This paper is concerned with two things: finding an objective and easily quantifiable measure of government efficiency and testing possible determinants of such quality. As measures of government efficiency we use the ratios of infant mortality rate to health expenditures as a percentage of GDP...

TreKker is an intervention model designed for students which aims to develop the individual as an integrated whole. This model was created to be used as a framework for individual skills development in an academic environment. As a result of the implementation of the Bologna Process, Higher...

Passaram 38 anos desde a instauração da Democracia em Portugal em 1974. Tendo como pano de fundo o descontrolo da despesa pública e a intervenção da Troika, o governo português tem em curso uma reforma do Estado português. Neste artigo procedemos a uma análise de impacto de três...

Together with the emphasis on the technical skills acquisition, higher education institutions have been making an effort on developing and updating undergraduate transferable competences in order to diminish the gap between academic training and working world entrance. In other words, to...

This paper analyses the provision of auxiliary clinical services that are typically carried out within the hospital. We estimate a flexible cost function for the three most important (cost- wise) diagnostic techniques and therapeutic services in Portuguese hospitals: Clinical Pathology, Medical...

This article takes the metaphor of myopia to explain the most limited vision of brand, understood as the identifying sign of a product. As brand is a sign, we turn to semiotics, the science of signs, in order to apply a model which broadens the concept of brand to three dimensions: that of the...

This research addresses the question of how mascots design characteristics affect children recognition and affective response of this type of brand sign. Regarding the literature, it was clear for us the important contribution in studying the short and long term recognition. It is found that the...

The paper explores theoretically and empirically the brand concept among children. Group interviews were conducted to examine the children’s associations to this concept. The data analysis was organized according to a circular frame (the circept frame), which allowed a content analysis based...

A new class of linear discrimination rules, designed for problems with many correlated variables, is proposed. This proposal tries to incorporate the most important patterns revealed by the empirical correlations and accurately approximate the optimal Bayes rule as the number of variables...