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Governments sponsor sports events as a way of developing, promoting, and combating the seasonality of a tourist destination, in order to enhance the image of a tourism destination. This study analyzes the impacts stemming from the realization of sport tourism events, focusing on the case of the world famous and spectacular Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series event in the Azores. The primary objective of this research is to assess the main economic impacts of this event, its importance for regional development, the perceptions of respondents, and the levels of satisfaction with it – both in a global sense and for several dimensions of the event – using a novel primary dataset, with individual survey data. The results support the idea that this event has important economic impacts and suggest that most participants are generally satisfied, although some aspects that could be improved have been identified. Most respondents consider this event to be important for tourism and economic development, and a large proportion consider it important for the social development and cultural development of the region in which it takes place.

In remote low-populated regions, air transport networks play a crucial role with respect to the mobility of people and goods, but can hardly be viable without the support of public subsidies. In this paper, we deal with the case of the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago of nine islands located in the North Atlantic Ocean, whose air transport network is subsidized through the Public Service Obligations system in place in the European Union. Specifically, we describe a study carried out to analyze possible evolutions of the (domestic) air transport network of the Azores with the objective of reducing the network’s operating costs. The changes to implement could involve the flight schedule, the fleet assignment and the route structure. According to the results obtained in the study, it would be possible to reduce the variable operating costs of the network by 16.2%, and, at the same time, improve substantially the level of service offered to passengers (decrease of 17.5% in the average travel time and of 37.5% in the average waiting time of connecting trips), while achieving a well-balanced distribution of impacts across the different islands of the Azores.

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.

The deregulation of air transportation was expected to have negative implications on regions with insufficient passenger demand to generate profits – regions where air transportation often plays a crucial role with respect to the mobility of people and goods, as well as to the development of tourism. Because of this, governments have decided to accompany the deregulation process with the adoption of subsidy schemes aimed at mitigating the anticipated consequences to low-demand regions. The subsidy scheme adopted in the European Union is known as the Public Service Obligations (PSO) system. In this paper, we propose a decision approach to assist governments (aviation authorities) in the setting of PSO standards consistent with the budget available to finance their implementation. The approach is based on an integrated flight scheduling and fleet assignment model to determine the air transportation network that minimizes the total social costs of satisfying a given origin/destination target demand. The usefulness of the approach is illustrated with an application to the network of the Azores, one of the main European networks fully operated according to the PSO system.

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.

This paper analyses the technical efficiency of Portuguese hospitals from 1997 to 2008 with the latent class frontier model, enabling the identification of different segments in the cost frontier. It is found that there are three statistically significant segments in the sample, leading to the conclusion that no common health policy can be applicable to all of the hospitals analysed, calling rather for policies conceived for each hospital segment identified. The health policy based in the identified segments enables a more accurate and cost-effective management of resources.

This paper studies the relationship between having a disability and unemployment duration by focusing on individuals registered at Portuguese job centers. Despite its relevance, because disabled people are likely to occupy disadvantaged positions in the labor market, it has received little attention in the literature. As different disabilities affect unemployment duration differently, we distinguish different types of disabilities and shed light on disability-specific support policies. We apply a discrete time hazard model with unobserved heterogeneity to microdata from the Instituto do Emprego e Formacao Profissional, which are free from self-reporting problems in disability identification. We find lower reemployment probabilities for many groups of disabled people: individuals with impairment in general functions, disfiguring, speech and visual disorders, muscle-skeletal and other organ impairments experience the more disadvantaged positions. Decomposition analysis indicates that part of the disadvantage is due to differences in returns rather than to differences in characteristics. These findings suggest that the disadvantage of disabled people in the labor market is not only explained by a different distribution of characteristics but especially by the interaction of their characteristics with the work environment. Policy implications are discussed.

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.

The main purpose of this study is to analyse the poverty effects of emigration and inward remittance flows through direct and indirect channels within the context of a standard computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. For that purpose we use a novel approach in modeling a social accounting matrix (SAM)-based CGE model by combining an original data set containing rich, highly-disaggregated household budget suveys with detailed macro-level data for Georgia. A distinctive contribution of this study is the attention paid to regional differences in terms of market access and transaction costs, in addition to households' factor endowments and consumption patterns. The main questions of interest are whether and to what extent remittance flows contribute to the production and consumption pattern of the poor. Two aspects of poverty reduction are emphasised: (1) the impact of remittances on aggregate and sectoral economic growth and (2) the impact of remittances on poor households, their production and consumpti...

We extend the Mortensen and Pissarides (1999a, b) model to feature an endogenous upgrading or training rate, to gain a novel, general equilibrium, approach to training and labour market policy to gain a distinct model from the traditional partial equilibrium approach (e.g. Acemoglu and Pischke 1998). Among other results, we show training subsidies decrease equilibrium unemployment incidence, duration and level and less generous unemployment benefits increase the occurance of training. We also show the high elasticity of job destruction to aggregate conditions causes the frequency of training to be procyclical. A calibrated version of our model rationalizes cross-country differences in labour and training equilibrium outcomes.

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.

Este estudo estima um modelo de fronteira estocástica à la Battese e Coelli (1992, 1995) para explicar a função custo variável de um conjunto de 51 hospitais Portugueses para o período 1997-2004. Os resultados obtidos têm forte valor estatístico e interessante significado económico. Entre os diversos resultados inovadores do estudo, de referir que os hospitais SA/EPE e os hospitais com sistemas de gestão de qualidade certificada apresentam custos variáveis superiores aos demais. De referir, ainda, que variáveis de índole regional, como a população da cidade e a região onde se situa o hospital, explicam cerca de 60% da eficiência técnica hospitalar estimada. Estes resultados têm importantes implicações políticas para as questões de localização e concentração dos hospitais Portugueses.

Este trabalho analisa as preferências dos consumidores do serviço de transporte aéreo entre São Miguel e Terceira: o mais importante corredor aéreo nos Açores. Dada a forte regulação histórica e actual que caracteriza este serviço, não há dados do tipo preferências reveladas. Contudo, o conhecimento das preferências dos consumidores é incontornável na implementação de políticas que promovam o bem-estar social. Assim, realizou-se um stated preferences choice game conducente à estimação dum modelo microeconométrico do tipo McFadden (1974): logit condicional. Os resultados estimados são estatisticamente significativos e revelam medidas de disposição para pagar economicamente elevadas por atributos como garantia de pontualidade e penalidades por alterações nas passagens. A disposição para pagar por mais um voo diário é deveras baixa. Este último resultado é importante no debate se este mercado é um monopólio natural.

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.

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 mea- sure 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 frame- work identifies policy shocks independently of productivity measurement issues via a two-step procedure. While the typical industry shows weak responses of pro- ductivity 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 down- turns. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

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.

This paper focuses on friction in the matching process arising in a dual labour market where good and bad jobs coexist. In particular, we present an empirical investigation of the role of strong preferences for permanent contracts to explain job mismatch and longer unemployment duration. To allow for a more flexible matching technology specification and to control for the role of micro level characteristics, we estimate a matching function using different specifications of hazard models for multiple unemployment spells, allowing both random matching and stock-flow matching mechanisms. We find evidence that the determinants of reemployment probabilities differ by gender. We also find a positive effect from having previous job experiences and, according to semi-parametric specifications, undergoing training while unemployed on reemployment probabilities. Overall we find that higher heterogeneity in searched and offered contract types increases frictions in the matching process. Specifically, individuals looking for a permanent contract experience longer unemployment duration, suggesting the existence of congestion problems related to the permanent job labour market segment. Finally, in order to reduce frictions in the matching process, policies aimed to provide training and to increase desirability of temporary contracts should be promoted.

The effects of interactions between private transfer behaviour and income redistribution policies depend on the motives underlying private income transfers. This paper tests for two different potential motives: pure altruism versus simple exchange, in the presence of capital market imperfections. Using household survey data for Bulgaria, microeconometric evidence is found that both motives are in effect. We also find evidence that capital market imperfections are likely to be binding for consumption smoothing, and hence are an important cause of private transfers. The results indicate that social security benefits "crowd out" the amount of private transfers received but not the incidence of private transfers. Finally, private transfers play an important role as a safety net as they significantly decrease poverty rates and the inequality of income distribution.