Maria Fraga O. Martins

Understanding e‐business adoption across industries in European countries

Purpose – The paper seeks to investigate the factors that affect the adoption of e‐business by firms belonging to European Union (EU) countries, by comparing the effect across two different industries: telecommunications (telco) and tourism.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 2,459 firms belonging to EU27 countries across two industries. The data were analyzed by employing factorial analysis and relevant hypotheses were derived and tested by logistic regression analysis.Findings – The results suggest that the perceived benefits and obstacles of e‐business, technology readiness, competitive pressure, and trading partner collaboration are the drivers that are important for both industries. Through the comparison of the industries, statistically significant differences between the telco and the tourism industries, i.e. the relative importance of all drivers for e‐business adoption differs between the industries, were found. The only exception is competitive pressure.Research limitations/im...

Health workers’ attitudes toward immigrant patients: a cross-sectional survey in primary health care services

BackgroundHealth workers’ attitudes toward immigrant patients influence behaviour, medical decisions, quality of care and health outcomes. Despite the increasing number of immigrant patients in health services and the potential influence of health workers’ attitudes, there is little research in this area. This study aimed to examine attitudes of different health workers’ groups toward immigrant patients and to identify the associated factors.MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted with a random sample of 400 health workers from primary health care services in the Lisbon region, Portugal. Among those, 320 completed a structured questionnaire. Descriptive analysis and multiple linear regression analysis were used for the evaluation of data.ResultsMost participants did not agree that immigrant patients tend to behave like victims, but about half considered that some are aggressive and dangerous. Doctors and nurses showed more positive attitudes than office workers. Among doctors, the older ones reported less positive attitudes compared to the younger ones. Health workers who have less daily contact with immigrants revealed more positive attitudes. Most participants evaluated their knowledge and competencies to work with immigrants as moderate or low.ConclusionsAlthough health workers reveal positive attitudes, this study reinforces the need to develop strategies that prevent negative attitudes and stereotyping in health services. Efforts should be made to improve workers’ competencies to deal with culturally diverse populations, in order to promote quality of health care and obtain positive health outcomes among immigrant populations.

Do art specialists form unbiased pre-sale estimates? An application for Picasso paintings

This work investigates whether art specialists provide good predictors of realized prices for Picasso paintings. A sample selection model is proposed to represent the decision of the seller and the price equation. The model is applied to data on 675 Picasso paintings for the period 1975–1994. It is found that the two auction houses, Sothebys and Christies, have given good predictions for the works that have been sold. However, for the unsold works, it would have been possible to give estimates better than those given by the salerooms. As a consequence they could perhaps have sold more paintings than they actually did.

Understanding the determinant factors of Internet business solutions adoption: the case of Portuguese firms

The purpose of our article is to identify the determinants of Internet Business Solutions (IBS), using a representative sample of Portuguese business sector in 2006. This article is based on a theoretical framework in which the adoption of IBS is done in two stages. At the first stage, the firm decides to adopt or not a website; at the second stage, those who adopted a website decide on the level of IBS adoption. We considered that the determinants of the adoption decisions can be internal or external and that their effect may be different at the two adoption stages. Based on these assumptions, we develop and test an integrated model of IBS adoption allowing for sample selection. Our results show that the two adoption decisions are taken sequentially and that selectivity bias is not present in our sample. Our findings also suggest that the relevant drivers of website and the level of IBS adoption are not necessarily the same.

Hierarchical Normal Mixture Model to Analyse HIV/AIDS LOS

Inpatient length of stay (LOS) is an important measure of hospital activity and is often considered as a proxy of hospital resource consumption. In Portugal, hospitalizations related to HIV infection are some of the most expensive and the second major diagnosis category with greatest average LOS. This paper investigates factors associated with HIV/AIDS LOS. A hierarchical finite normal mixture model was fitted to the logarithm of LOS, to account for the inherent correlation of patients clustered in hospitals. We found that the model with two components had the best fit. In addition associated risk factors were identified for each component and the random effects make possible a comparison of relative efficiencies among hospitals.

Semiparametric Estimation of Information Technology Diffusion Models: A Study Based on Portuguese Firm-Level Data

SYNOPTIC ABSTRACT This paper applies both parametric and semiparametric methods to the estimation of an Information Technologies (IT) Diffusion Model for Portuguese firms. The semiparametric estimator used is the one proposed by Klein, and Spady (1993). Specification tests based on the findings of Horowitz and Härdle (1994), Fan, and Liu (1997) and Aït-Sahalia, Bickel, and Stoker (2001) are employed to verify the goodness of fit of the parametric model. We find that both approaches yield similar results and specification tests reveal that the estimated parametric model fits the data reasonably well and can therefore be used for policy purposes.