António Gomes de Menezes

The determinants of length of stay of tourists in the Azores

This paper examines the determinants of the length of stay of tourists in the Azores. It is found that socio-demographic profiles, such as nationality and Azorean ascendancy, and trip attributes, such as repeat visitation rates and type of flight, are important determinants. In addition, destination image and attitudes regarding environmental initiatives, constructed from a factor analysis exercise, also influence the length of stay. In particular, the results suggest that marketing strategies which promote the Azores for its nature, landscape, remoteness and weather may increase length of stay, whereas cultural heritage has the opposite effect.

Technological Innovation in New EU Markets

We analyze the role of innovation in the technological development of four new members of the European Union: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. For that purpose, we use a novel approach, modeling the empirical relationship between intraindustrial bilateral trade flows, which represent the level of technological progress, and innovation expenditures within the context of a gravity model having a set of appropriate instrumental variables to account for the potential endogeneity of innovation to trade. We show that innovation efforts in high-tech industries exhibit a strong effect on the technological progress of the region and they are closely linked to foreign direct investment and multinationals. As foreign-owned subsidiaries become a part of the innovation systems and industrial structure of the host country, they promote overall technological growth in the region.

Determinants of Length of Stay: a Parametric Survival Analysis

Length of stay is one of the most important decisions made by tourists as it conditions their overall expenditure and stress caused on local resources. This article estimates survival analysis models to learn the determinants of length of stay as survival analysis naturally lends itself to study the time elapsed between arrival and departure. It is found that sociodemographic profiles, such as nationality and gender, and trip attributes, such as repeat behavior, travel motive, and type of flight, are important determinants of length of stay. This article’s results are important to design marketing strategies that effectively influence length of stay.

Low pay, higher pay and job quality: empirical evidence for Portugal

This paper examines to what extent low pay jobs can be considered of low quality. For this purpose, we use three waves (1997–1999) of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for Portugal. The results indicate that low pay workers report a lower level of job satisfaction when compared with their higher paid counterparts. Moreover, some of the determinants of job satisfaction differ between these two types of workers. This supports the idea that low wage employment mainly comprises low quality jobs and is consistent with the segmented labour market theory, which claims the existence of good and bad jobs. This is, however, at odds with some empirical evidence recently reported for the British labour market where low pay individuals report a higher level of satisfaction, which is more in line with the notion that these workers obtain compensating differences in the form of non-pecuniary benefits.

The Daily Returns of the Portuguese Stock Index: A Distributional Characterization

This paper compares the fitting of the normal, generalized hyperbolic, normal inverse Gaussian and Student t distributions to the daily returns of the Portuguese Stock Index PSI-20 over the period 1992-2013. We find that the distribution of the actual returns of the PSI-20 exhibits much higher kurtosis and extreme values as compared to the normal distribution. Overall, the best fit is provided by the Student t and the generalized hyperbolic distributions. This pattern also applies to the tail behavior, as the density of the Student t distribution exhibits fatter tails then the density of the other distributions, followed by the density of the generalized hyperbolic distribution. Finally, we find that the normal inverse Gaussian and the normal distributions have the lowest fitting quality to the actual daily returns of the Portuguese stock index.

Wage persistence and labour market institutions: an analysis of young European workers

This article investigates the effects of Labour Market Institutions (LMIs) on wage persistence among young European workers at the beginning of their careers. We use European Community Household Panel (ECHP) data from 1995 to 2001 for 13 EU countries and estimate a three-level random intercept probit model that allows for unobserved heterogeneity both at the individual and country level. Overall, we find that LMIs explain wage persistence. In particular, we find a high level of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) and a high level of Bargaining Centralization (BC) increase wage persistence.

Demand Shocks and Productivity Growth

Abstract.This paper presents evidence on the relationship between cyclical shocks and productivity growth, for 20 2-digit SIC US manufacturing industries and a set of monetary policy, fiscal policy, and oil price shocks. The paper uses as a measure of productivity change a Solow residual corrected for a wide range of non-technological effects due to imperfect-competition, non-constant returns to scale, and cyclical utilization rates of capital and labor services. The empirical framework identifies policy shocks independently of productivity measurement issues via a two-step procedure. While the typical industry shows weak responses of productivity to the shocks considered, in some industries temporary contractionary policy shocks lead to increases in productivity. In addition, the results reveal that there are localized asymmetries, with contractionary policy shocks having larger productivity effects than their expansionary counterparts. The results support the thesis that job reallocation is an important channel linking contractionary policy shocks and productivity growth. These results support the pit-stop view of downturns.

The satisfaction of the Nordic tourist with the Azores as a destination.

Abstract The Northern European markets are considered strategic for the Azores, one of the outermost regions of Europe. Progressively, the Azores are becoming a desirable destination to inhabitants of modern and stressful urban areas of Europe. Because tourism is a very competitive business worldwide, it is crucial to employ tourism policies that enhance competitiveness. It is reasonable to argue that these policies should be guided by accurate knowledge of the strong and weak characteristics of the Azores, as a destination competing in a global market. Under this context, this study seeks to comprehend how the typical Nordic visitor feels pleased with his stay in the Azores. Using a large database of responses from tourists, we employ statistical methods to assess the degree of satisfaction of the average Nordic visitor with the Azores as a destination.