Miguel Portela

Measuring skill: a multi-dimensional index

Traditionally, skill is measured concentrating on just one dimension of the workers ability, usually years of schooling or the blue/white collar nature of the job. This paper proposes a measure of skill that combines, in a multiplicative way, several of the observed components of skill, as well as its unobserved dimension. The proposed index is intuitivlely appealing and it is flexible, in the sense that it can accomodate as many (or as little) dimensions of human capital as feasible and suitable for the analysis to be undertaken.

Measurement Error in Education and Growth Regressions

The use of the perpetual inventory method for the construction of education data per country leads to systematic measurement error. This paper analyzes its effect on growth regressions. We suggest a methodology for correcting this error. The standard attenuation bias suggests that using these corrected data would lead to a higher coefficient. Our regressions reveal the opposite. We discuss why this is the case.

Hours of work and retirement behaviour

Using a novel dataset from the 2006 Portuguese Labour Force Survey this paper examines the impact of a voluntary reduction in hours of work, before retirement, on the moment of exit from the labour force. If, as often suggested, flexibility in hours of work is a useful measure to postpone retirement, then a reduction in working hours should be associated with retirement at later ages. Results prove otherwise suggesting that reducing hours of work before retirement is associated with early exits from the labour force. A reduction in hours of work seems to signal the worker’s wish to retire sooner rather than to announce the desire of remaining in the labour market. This result may enclose the need for some alternative policy strategies regarding working hours.JEL codesJ14; J26; J22; J21

Aggregate and Sector-Specific Exchange Rate Indexes for the Portuguese Economy

In this paper, we compute and compare aggregate and sector-specific exchange rate indexes for the Portuguese economy. We find that alternative effective exchange rate indexes are very similar between them. We also find that sector-specific effective exchange rates are strongly correlated with aggregate indexes. Nevertheless, we show that sector-specific exchange rates are more informative than aggregate exchange rates in explaining changes in employment: whereas aggregate indexes are statistically insignificant in employment equations, regressions using sector-specific exchange rate indexes show a statistically significant and economically large effect of exchange rates on employment.

Admission conditions and graduates’ employability

In a context of increasing competition for students, admission conditions have been used as an instrument in a strategy of differentiation. Such a strategy is guided by short‐run concerns, that is, the immediate need to attract more students. This article takes a longer term view, by examining graduates’ employability. The authors find that tougher admission conditions (namely, a mandatory mathematics examination) appear to be linked with lower unemployment propensity. Previous studies, however, have found that those programmes face lower demand when compared to other studies. These results suggest that students’ choices may be based on insufficient information on returns to higher education investment. That information failure indicates that a government intervention may be due.

Rent Sharing in Portuguese Banking

Using the fixed e¤ects estimator and the dynamic panel data system-GMM estimator, on a sample of 75 banks, covering the period 1988-2005, this paper estimates how wages in the Portuguese banking sector depend on the employers ability to pay. The results indicate that wages are strongly positively correlated with pro?ts even after controlling for ?rm and workforce characteristics. The Lester?s range of wages due to rent-sharing is 46% - 75% of the mean wage in the Portuguese banking sector.

A Prediction Rule to Stratify Mortality Risk of Patients with Pulmonary Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis imposes high human and economic tolls, including in Europe. This study was conducted to develop a severity assessment tool for stratifying mortality risk in pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients. A derivation cohort of 681 PTB cases was retrospectively reviewed to generate a model based on multiple logistic regression analysis of prognostic variables with 6-month mortality as the outcome measure. A clinical scoring system was developed and tested against a validation cohort of 103 patients. Five risk features were selected for the prediction model: hypoxemic respiratory failure (OR 4.7, 95% CI 2.8–7.9), age ≥50 years (OR 2.9, 95% CI 1.7–4.8), bilateral lung involvement (OR 2.5, 95% CI 1.4–4.4), ≥1 significant comorbidity—HIV infection, diabetes mellitus, liver failure or cirrhosis, congestive heart failure and chronic respiratory disease–(OR 2.3, 95% CI 1.3–3.8), and hemoglobin <12 g/dL (OR 1.8, 95% CI 1.1–3.1). A tuberculosis risk assessment tool (TReAT) was developed, stratifying patients with low (score ≤2), moderate (score 3–5) and high (score ≥6) mortality risk. The mortality associated with each group was 2.9%, 22.9% and 53.9%, respectively. The model performed equally well in the validation cohort. We provide a new, easy-to-use clinical scoring system to identify PTB patients with high-mortality risk in settings with good healthcare access, helping clinicians to decide which patients are in need of closer medical care during treatment.

Exchange Rates, Employment and Labour Market Rigidity

In this paper, we study the effect of labour market rigidity on the impact of exchange rate shocks on employment. We use a panel dataset comprising 22 manufacturing sectors across 23 OECD countries. In our econometric model, the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on sectoral employment is mediated by the degree of openness and by a measure of labour market rigidity: the OECDs employment protection legislation (EPL) index. Our results suggest that greater labour market rigidity reduces the impact of exchange rate shocks on employment. This effect is statistically significant for low-technology sectors.

Do personality differences between students from different schools generalize across countries

We read with particular interest the paper ‘‘Variation in personality traits of medical students between schools of medicine’’ (Wilson et al. 2013). That study compared personality traits (NEOFFI) of undergraduate vs. graduate entry medical students in seven schools in Australia and found that higher Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were associated with attending an undergraduate school (OR1⁄4 1.07 and 1.03, respectively). We have replicated the regression analysis (backward logistic regression, with undergraduate versus graduate being predicted by NEOFFI personality traits controlling for gender and age) in a sample of 529 medical students (75% of undergraduate students, n1⁄4 397) from three different medical schools in Portugal. As expected, we have found similar results for age: older students were more likely to be graduate entry students (OR1⁄4 3.14, 95% CI 2.47–4.00, p50.001). However, age presented significantly higher impact in our study. The only personality trait that was statistically significant between the two school types was Conscientiousness (OR1⁄4 1.10, 95% CI 1.00–1.21, p1⁄4 0.049), with graduate students being the most conscientious ones. This result is the opposite of what Wilson et al. obtained. Also, contrarily to authors’ results, Agreeableness was not a significant predictor of attending a particular school type. When performing a binary logistic regression with ‘‘Enter’’ method, Agreeableness presented similar effect size, although higher scores were associated with graduate entry (OR1⁄4 1.04, 95% CI 0.90–1.21, p1⁄4 0.120) and not with undergraduate entry. This nonsignificance could be explained by the difference in size of the two samples. The highlight from our study is that relations between personality and attendance of graduate entry versus high school entry schools probably do not generalize across countries. More in depth studies are necessary to clarify whether the differences are caused by educational policies – for example; admissions policies, cultural factors, religion, level of development, etc. – or others.