Browsing by Issue Date, starting with "2023-10-26"
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- Understanding the adoption and acceptance of RPA bots in modern workplaces : a mixed methods studyPublication . Costa, Vasco David Pereira; Andrade, António Manuel Valente deAs automation technologies become more prevalent in workplaces, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bots have emerged as valuable tools for optimizing productivity. However, the successful adoption of RPA bots extends beyond their technical capabilities. This thesis employs a mixed methods approach to explore the adoption and acceptance of RPA bots in modern workplaces. The quantitative analysis, guided by Wewerka's User Acceptance Model for RPA, reveals participants' consensus on the positive social influence, job relevance, and perceived usefulness of RPA bots. Trust and hedonic motivation variations highlight the importance of addressing concerns and enhancing enjoyment for widespread acceptance. The qualitative analysis uncovers diverse motivations for adopting RPA bots, emphasizing task automation, efficiency improvement, and positive impacts on work processes. Participants express overall satisfaction with training and support, minimal barriers to adoption, and recognition of the value of human skills. Looking ahead, participants envision increased automation and emphasize the need for ongoing training and skills development. This research provides insights into the acceptance, benefits, challenges, and future outlook of RPA bots in the modern workplace.
- Dynamic rebalancing strategies applied to factor portfoliosPublication . Moreira, Bruno José Suzano de Campos Vaz; Alves, Paulo Alexandre PimentaPortfolio rebalancing serves as a critical mechanism for maintaining targeted asset allocations and optimizing risk-return trade-offs. This thesis compares the impact of various calendar- and threshold-based rebalancing strategies in the context of factor investing. Specifically, it scrutinizes the influence of rebalancing frequency, rebalancing threshold, and partial rebalancing proportion on performance. While frequent rebalancing enhances factor exposure and gross returns, it simultaneously increases transaction costs, indicating the presence of an optimal trade-off point. Notably, simple calendar-based strategies demonstrate returns on par with their more intricate, threshold-based counterparts, although the latter exhibit greater consistency in achieving high returns. Consequently, portfolio similarity emerges as a more reliable predictor of returns compared to rebalancing period. Partial yet frequent rebalancing consistently delivers superior performance as stock price changes approximate a Geometric Brownian Motion with a drift component.
- Executive compensation and stock price reaction : decoding the puzzle of shareholder value creation : insights from a decade of the top 100 U.S. M&A dealsPublication . Gonçalves, Francisco Mota; Alves, Paulo Alexandre PimentaThe complexity of executive compensation structures and their potential effects on the market reaction to the announcement of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) transactions has been a subject of increasing interest for both practitioners and scholars in the realm of corporate finance. This research adds to the ongoing discourse by investigating the effects of different types of executive compensation - cash and equity-based - on short-term M&A outcomes, particularly the cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) around the announcement date. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset composed of the 100 largest M&A transactions of the past decade (2010-2020), we conducted detailed and robust regression analyses. The empirical findings of the study are both significant and revealing. There is a statistically significant negative correlation between cash-based compensation and CAR. This suggests that firms which compensate their executives heavily with cash are less likely to achieve value-enhancing M&A transactions, thereby experiencing lower or insignificant abnormal returns during the announcement period. On the other hand, our analysis revealed a positive relationship between equity-based compensation and CAR. This implies that when executives are rewarded with equity, a stake in the company, they may be more motivated to undertake M&A transactions that enhance firm value, thereby yielding more favorable short-term financial outcomes. However, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study. The focus was solely on the short-term impacts of M&A transactions, and we did not measure whether the deals were successful over the long term. Moreover, our dataset comprised only the 100 largest deals, which may over-represent certain types of firms or industries. Potential illegal insider trading could convey information to the market, prior to the formal M&A announcements, a factor could also influence CAR, that was not accounted for in the study (Ahern, 2017; Augustin et al., 2014).
- Como devem ser tributados os rendimentos derivados das criptomoedas em Portugal : estudo comparativoPublication . Silva, Sofia Ribeiro da; Alves, Paulo Alexandre Pimenta; Pinto, Cristina CostaO presente estudo propõe-se abordar como devem ser tributados, em Portugal, os rendimentos derivados das criptomoedas. De forma a podermos compreender a envolvente das criptomoedas, foi necessário estudar todas as suas temáticas, nomeadamente, o seu enquadramento legal, a linguística subjacente a este tipo de ativos, bem como a sua contextualização histórica e o seu aparecimento em Portugal. Como não estamos perante uma questão consensual, efetuamos uma pesquisa exaustiva sobre a tributação deste tipo de moedas em países como os Estados Unidas da América (EUA), a China, a Bélgica e, obviamente, Portugal, por forma a inferir os diferentes critérios de tributação. Com isto, pretendíamos ter uma ideia geral do que acontece a nível mundial e europeu, o que justifica a escolha dos países supracitados. Por fim, foi também relevante analisar as novas alterações do Orçamento do Estado 2023 (OE 2023), uma vez que surgiram alterações relevantes para o estudo.
- What explains cross-country differences in the gender happiness gap? : does gender inequality matter?Publication . Costa, Gonçalo José Silva Pinto da; Demiray, Zahide Eylem GevrekSubjective well-being (SWB) serves as an important measure of development and social progress. There has been considerable progress in achieving gender parity in individual outcomes across various domains of life, including education, economics, and health. As individual SWB is impacted by contextual factors such as objective conditions, it is important to examine whether this progress towards “objective equality” has resulted in an increase in gender equality in SWB. Using data from 8 rounds (2006-2020) of the European Social Survey across 36 different countries, this study aims to investigate the relationship between societal gender equality, which is measured by the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index (GGI), and the gender gap in subjective well-being. To this end, we employ a two-stage empirical strategy. In the first stage, we use the Oaxaca-Blinder method to decompose the gender gap in subjective well-being in each country/survey year into two parts: a part that is explained by gender differences in observable characteristics and a part that remains unexplained. In the second stage, we explore the relationship between the unexplained part of the gender gap and our societal gender equality measure (GGI). The estimation results indicate that there is no statistically significant association between GGI and the unexplained part of the gender gap in subjective well-being. This finding is robust to several sensitivity checks.
- The impact of covid-19 on the European stock marketPublication . Lobato, Maria Taveira da Mota; Alves, Paulo Alexandre PimentaThe emergence of the novel coronavirus has posed a global health emergency, significantly impacting diverse economic and financial fields. Among these, the stock market experienced asymmetric effects, with certain industries witnessing a sharp decline in revenues, while others observed an exponential surge in demand for their goods and services. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to analyze the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the European stock market, with a specific emphasis on the heterogeneous behavior exhibited by different industries. Hence, the daily data of 300 firms based in 13 European countries were analyzed from December 10, 2019, and October 7, 2020, using the event study methodology. The primary finding of this study indicates that the European stock markets were influenced by the pandemic, leading to a mixture of positive and negative effects across various industries and different time horizons. The findings of the study revealed that the utilities, consumer staples, real estate, and health care industries demonstrated positive performance across various time horizons. In contrast, the financials, energy, consumer discretionary, and basic materials industries exhibited the poorest results, aligning with existing literature. The industrials industry displayed a relatively stable performance, albeit with negative results. On the other hand, the technology and telecommunications industries maintained a consistent performance, with positive outcomes observed.
- New theory of value accretion under uncertaintyPublication . Moura, João Tiago Caetano Águia de; Cunha, Manuel Ricardo Fontes daThis work consists in a non-canonical formulation a new theory of value accretion under uncertainty, exploring the concept of bernoullian emolumentum alongside idiosyncratic differences in the calculation of geometric expectations. This asymmetry allows for higher returns from uncertainty from both parties in a transaction. The present work reviews the evolution of expectations up to modern finance, before laying a conceptual framework for measuring mutual value accretion gaps, and finally, proposing an empirical work through tail-hedging of a market portfolio. All-in-all, this theory both holds in an a piori basis, as well as shows promise in practice for future developments and applications. Quantified in its iterations, modern financial theory shows methodological gaps, overruling the non-linearity, chaotic order of human action, as well as capital finitude and time dependence as axioms of real life. Indeed, here lies an unseen world of fully unexplored financial opportunities. Seen through a new light, from the metaphorical torch set by Daniel Bernoulli in 1738, who in his eminent Specimen Theoriae Novae de Mensura Sortis, proposed a solution to the famous St. Petersburg Paradox and set in motion a unified theory for assessing holistically the value of any investment.
- Sephora : posicionamento face aos desafios no comportamento das gerações Z e millennialsPublication . Fonseca , Jaíne de Oliveira; Celeste, Pedro Manuel Amador RodriguesNos últimos anos, a indústria da beleza e cosmética tem testemunhado uma rápida evolução e relevado bastante resiliência face às crises económicas globais e ao ambiente macroeconómico em constante mudança. Novas tendências de mercado surgiram e as empresas tiveram que adaptar as suas estratégias de posicionamento para atender às expectativas dos novos consumidores, chamados nativos digitais. A presente tese investiga como a Sephora, empresa de perfumaria e cosmética Premium, se posiciona face aos desafios no comportamento das gerações Z e millennials, que parecem ter diferentes hábitos de compra, voltados para a tecnologia e inovação. Para sustentar as conclusões, foi feita uma entrevista à responsável pelos Social Media e Relações Públicas da empresa e um questionário a consumidores de ambas as gerações. Os resultados permitiram afirmar que o posicionamento da empresa se tem manifestado suficiente, dentro daquilo que as novas gerações procuram numa marca e que não houveram diferenças significativas de comportamento entre as duas gerações. A estratégia da empresa pode ser direcionada de igual forma para este público, mas deve concentrar-se na criação de experiências imersivas e memoráveis nas lojas, onde estas gerações mais compram os seus produtos de beleza, com mais tecnologia, inovação e serviços personalizados, para reforçar o posicionamento de uma empresa inovadora e que gera novas tendências.
- Higher moments and the cross-sectional predictability of equity on an intermediate formation periodPublication . Almeida, José; Barroso, PedroI use daily data from all the Spanish listed companies from January 1990 to December 2021 to compute realized moments for 3 different time formation periods and study their cross-section properties. The realized volatility revealed a negative relation with returns, as buying the lowers realized volatility quintile and selling the ones in the highest generated a Sharpe-ratio of 0.72 for the full formation period, 0.77 for the intermediate formation period and 0.62 for the recent formation period with T-statistics of 4.02, 4.28 and 3.40 respectively. The relation between realized skewness and returns is positive or negative depending on the formation period in question revealing an inversion in the relation for longer formation windows. The relation between realized kurtosis and returns is negative but with low statistical significance.
- Impacto da sustentabilidade no comportamento de compra do consumidorPublication . Sousa, Ana Pinto de Andrade Almeida e; Ribeiro, Rita Moura Bastos de AlmeidaNos dias de hoje, cada vez mais o tema da sustentabilidade se tem vindo a revelar cada vez mais relevante. Essa crescente relevância e preocupação levou as pessoas a ficarem mais alerta e atentas e ponderadas no que diz respeito aos seus hábitos do dia-a-dia e respetivas consequências no ambiente, sociedade e economia. A legislação tem vindo a deixar-se moldar por fatores de sustentabilidade e as organizações igualmente, não só por consequência da lei, mas por preocupação e de forma a ir de encontro às necessidades e desejos dos consumidores. O propósito desta dissertação é perceber qual o impacto que a sustentabilidade tem na decisão e comportamento de compra do consumidor. De maneira a analisar este impacto e concluir o que pode ser feito para que este seja significativo, foi efetuada e uma revisão da literatura e em seguida um questionário a pessoas com idades compreendidas entre os 18 e os 80 anos. Este estudo permitiu concluir que de facto existe uma positiva perceção da sustentabilidade e a maioria dos consumidores dão importância ao tema e praticam ações sustentáveis. Ainda assim, existem muitos que não dão tanta importância ao tema devido a fatores como preço, falta de acesso à informação, transparência e confiança. Assim, entende-se que, para que a sustentabilidade impacte total ou quase totalmente o comportamento dos consumidores, existem ainda vários fatores a estudar e a desenvolver.