The impact of income redistribution on aggregate consumption

Atlantic Economic Journal -     

The development of Portuguese consumer law with special regard to conflict resolution

The paper reports about the considerable progress in Portuguese consumer law since the adoption of the Constitution of 1976. Portugal has adopted a frame-work legislation aiming at guaranteeing certain consumer rights as well as specific acts implementing EC consumer protection directives. Most important has been the institution of a system of consumer arbitration, based on an agreement negotiated between the Lisbon's townhall, Portuguese government, Portuguese business, and consumer associations. It is supported by the EC Portuguese government and Lisbon's townhall. Information, mediation, conciliation, and arbitration in the City of Lisbon are in the hands of a special arbitration centre (CACC) of which the author is the chairperson. The paper presents the first practical experiences of the centre.

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Die Entwicklung des portugiesischen Verbraucherrechts unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Konfliktlösung

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag berichtet über die rasante Entwicklung des portugiesischen Verbraucherrechts seit der neuen Verfassung von 1976. Ein Rahmengesetz und zahlreiche Sondergesetze garantieren einen umfassenden Rechtsschutz des Verbrauchers. Von besonderer Bedeutung ist die Entwicklung vereinfachter Konfliktlösungverfahren. Die Verfasserin berichtet ausführlich über die Erfahrungen des von ihr geleiteten Schiedszentrums für Verbraucherstreitigkeiten in Lissabon, das sie für ein gelungenes, verbreitungsfähiges Experiment hält. In letzter Zeit nimmt es sich auch grenzüberschreitenden Streitigkeiten an, insbesondere durch Abschlu\ einer Gegenseitigkeitsvereinbarung mit einer entsprechenden Einrichtung in Madrid.

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Isabel Mendes CabeÇadas has been Director of the Centro de Arbitragem de Conflitos de Consumo (CACC) since its founding in 1989.     

How long memory in volatility affects true dependence structure

Long memory in volatility is a stylized fact found in most financial return series. This paper empirically investigates the extent to which interdependence in emerging markets may be driven by conditional short and long range dependence in volatility. We fit copulas to pairs of raw and filtered returns, analyse the observed changes in the dependence structure may be driven by volatility, and discuss whether or not asymmetries on propagation of crisis may be interpreted as intrinsic characteristics of the markets. We also use the findings to construct portfolios possessing desirable expected behavior such as dependence at extreme positive levels.     

Insights into carsharing demand dynamics: Outputs of an agent-based model application to Lisbon,Portugal

Two important claims for carsharing systems are their increased flexibility and potential contribution to reducing transport externalities such as pollution. Carsharing typically involves a fleet of vehicles in stations around a city that clients may use on an hourly-payment basis. Classical round-trip systems address a niche market of shopping and errand trips. However, a growing market is now arising providing one-way trips to clients. Great uncertainty remains on the economic viability of this type of carsharing given the complex relation between supply and demand, and how this may influence the level of service provided. Realistic modeling tools that include both supply and demand characterization and allow testing several carsharing operational parameters are scarce. In this sense, a detailed agent-based model was developed to simulate one-way carsharing systems. The simulation incorporates a stochastic demand model discretized in time and space and a detailed environment characterization with realistic travel times. The operation includes maintenance operations, relocations and reservations. The model was applied to the case-study city of Lisbon. Our results show that comparing to other modes, carsharing performs worse than private cars both in terms of time and cost. Nevertheless, it clearly outperforms taxis in terms of cost, and outperforms buses, metro and walking in terms of travel time. The competitiveness of carsharing is highly determined by trip length, becoming more competitive than other modes (travel-time wise) as trips become longer. The operational policies as car-fleet relocation and car reservation showed significant effects in enhancing profit while preserving good customers' satisfaction.     

The codispersion map: a graphical tool to visualize the association between two spatial variables

The codispersion coefficient quantifies the association between two spatial processes for a particular direction (spatial lag) on a two‐dimensional space. When this coefficient is computed for many directions, it is useful to display those values on a single graph. In this article, we suggest a graphical tool called a codispersion map to visualize the spatial correlation between two sequences on a plane. We describe how to construct a codispersion map for regular and non‐regular lattices, providing algorithms in both cases. Three numerical examples are given to illustrate how useful this map can be to detect those directions for which the codispersion coefficient attains its maximum and minimum values. We also provide the R code to construct the codispersion map in practice.     

The influence of socioemotional wealth in the entrepreneurial orientation of family businesses

This study analyses the effect of socioemotional wealth on the entrepreneurial orientation of family businesses. Entrepreneurship, measured through entrepreneurial orientation, is a key factor for the survival of family businesses. Second-generation structural equation method (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse the results, specifically, the SmartPLS 3.2.7 software applied to data on106 Spanish family businesses. The main contribution of this study is to show that family businesses provide an adequate framework for analysing entrepreneurship from an entrepreneurial orientation. Second, the FIBER measurement model for socioemotional wealth allows capturing the special behaviour of family businesses. Finally, with this study we ascertain that socioemotional wealth positively influences entrepreneurial orientation, thus explaining 32.6% of its variance.

     

Demand for locally provided public services within the median voter's framework: the case of the Brazilian municipalities

In this paper we estimated the demand for local public spending for the Brazilian municipalities within a median voter's framework. The rationale for applying that framework came from the fact that in federal systems voters’ preferences are more likely to be reflected at the local level as the consumers of public services have a better knowledge of the benefits and costs of the local public expenditures. Results obtained are consistent with the theoretical background thus suggesting that this hypothesis might be useful to describe the demand for local public goods in Brazil. In particular, the use of quantile regression permitted us to investigate the impacts of the conditioning variables on local public expenses across different expenditures classes thus allowing for heterogeneity across municipalities. Our results also suggest that the impact of the city size on the quality of club goods shows crowding effects as γ is between zero and one. However, in the estimated models, marginal congestion slightly decreases with expenditure. This is a rather surprising result as one is tempted to conclude that the congestion effect should be higher on big cities. Yet, a more careful look shows the drawbacks of such an interpretation. The indivisibilities preclude the provision of certain services in small towns, concentrating their provision on larger cities. Hence, the higher expenditures of those big cities reflect not only a crowding cost but also the fact that these towns offer a wide range of services when compared to the small ones.     

An empirical assessment of assortative matching in the labor market

In labor markets with worker and firm heterogeneity, the matching between firms and workers may be assortative, meaning that the most productive workers and firms team up. We investigate this with longitudinal population-wide matched employer–employee data from Portugal. Using panel data methods, we quantify a firm-specific productivity term for each firm, and we relate this to the skill distribution of workers in the firm. We find that there is positive assortative matching, in particular among long-lived firms. Using skill-specific estimates of an index of search frictions, we find that the results can only to a small extent be explained by heterogeneity of search frictions across worker skill groups.     

Polymyxin B and colistin—the economic burden of nephrotoxicity against multidrug resistant bacteria

Background: Polymyxin B and colistin are nephrotoxic drugs used in the treatment of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. The aim of this study is to evaluate the burden of costs due to polymyxin associated AKI and propose a simulated break-even price for new therapies.

Methods: The pharmacoeconomic model is based on two large cross-sectional studies of polymyxin nephrotoxicity. Total direct costs in patients with and without renal failure were compared. The direct cost of each hemodialysis section (USD82.94) and daily hospital charges (USD934.85) were based on the values used in a major public hospital in the city where the clinical study was performed. The break-even price of new drugs was simulated considering eventual new drugs as effective as polymyxins, but less nephrotoxic in different percentages. Outcomes of patients after hospital discharge were not evaluated.

Results: Total direct cost of the group of patients who survived without AKI was significantly lower than total direct cost of the groups either with AKI or the group who died without AKI. There was a tendency of even higher costs in those who died with AKI and dialysis. Direct cost of hemodialysis was not as important as the longer hospitalization after sepsis. Considering daily cost of polymyxin is USD60, drugs with 50% less AKI could be considered cost-beneficial if the daily cost is lower than USD160.

Conclusions: AKI in patients with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae treated with polymyxin increases both length of stay in hospital and total costs.     

Correcting for biases when estimating production functions: an illusion of the laws of algebra?

This paper shows that the endogeneity bias that allegedly appearswhen estimating production functions using value data, and whichthe literature has tried to deal with since the 1940s, is simplythe result of omitted-variable bias due to a poor approximationto an accounting identity. This problem has no econometric solution.As a result, recent attempts to solve the problem by developingnew estimators are questioned. The only possible way to estimatethe technological parameters of the production function is touse physical quantities.