CEF.UP – WiP Webinar

Tuesday – April 13^th, 2021 at 3:00 p.m.

“Building a Composite Index using the Multi-objective Approach: An application to the case of human development”.

Elif Öztürk – FEP

Abstract:

“Composite indicator (CI) is a powerful tool to observe the performance of various alternatives when several dimensions are in question. Normalisation, weighting and aggregation are known as the three obligatory steps to build a CI. The current paper proposes a new and unconventional method, which does not require any of these steps, to construct a CI. In this method, we suggest using the Pareto frontier concept, a term in the multi-objective optimisation, to set the solutions  (e.g. countries, firms, or alternatives) in an order. Pareto frontiers help to collect similar solutions together according to their performance on several dimensions, sequentially. Each Pareto frontier represents a different achievement level. However,  it is not possible to evaluate the solutions located in the same Pareto frontier using multi-objective optimisation. To identify the performance of each solution within the Pareto frontiers, we implement the ordered probit regression model and predict the latent variable that represents the specific problem by using the estimated results. We use this proposed methodology to re-measure human development. A comparison took place between the Human Development Index (HDI) and our proposed method. According to the results, the country ranks in the proposed method show a significant difference compared to the HDI, although there is a high Spearman’s rank correlation. This method is strong and reliable because it does not require any vague selection of obligatory steps to build a CI. Moreover, it provides fully non-compensatory results and an influential ranking of the solutions.”

CEF.UP – MaR Webinar

Tuesday – April  6^th, 2021 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

“Identifying Market Structure: A Deep Network Representation Learning of Social Engagement“

P.K. Kannan – University of Maryland (USA)

Area: Marketing and Strategy

CEF.UP – MaR Webinar

Tuesday – March 23^rd, 2021 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

“Economic lot sizing problem with remanufacturing option“

Ashwin Arulselvan – University of Strathclyde (UK)

Area: Operations and Logistics

Abstract:

“In a single item dynamic lot-sizing problem, we are given a time horizon and demand for a single item in every time period. The problem seeks a solution that determines how much to produce and carry at each time period, so that we will incur the least amount of production and inventory cost. When the remanufacturing option is included, the input comprises of returned products at each time period that can be potentially remanufactured to satisfy the demands, where remanufacturing and inventory costs are applicable. For this problem, we first show that it cannot have a fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS). We then provide a pseudo-polynomial algorithm to solve the problem and show how this algorithm can be adapted to solve it in polynomial time, when we make certain realistic assumptions on the cost structure. A lot of questions remain open for generic cost structure.

In the second half of the talk, we are interested in the robust version of the problem. We assume that the demands and returns are uncertain and we employ the approach used by Bertsimas and Thiele to model the uncertainty set. We then provide a computational approach to solve the problem assuming the demands and returns belong to this uncertainty set. The approach can be viewed as a variant of Benders’ decomposition. The complexity of the subproblem even in the simplest case remains open.”

CEF.UP – WiP Webinar

Tuesday – March 23^rd, 2021 at 3:00 p.m.

“How does inequality affect growth on the US and France? A SVAR approach with structural breaks focused on the whole distribution of income and wealth”

Pedro Lima – FEP

Abstract:

“We analyze transmission channels between inequality and growth on the US and France using an approach that innovates twofold: (i) analyzing measures that characterize different parts of the income and wealth distributions; (ii) conducting a time series analysis using a SVAR approach with long-run restrictions that considers the presence of structural breaks in the data. We find that each transmission channel is affected by changes in particular parts of the income and wealth distribution, which are not always consistent with an inequality increase, and there are stark differences in the way each transmission channel operates between different distributions and countries. Our results are robust to alternative long-run specifications and provide an additional explanation for the myriad of results found in the literature that reinforces the complexity of the inequality-growth relationship.”

CEF.UP – MaR Webinar

Tuesday – March 2^nd, 2021 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

“Job Insecurity and Work Engagement when Working Remotely: Evidence from Academics in the UK during the COVID-19 Lockdown”

Rita Fontinha –  University of Reading (UK)

Area: Organization and Human Resources

CEF.UP – WiP Webinar

Friday – February 26^th, 2021 at 2:00 p.m.

“The Agglomerative Force of Education”

Jorge Saraiva – CEF.UP

Abstract:

“We find that, when skilled workers are allowed to choose their location, an economy with a higher human capital favours the agglomeration of economic activities and reduces the likelihood of a symmetric dispersion scenario. We explore the possibility that both skilled and unskilled populations remain unchanged while allowing skilled workers to increase their productivity. The choice of the productivity level turns out to be independent of spatial distribution and transportation costs. Education is higher, the higher the expenditure share in the industrial good is. Increases in education levels lead to positive externalities that affect the whole society.”

CEF.UP – ECO Webinar

Friday – January 8^th, 2021  3:00 p.m.

Comparative European Institutions and the Little Divergence, 1385-1800

Nuno Palma –   Manchester University (joint work with António Castro Henriques)

Abstract:

Why did the countries which first benefited from access to the New World –Castile and Portugal –decline relative to their followers, especially England and the Netherlands? The dominant narrative is that worse initial institutions at the time of the opening of Atlantic trade explain Iberian divergence. In this paper, we build new quantitative measures which allow for a comparison of institutional quality over time. We consider the frequency and nature of parliamentary meetings, the frequency and intensity of extraordinary taxation and coin debasement, and real interest spreads for public debt. We find no evidence that the political institutions of Iberia were worse at least until the English Civil War.