively affected by scale. Our findings suggest that the adverse scale effects in the USA are related to liquidity constraints faced by funds that, by virtue of their style, have to invest in small and domestic stocks. Country characteristics also explain fund performance. Funds located in countries with liquid stock markets and strong legal institutions display better performance.