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University Library of Munich, Germany, 14 February 2015 We use wavelet analysis to investigate to what extent individual U.S. states' business cycles are synchronized. The results show that the U.S. states are remarkably well synchronized compared to the previous findings w.r.t. the Euro Area. There is also a strong and significant correlation between business cycle dissimilitudes and the distance between each pair of states, consistent to gravity type mechanisms where distance affects trade. Trade, in turn, increases business cycle synchronization. Finally we show that a higher degree of industry specialization is associated with a higher dissimilitude of the state cycle with the aggregate economy.

The recent experience of a Great Recession has brought the effectiveness of fiscal policy back into focus. Fiscal multipliers do, however, vary greatly over time and place. between wealth inequality and the magnitude of fiscal multipliers. To explain this finding, we develop a life-cycle, overlapping generations economy with uninsurable labor market risk. We calibrate our model to match key characteristics of a number of OECD economies, including the distribution of wages and wealth, social security, taxes and debt and study the effects of changing policies and various forms of inequality on the fiscal multiplier. We find that the fiscal multiplier is highly sensitive to the fraction of the population who face binding credit constraints and also negatively related to the average wealth level in the economy. This explains the correlation between wealth inequality and fiscal multipliers.

In the first essay, Distortions in the Neoclassical Growth Model: A Cross Country Analysis, I show that shocks that express themselves as total factor productivity and labor income taxes are comparably more synchronized than shocks that resemble distortions to the ability of allocating resources across time and states of the world. These two shocks are also the most important to model. Lastly, I document the importance of international channels of transmission for the shocks, given that these are spatially correlated and that international trade variables, such as trade openness correlate particularly well with them. The second essay is called Monetary Business Cycle Accounting for Sweden. Given that the analysis is focused in one country, I can extend the prototype economy to include a nominal interest rate setting rule and government bonds. As in the previous essay, distortions to the labor-leisure condition and total factor productivity are the most relevant margins to be modeled, now joined by deviations from the nominal interest rate setting rule. Also, distortions do not share a structural break during the Great Recession, but they do during the 1990’s. Researchers aiming to model Swedish business cycles must take into account the structural changes the Swedish economy went through in the 1990’s, though not so during the last recession. The third essay, Consumer Confidence and Consumption Spending: Evidence for the United States and the Euro Area, we show that, the consumer confidence index can be in certain circumstances a good predictor of consumption. In particular, out-of-sample evidence shows that the contribution of confidence in explaining consumption expenditures increases when household survey indicators feature large changes, so that confidence indicators can have some increasing predictive power during such episodes. Moreover, there is some evidence of a confidence channel in the international transmission of shocks, as U.S. confidence indices help predicting consumer sentiment in the euro area.

For most academics and policy makers, the depth of the 2007-09 financial crisis, its longevity and its impacts on the real economy resulted from an erosion of confidence. This paper proposes to assess empirically the link between consumer sentiment and consumption expenditures for the United States and the euro area. It shows under which circumstances confidence indicators can be a good predictor of household consumption even after controlling for information in economic fundamentals. Overall, the results show that the consumer confidence index can be in certain circumstances a good predictor of consumption. In particular, out-of-sample evidence shows that the contribution of confidence in explaining consumption expenditures increases when household survey indicators feature large changes, so that confidence indicators can have some increasing predictive power during such episodes. Moreover, there is some evidence of a "confidence channel" in the international transmission of shocks, as U.S. confidence indices lead consumer sentiment in the euro area.

This work combines a financial ratio analysis of the "Big Three" Portuguese clubs with the primary objective to develop and implement a strategy for the financially most robust Portuguese Club. Furthermore, the paper aims to identify if the Balanced Scorecard is a useful strategic tool for Club Managers to make well-founded decisions striving for competitive advantage among European Top Clubs. According to the analysis of the financial data and the inclusion of strategic frameworks as well as the existing literature there are indications that the Balanced Scorecard meets the requirements in this industry.

In an emerging sports market such as India, professional sports leagues across various sports have started coming up. The growing interest in football throughout the country prompted the AIFF to introduce ISL in 2013 with an aim to revolutionize Indian Football. This paper focusses on a single team in the ISL and aims to understand if there is a growth in the team since the very beginning, looking at itsfinancialstatements and player value data to conclude. In the end, it can be concluded that the team is growing which subsequently shows the growth of the league.

The objective of this thesis is to analyse the financial statements of Manchester United and pursue an equity valuation in order to issue a recommendation to buy, sellor hold recommendation as of 30thof June 2021.To do so, the author decided to use the DCF model because Manchester United is not expected to change their debt-to-equity ratio and is a flexible model where all the assumptions about the company can be included. It also allows to do a sensitivity analysis what will help to understand the changes between the inputs and outputs. To support the result of the DCF model, the author has also employed a multiples valuation with the EV/EBITDA multiple. The author got a target price of Manchester United shares of 13.99£through DCF valuation and 12.44£using the multiples valuation, what indicate us that the share is under valued since the market price was 10.94£.

Portuguese football is known for its quality and ability to sell some of the world’s best players. Never the less, it seems far behind the 5 major European leagues in what concerns getting their brand recognized abroad and capitalizing on it. This work looks at how Portuguese football, as a late mover, can internationalize, using other countries’ examples and data as a basis. For being able to successfully manage the expected boom caused by the centralization of broadcasting rights, both teams and the league must put measures into placethat combine national opportunities and strengths.

The project’s goal is to redesign a financial literacy programme, in partnership with SJPF, considering the challenges of COVID-19. In fact, the programme could not be successfully implemented due to the players’ lack of motivation, PNFF requirements, lack of HR availability and CNSF complexity. Taking in to account the project’s goal, internal and external factors were studied to assess the programme’s current situation. These were followed by quantitative and qualitative analyses as well as an external benchmarking, from which several recommendations were developed. SJPF could implement an advertisement plan considering existing social media platforms, the power of word- of- mouth and the delegates.

This project deals with the organizational challenge “how to activate and monetize mascots as a marketing tool of a professionals ports club”. The challenge was provided by the marketing director of FC Porto, Tiago Gouveia. The paper is structured in a diagnosis, analysis ,results plus solution, and a conclusion. First, the diagnosis introduces the client with its core values, mission, its two mascots ‘Draco’ and ‘Viena’ and contains a ‘SWOT’ analysis. Second, the analysis presents best practices from major leagues in the United States, European success stories, on-site and in-store observations. Third, the results evaluate which findings may be adapted to the Portuguese market, comparing countries with the Hofstede insights, and coming up with an action plan including mascot appearances, activations with children, opportunities with sponsors, merchandising, content marketing and digital. It is expected that mascots will be used more sophisticated in the future and by implementing this plan, FC Porto can act as an early mover in Europe.

The project’s goal is to redesign a financial literacy programme, in partnership with SJPF, considering the challenges of COVID-19. In fact, the programme could not be successfully implemented due to the players’ lack of motivation ,PNFF requirements, lack of HR availability and CNSF complexity. Taking in to account the project’s goal, internal and external factors were studied to assess the programme’s current situation. These were followed by quantitative and qualitative analyses as well as an external benchmarking, from which several recommendations were developed. SJPF could reformulate the on-site sessions and introduce an online service considering trainers, dynamics, content and timeframe.

The project’s goal is tore design a financial literacy programme, in partnership with SJPF, considering the challenges of COVID-19. In fact, the programme could not be successfully implemented due to the players ’lack of motivation, PNFF requirements, lack of HR availability and CNSF complexity. Taking in to account the project’s goal, internal and external factors were studied to assess the programme’s current situation. The sew ere followed by quantitative and qualitative analyses as well as an external benchmarking, from which several recommendations were developed. SJPF could create an online platform, provide incentives for participation purposes and establish a mandatory requirement for clubs.

Data analytics is a substantial element of today’s marketing communication. Nonetheless, marketers, sponsors and researchers lack a holistic and comprehensive understanding of key determinants for using analytical tools in sports sponsor ship. There is an agreement around the role of data analytics in driving revenues, however researchers do not delve into the sports fan loyalty as major determinant for using data analytics in sport sponsorship. The purpose of this thesis is to understand how the loyalty of the sports consumer should be the driver for organizations to employ data driven strategies. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied, through conducting semi-structured interviews with industry experts and an analysis of secondary data collected from company reports. Results suggest that the sports consumer is different than other types of consumers, and that trends in sports sponsorship are driven and influenced by fan loyalty.

The present project derives from the Portuguese Football Federation’s 2015-2020 Women’s Football Strategic Plan, with the purpose of evaluating and evolving its outcomes, specifically concerning the first strategic objective: broadening the player base in Portugal. Against the background of this objective, it focuses on the challenge of recruiting more players. To address this challenge, the project leverages on sports management literature to analyse the internal and external context, while benchmarking other football associations’ successful initiatives, culminating on a set of recommendations to achieve the strategic evolvement in coordination with the Portuguese Federation’s priorities and objectives.

This project pretends to analyze the difficulties faced by student-athletes when having dual careers. We included the good practices done by exemplar countries ,and then comparing it with our country’s student-athletes. While analyzing the dual careers, it is important to understand that there’s a life after sports, and it is sometimes a challenge for athletes who are in transition. With that it was possible to conclude that having a dual career and preparing the sports retirement is fundamental to succeed not only during the sports’ career, but also after that.

The team worked with iWork in Sport during this field lab, a company playing an intermediary role between students, schools, and companies, in the sport industry. Thereby, we articulated our thesis using the following structure: a first part analyzing the industry and the environment with qualitative and quantitative data, a second part divided in three subtopics addressing more specific solutions to these challenges from a data, marketing, and strategic perspective. Finally, we addressed apart aiming to provide recommendations based on the research and analysis performed.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a recommendation on whether to buy or sell Juventus's stock on December 3, 2021. The author chose to include Discounted Cash Flows, Multiples, and Multivariate methods. The author reached a target price of €0.35,€2.26, €0.25, €0.15and €0.3331respectively.As the results obtained from multiples valuation are not reasonable the price was determined by averaging 50%/50% the valuation findings from the Multivariate and DCF techniques with a target price of €0.3338.The firm is overvalued as the Market Quote = €0.4144, resulting in a sell recommendation.

The overall development of professional football has placed considerable pressure on clubs’ ability to remain competitive both on and off the field, being this effort envisaged by the recurring external capital injections. In Portugal, this funding has come mainly as a combination of Bank Loans and Corporate Bonds, however, it happens that the inflexibility from these instruments’ reimbursements is often incompatible with the unpredictable profitability from sports organisations. As such, this Work Project intends to develop funding alternatives that explore supporters’ distinctive features as financiers, granting the much-needed capital under more favourable terms than traditional capital providers would offer.

Conducted between November 2021 and December 2021, the objective of this equity analysis was to determine the intrinsic value of NIKE, Inc. to recommend an investment decision. Utilizing quantitative and qualitative information, financial forecasts of NIKE, Inc.’s key metrics and performance were made. Upon completion of the forecasts, a Discounted Cash-Flow model was applied to reach a target price. The report concludes that NIKE, Inc.’s business outlook is favorable, thus resulting in a buy recommendation, with a target share price of $202.63.

This work aims to study the challenges that high-performing athletes face when conciliating their sports activities with a second occupation and the skills developed during that time. Having best practices from other countries as benchmarks, we contrast them with the experience of Portuguese athletes, in particular, concerning the ability to conciliate their sports activities with their academic careers. We find that there are considerable improvements at the financial, infrastructure, and regulatory levels to close the gap with our benchmark cases.

Within the Sport Management Field Lab supervised by Pedro Brinca, we have had the opportunity to work with iWork in Sport, a company playing as an intermediary between students, schools, and companies of the sport industry. Thereby, we articulated our thesis using the following structure: a first part analyzing the industry and the environment with qualitative and quantitative data, a second part divided in three sub topics addressing more specific solutions to these challenges from a data, marketing, and strategic perspective, and a final part aiming at providing recommendations using the analysis done in the previous parts.

Forecasting is key in the aviation industry. Airlines use software applications to make cargo predictions. This thesis explores the advantages of training Machine Learning models using data from an airline to produce cargo forecasts and it evaluates the quality of these forecasts in the context of the business problem. The dataset available is curated and fed into different regression models, using Python scripts. Results are benchmarked with the current model used by the airline. Most of the models trained in this thesis serve the airline with better cargo predictions than the current model does, at one hour before the scheduled departure time.

In this project, the potential impact of the Collective Bargaining of Tv rights in the Portuguese League is analysed, concluding that there is a lot of uncertainty on its impact on revenues and its likely to have a negative social welfare impact on the league. With the Collective Bargaining beginning in the 2028/2029 season, Comparative analysis of European Leagues was conducted to understand their respective distribution models. Said analysis was used to create assumptions that allowed the elaboration of two potential distribution models. The 2 models were then compared in a multitude of different scenarios to reach meaningful conclusions.

Although recent studies identified the percentage of constrained agents as the crucial force driving many fiscal policy mechanisms, the values attained were purely the result of model calibrations. We make use of household-level data to estimate the fraction of hand-to-mouth households for several European countries. We calibrate an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents to match the net liquid wealth distribution and study the impact of credit constraints on the effectiveness of fiscal consolidation policies. Our findings suggest that the share of hand-to-mouth agents is no longer quantitatively relevant to explain the cross-country heterogeneity in fiscal multipliers when we calibrate the model to match empirically plausible estimates of that share. These results may be driven by the characteristics of the model we employ, which excludes the wealthy hand-to-mouth.

We apply the Business Cycle Accounting framework to the COVID-19 recession in the Euro Area and the United States. We conclude that the efficiency wedge had the most important role in the Euro Area, followed by the labor and investment wedges. In the United States, the labor wedge was most crucial, with the investment wedge taking a second place. We present hypotheses, supported by our theoretical framework, for the dichotomy of the role of the efficiency wedge between the studied regions.Keywords:Economics,COVID-19, Business Cycle Accounting, Macroeconomics, Financial Crises, Financial Frictions, Wedges

Since 1980, income and wealth inequality increased gradually in the U.S.. Several solutions have been proposed, namely the introduction of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) system. In order to assess whether a UBI financed by a progressive labor tax is a viable solution to reduce inequality, we develop an overlapping generations model, with multiple sources of technological change and four different occupations. Calibrating the model to the U.S. we find that the welfare-maximizing level of UBI is actually quite low, 0.5% of GDP. Event hough a higher UBI would decrease income and wealth inequality, it would negatively affect economic efficiency and make all types of agents worse off. The main mechanism is the distortionary effect of higher labor income taxation on capital accumulation which prevents the economy from incorporating the gains from investment-specific technological progress.

This paper aims to contribute for the vast literature on the impact of country-specific characteristics on fiscal multipliers. We argue that countries have relevant dierences in risk attitudes, and that those dierences are economically significant in determining output responses to fiscal consolidation programs. We start with an empirical analysis, estimating the coecient of relative risk aversion for nine European economies, finding relevant heterogeneity across coun-tries. Using the coecients found, we calibrate an incomplete markets overlapping generationsmodel and study the impacts of an unanticipated fiscal consolidation shock. We find a positiverelationship between fiscal multipliers and risk aversion when there is a spending-based consol-idation, showing that recessive impacts from austerity are stronger the larger the degree of risk aversion. The underlying mechanism depends on the eect of risk aversion on precautionary savings behavior and so on the share of constrained agents. Larger risk aversion induces more precautionary savings, thus shrinking the share of constrained agents. Credit-constrained agents have a less responsive labor supply with respect to spending-based fiscal consolidation shocks.

We claim that changes in the interest rate impose impacts on multipliers of fiscal consolidations programs. We use the database and extend the regression in Alesina et al. (2015a)with interest rates to check the relationship with fiscal multipliers. Then, we adapt the overlapping generations model with incomplete markets used in Brinca et al. (2021) and fix the wage and interest rate. Using that adaptation of the model, we assess the impact of a change in the interest rates of three calibrated European economies. We then test the mechanism and compare the impacts based on countries’ different Gini coefficients and percentage of agents constrained. For both analysis we conclude that there is a negative relationship between the interest rate and fiscal consolidation multipliers under a fixed wage and interest rate environment. We also conclude that countries with higher percentage of agents constrained are more resistant to changes on interest rates.

The Business Cycle Accounting method by Chari, Kehoe, and Mc Grattan (2007) helps identify theories that have quantitative promise in explaining economic fluctuations. In this work project, it will be applied to Germany to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The efficiency wedge primarily drove Germany’s recession. The extensive lockdowns that prevented existing production factors such as labor and capital from producing at their full potential can explain the productivity loss. This suggests that the lock downs are well identified as significant drivers of the reduction in economic activity and that their end would predict a sharp recovery in Germany.

Aggregate inflation measures such as the Consumer Price Index seek to capture the im-pact on households consumption possibilities of changes in prices over time and are generally assumed as representative of all consumers. This is only true if households have all the same consumption patterns. Based on household level microdata, we construct specific household baskets of consumption and calculate the inflation for each one. By comparing Plutocratic and Democratic indexes, and inflation between groups of income, we conclude that households experienced different inflation rates, with the poorer suffering more with the loss in the purchasing power. The potential impacts of these findings on Fiscal and Monetary Policy show that around 1.77 million households could be paying federal income taxes when they should not; Social Security benefits could be up to 9.70% higher for some households; Federal Funds Rates would be 0.8 percentage points higher, based on a Taylor type rule, if FED used a Democratic core inflation index.

Earnings inequality has been increasing in Portugal and United States in the last 30years and with the recent pandemic outbreak this trend is likely to reach even higher levels. The purpose of this paper is to identify what is the role of automatization in increasing wage inequality, making a comparison between the two countries. Using PSID and Quadros de Pessoal, we find that labor income dynamics are strongly determined by the variance of the individual fixed component. This effect is drastically reduced by adding information on workers’ occupational tasks, confirming that decreasing price of capital and the consequent replacement of routine manual worker shave deepened wage inequality. During the current crisis, we find that the ability to keep working is strongly related with the occupation type. As such, we simulate the impact of a permanent demand shock using an overlapping-generations model with incomplete markets and heterogeneous agents to quantitatively predict the impact ofCovid-19 and lockdown measures on wage premium and earnings inequality. We find that wage premia and earnings dispersion increase, suggesting that earnings inequality will increase at the expenses of manual workers.

The literature on fiscal multipliers has evolved towards the notion that there is no such think asafiscal multiplier. These differ among many dimensions, including the aggregate state of theeconomy, wealth and income inequality, the demographic structure to name a few. However, in allof this studies, the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (Frisch) is held constant across countries.Based on findings from Peterman (2015), we use micro data to estimate country specific Frischelasticities and find that these differences not only are quantitatively meaningful in explaining cross-country differences in fiscal multipliers, but that the magnitude of the differences is much largerthan in most mechanisms that have been brought forward to explain cross-country heterogeneity infiscal multipliers.

Current literature suggests that corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations can have an impact on the way consumers relatetoand act toward companies. This relationship is of special relevance in the context of professional sport, characterized by intense media scrutiny, communication power and social significance. The presentthesisstudiesthe responses of European soccer fans to their perceptions of clubs’ social responsibility, as well as the explanatory psychological mechanismsbehindthose effects. To do so, a quantitative approach was followed, with the application of a questionnaire and analysis of the resulting fan-level data to test the conceptual framework proposed. Taken together, the results indicate that corporate social responsibility perceptionshavea positive direct impact on fans’ reputation assessments of their club, as well as their intentions to patronize it, by attending games, following it via media, buying merchandise and speaking favorablyabout it to others. The attribution of positive motives to clubs’ CSR efforts was shown to explain the positive impact on reputation, but the study was unsuccessful in explaining the positive impact on patronage intentions. Overall, the findingsbroaden the knowledge aboutCSR responses in the sport industry and illustrate the importance of an effective strategic integration of CSR for professional sport clubs, as a potential source of competitive advantage.

We show that the labour share of income is an important factor affecting the mechanisms behind fiscal consolidation programs, thus requiring consideration when evaluating fiscal mul- tipliers across countries. We calibrate a life-cycle, overlapping generations model to match key characteristics of different European economies and evaluate the recessive impacts of fiscal consolidation programs. We find a positive relationship between the labour share and the impact fiscal multipliers generated by our model. This result directly follows from the higher weight of labour on production and the lower opportunity cost of leisure present in economies with a higher labour share. Following the impact period, the relationship between the labour share and the fiscal multipliers is dependant on the type of fiscal instrument employed in the consolidation.

This work studies the response of social welfare to fiscal consolidations, by focusingon a less debated characteristic of fiscal plans: the speed of deleveraging. A neo-classical overlapping generations model is calibrated to the German economy, anda sequence of reductions of the same size in the debt-to-GDP ratio are simulatedconsidering different adjustment periods. Welfare gains are found to be larger inslow, delayed fiscal consolidations, due to the presence of incomplete markets. It isalso found that the aggregate welfare response depends on the distribution of wealthand the type of fiscal instrument used.