Gender differences in occupational mobility – evidence from Portugal

In this paper we evaluate if gender influences the pattern of upward and downward occupational mobility. With data for Portugal in the period 1998–2009, we find that women have a lower probability of upward mobility and a higher probability of downward mobility. The results also reveal the importance of some other determinant factors, especially education and initial occupation. Additionally, considering an analysis in which we group occupations into four ranked categories (low, medium-low, medium-high, and high level occupations), we confirm that the determinants of occupational mobility depend on the ranking of the initial occupation. This analysis allows us to conclude that the unfavorable pattern of occupational mobility in the case of women is due, essentially, to the disadvantage they have at the bottom of the distribution. On the contrary, in the top occupations, the results suggest the existence of equality between genders.     

Measuring Local Government Transparency

Despite the importance of government transparency to promote accountability and prevent maladministration, empirical research has failed to produce proper tools to assess and compare government transparency practices. Most contributions to the topic do not address it from a stakeholder’s perspective, particularly in selecting the indicators to include in transparency indexes. This paper contributes to the debate by developing a municipal transparency index based on information available on local government official websites. The methodological approach borrows insights from the decision analysis literature to structure the index through a participatory process. An application to the Portuguese local government setting is briefly discussed.     

Optimal auction design in two‐sided markets

A key feature of online markets for advertising (e.g., sponsored links) is that clicking rates depend on the searchers' expectations that the platform selects relevant advertisers. This article studies auction design by a platform that maximizes profits in the long run, where clicking rates are mechanism dependent. In line with the practice of the major search engines, the revenue‐maximizing mechanism is a scoring auction that combines the willingness to pay and the relevance to searchers of advertisers. By trading off rent extraction and clicking volume, this mechanism works as a cross‐subsidization device between searchers and advertisers.     

Cost of doing business index in Latin America

Quality & Quantity - The World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index (EDBI) has been widely used in analyzes of attracting investments and formulating public policies. Despite its importance...     

Drivers of exceptional job creation – a dynamic probit approach using portuguese firm-level data

Portuguese Economic Journal - It is a well-established fact that a small number of firms, known as Gazelles, drive a disproportionately large amount of net job creation. This fact has attracted...     

Determinants of the income velocity of money in Portugal: 1891–1998

This paper performs a long-run time series analysis of the behaviour of the income velocity of money in Portugal between 1891 and 1998 by assessing the importance of both macroeconomic and institutional factors and looking for particularities in the Portuguese case. We estimate two cointegration vectors for the income velocity of money, macroeconomic variables and institutional variables. It is apparent that one of these vectors reflects the relationship between income velocity and macroeconomic variables, while the other reflects the relationship between income velocity and institutional variables. Moreover, a regression analysis reveals that the usual U-shaped pattern is displayed with a relatively late inflection point located around 1970, which is consistent with the Spanish case. It is further noted that this is a feature of countries with a late economic and institutional development process.     

Sraffa on Fixed Capital,Money and the Phases of Capitalism

In this paper I address some elements in Piero Sraffa's thinking that are connected to his conceptualization of the phases of capitalism. Sraffa describes various stages of capitalism using similar categories to the ones employed in the model of the economy provided in Production of Commodities. This is done by distinguishing the role of population, land and (circulating, intermediate and fixed) capital in each stage. Sraffa changed his conceptualization of fixed capital over the years, until he reached its final formulation. The conceptualizations of fixed capital that Sraffa discusses, together with his remarks on money which are made through an analogy with circulating and fixed capital, provide some elements that shed light on Sraffa's view of the dynamics of capitalism.     

Determining the utility functions of criteria used in the evaluation of real estate

This article presents an application of the UTA method and its variant UTA-CR to determining utility functions for the multicriteria evaluation of residential real estate. Data for the city of Volta Redonda, Brazil, were used in this study. Unlike UTA, UTA-CR makes use of the decision agents’ preferences in relation to a set of criteria to determine a ranking of the alternatives. It was concluded that UTA-CR manages to obtain utility functions closer to the preferences of the decision agents as compared to these that result from the use of UTA. This demonstrates an important advantage of UTA-CR over UTA.     

Territorial identity and development: From topophilia to terraphilia

This paper brings about a conceptual and methodological framework for the study of topophilia and its enrichment in terms of development policy and actions seeking (re)affirmation of landscape-related and other territorial identity features. To this end, the results of an empirical verification of a newly introduced concept, named terraphilia, are presented. Records and assessments of the topophilia–terraphilia interface were carried out in the framework of the Identerra Model that enables empirical delimitation and systematization of the state (spatial fixes) and change (spatial flows) of natural, economic, societal and cultural features of territorial identity. The research area was the Oeste Region (a NUTS III, North-west of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area). The promotion of terraphilia may be important in the process of identification and assessment of strategically relevant elements of local and regional development, such as “sense of territorial belonging” and “territorial attractiveness”.