Search results for "Economy"
showing 10 items of 2131 documents
COMPETITIVENESS OF LATVIAN FIRMS IN CHINA
2012
The results of the firms’ performance are one of the key aspects in the research of competitiveness. The competitiveness of firms is a concept that involves many aspects of measurement. There are many models that can be used to assess the international competitiveness of firms, including the competitiveness of foreign firms in the Chinese market. The opportunities of Latvian firms to enter China market and the capabilities of Latvian firms to compete in China have not so far been sufficiently studied. In 2010 the export volume of Latvian firms to China was 25 million EUR and more than half of it was export of raw materials. The model of SME competitiveness is used to research the competitiv…
European comission's identity during brexit : a communication strategy change on twitter
2021
The European Union (EU) was founded to promote peace, prosperity and other values between an increasing number of member states (European Commission, 2001). However, Brexit has activated a reputation crisis that reinforces Euroscepticism (Borzel; Risse, 2018). The objective of the study is to identify the differences in the semantic construction and thematic framing of the European Commission during a two-year period, previous to Brexit and after Brexit, on a sample of 4827 tweets posted by the European Commission. Findings show that in the period before Brexit, the EU is presented as an abstract political body, highly informative on major crisis, and reactively framing messages with values…
The shadow economy in Portugal: An analysis with the MIMIC approach
2007
The paper estimates the Portuguese Shadow Economy (SE) from 1977 to 2004 and tests the statistical relationships between the SE and other economic variables. In order to carry out the econometric analysis, a multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) model with means and intercepts is applied. The main causes of the Portuguese SE are analyzed and economic policies to reduce it are suggested. An appraisal on the reliability of estimates and an alternative benchmark strategy for the MIMIC approach are proposed.
Drastic innovation reduces firms’ incentives to create divisions
2020
I study a game in which two firms create independent divisions, then they choose whether to do R&D so as to reduce their divisions’ marginal costs, and then the divisions compete in the market. I provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which the game has an equilibrium in pure strategies, and I show that the game has an equilibrium only if each firm threatens that if the rival creates more divisions it will use R&D to foreclose the market. The case we find in the literature, in which firms flood the market with their divisions, should happen only in industries with low returns to R&D.
Working in a boom-town: Female perspectives on gold-mining in Burkina Faso
2009
Abstract In Burkina Faso, informal mining camps attract girls and women from rural areas because they offer a variety of income generating activities and access to urban consumer goods. Moreover, migration to the mines also allows for a different life-style and greater personal freedom. On the other hand, by going to the mining camps, girls and women risk acquiring a bad reputation in their communities because they are suspected of having illicit sexual relationships. In fact, relationships with gold miners and the material benefits connected with them are among the lures of the gold mines. Thus, from a female perspective migration to the gold mines is fraught with ambivalence, which is exp…
In memory of Erdmann Gormsen, 1929–1998
1999
(1999). In memory of Erdmann Gormsen, 1929–1998. Tourism Geographies: Vol. 1, Sustainable Tourism, pp. 139-140.
Policies of Refugee Settlement and Integration in Europe: the Cases of Portugal and Finland
2019
Abstract Though geographically distant from each other, Portugal and Finland present an interesting comparison concerning the policies and devices of asylum. Both provide an informed and critical appraisal of the current international response to the refugee issue, especially considering the European Union. The Finnish situation evidences a long-standing integrated resettlement frame, associated with the inclusive and pluralistic character of Nordic immigration policies, in spite of the growing threat of regression under the emergent xenophobic pressure. Unlike Portugal, where a finely-tuned response system is still lacking in spite of the existence of an assumed political will and commitme…
Biopartitioning micellar separation methods: modelling drug absorption
2003
The search for new pharmacologically active compounds in drug discovery programmes often neglects biopharmaceutical properties as drug absorption. As a result, poor biopharmaceutical characteristics constitute a major reason for the low success rate for candidates in clinical development. Since the cost of drug development is many times larger than the cost of drug discovery, predictive methodologies aiding the selection of bioavailable drug candidates are of profound significance. This paper has been focussed on recent developments and applications of chromatographic systems, particularly those systems based on amphiphilic structures, in the frame of alternative approaches for estimating t…
Power laws and the market structure of tourism industry
2013
In this article, we use both graphical and analytical methods to investigate the market structure of one of the world’s fastest growing industries. For the German and Italian datasets, we show that the size distribution of tourism industry is heavy-tailed and consistent with a power-law behavior in its upper tail. Such a behavior seems quite persistent over the time horizon covered by our study, provided that during the period 2004–2009, the shape parameter is always in the vicinity of 2.5 for Germany and 2.6 for Italy. Size of the tourism industry has been proxied by the lodging capacity of hotel establishments: hotels, boarding houses, inns, lodging houses, motels, apartment hotels, touri…
How representative are referendums? Evidence from 20 years of Swiss referendums
2017
Direct democracy allows citizens to reverse decisions made by legislatures and even initiate new laws which parliaments are unwilling to pass, thereby, as its proponents argue, leading to more representative policies than would have obtained under a purely representative democracy. Yet, turnout in referendums is usually lower than in parliamentary elections and tends to be skewed towards citizens of high socio-economic status. Consequently, critics of direct democracy argue that referendum outcomes may not be representative of the preferences of the population at large. We test this assertion using a compilation of post-referendum surveys encompassing 148 national referendums held in Switze…