Using templates and linguistic patterns to define process performance indicators

Process performance management (PPM) aims at measuring, monitoring and analysing the performance of business processes (BPs), in order to check the achievement of strategic and operational goals and to support decision-making for their optimisation. PPM is based on process performance indicators (PPIs), so having an appropriate definition of them is crucial. One of the main problems of PPIs definition is to express them in an unambiguous, complete, understandable, traceable and verifiable manner. In practice, PPIs are defined informally – usually in ad hoc, natural language, with its well-known problems – or they are defined from an implementation perspective, hardly understandable to non-technical people. In order to solve this problem, in this article we propose a novel approach to improve the definition of PPIs using templates and linguistic patterns. This approach promotes reuse, reduces both ambiguities and missing information, is understandable to all stakeholders and maintains traceability with the process model. Furthermore, it enables the automated processing of PPI definitions by its straightforward translation into the PPINOT metamodel, allowing the gathering of the required information for their computation as well as the analysis of the relationships between them and with BP elements.     

Networks of Value‐added Trade

Global value chains (GVCs) require new methods for evaluating interconnections among countries, which can no longer be accurately appraised by standard bilateral gross trade flows. This paper uses tools of network analysis to examine the evolution of value‐added trade from 1995 to 2011. GVCs are very centralised and asymmetric networks, with a few large economies acting as hubs, which exposes them to the propagation of idiosyncratic shocks. As GVCs expanded, the networks of foreign value added in exports became denser, more complex and intensively connected. The regional dimension of GVCs is still dominant but is progressively giving place to a more global network. Networks of foreign value added in goods exports outpace those of services exports. However, foreign inputs of services are important for exports of both goods and services. There is a striking rise of China as a supplier of value added, while Germany and the United States maintain a central role in GVCs over the whole period.     

Competition in the Portuguese economy: insights from a profit elasticity approach

The article uses the elasticity of profits to marginal costs, as in Boone (Econ J 111:1245–1261, 2008b), to measure the degree of competition in the Portuguese economy in a period characterised by the reallocation of resources towards the non-tradable sector and the accumulation of macroeconomic imbalances. Using firm-level data for the period 2000–2009, we find that there is lower competition intensity in the non-tradable sector. The least competitive markets within this sector lay in professional services, network industries and segments of retail trade. We also find that reductions in competition intensity are relatively widespread in the economy, but in terms of sales, gross value added and employment they are more substantial in the non-tradable sector. Results suggest that some network industries and other services exhibit low and a declining competition intensity in the period under analysis. In addition, the article discusses the coherence of the profit elasticity with classic indicators of market power, such as the Herfindahl–Hirschman index and the price-cost margin, and find that in more than half of the markets there is an agreement in the dynamics of competition intensity.     

Learning from private and public observations of othersʼ actions

We study the diffusion of dispersed private information in a large economy, where agents learn from the actions of others through two channels: a public channel, such as equilibrium market prices, and a private channel, for example local interactions. We show that, when agents learn only from the public channel, an initial release of public information increases agents? total knowledge at all times and increases welfare. When a private learning channel is present, this result is reversed: more initial public information reduces agents asymptotic knowledge by an amount in order of $\log (t)$ units of precision. When agents are sufficiently patient, this reduces welfare.     

International trade in services: firm-level evidence for Portugal

Portuguese Economic Journal - This paper adds to the existing firm-level evidence on international trade in non-tourism services, using a new Portuguese database merged with balance-sheet data. In...     

What can we learn from the distribution of trade patterns?

This paper proposes an empirical framework for analyzing the dynamics of trade specialization, using a symmetric transformation of the standard Balassa (Manch Sch Econ Soc Stud 33(2):99–123, 1965) index and the conditional density estimation methods suggested by Hyndman et al. (J Comput Graph Stat 5(4):315–336, 1996). The framework is implemented using data on the cross-sector export and import specialization of the four initial EU Cohesion countries over the last 40 years. We discuss the importance of studying both the distribution’s external shape and the intra-distribution dynamics and why it is interesting to include imports in the analysis. We find a reduction of the overall degree of export specialization in Portugal, Greece and Spain. Conversely, Ireland has the strongest export specialization and there is evidence of an increase over time. The export intra-distribution dynamics reveal persistence of the specialization status in the four countries, especially for high values of the index. In all countries, the degree of specialization is higher for exports than for imports and intra-distribution dynamics reveal more mobility of import specialization than that of exports.     

Loan growth and bank risk: new evidence

This study provides new evidence on the relationship between abnormal loan growth and banks’ risk-taking behavior using data from a rich panel of Colombian financial institutions. We show that abnormal credit growth during a prolonged period leads to an increase in banks’ riskiness, accompanied by a reduction in solvency and an increase in the ratio of nonperforming loans to total loans. We also show that abnormal credit growth played a fundamental role in the bank-failure process during the late 1990s financial crisis in Colombia. Our results have important implications for financial regulation and macro-prudential policy.     

GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS: A SURVEY OF DRIVERS AND MEASURES

Global value chains (GVCs) emerged as the paradigm for the international organization of production. For most goods and services production is nowadays vertically fragmented across different countries and this reality gave rise to a significant new strand of research in international trade. This article starts by discussing the major driving forces of GVCs in recent decades. Next, it surveys the main measures of GVCs, accounting for their different scopes and required data sets. The article highlights the timing of the contributions to the literature, signalling their sequential nature and the trend toward more accurate and data‐demanding indicators.     

Vertical specialization across the world: A relative measure

This article investigates the dynamics and the international distribution of vertical specialization (VS) - the use of imported inputs to produce goods that are afterwards exported. We propose a relative measure of VS-based trade that combines information from Input-Output matrices and international trade data, producing results for a large sample of countries with a detailed product breakdown. We illustrate this measure by showing the evolution of VS activities at the world level over the 1967-2005 period. The results are consistent with partial evidence existing in the literature, pointing to a substantial increase of VS in high-technology products and in East Asia.