Research in a Tweet: In customer service, the right blend of affiliative and self-defeating humour significantly impacts perceived service quality. Affiliative humour, when predominant, enhances customer perceptions, while excessive self-defeating humour can have a negative effect. The key lies in balancing these humour styles to optimally engage customers.

Research in a Tweet: In recent years, consumer engagement has risen to occupy a prominent position in brand management research and practice. Although most research has adopted the brand as the focal object, consumer engagement can transpire with different actors and objects such as AI-based digital assistants and social media influencers.

Research in a Tweet: Conventional wisdom on exit strategies for Private Equity favors IPOs. However, other alternatives, like secondary buyouts, are preferable in certain market conditions, as they allow strategies out of reach to a public company.

Research in a Tweet: Amidst a dynamic, progressively technical, and fiercely competitive academia, researchers grapple with the challenge of remaining abreast of the latest developments. To aid them in this, in the previous academic year, CEF.UP took a pioneering step and launched a new initiative: a series of advanced courses led by preeminent experts at the forefront of their fields.

Research in a Tweet: Most research on efficiency and productivity measurement disregards the time interdependence of firms’ production and investment decisions. Elvira’s career has been dedicated to correcting this. Her approach is fruitful, allowing, among others, the estimation of environmental efficiency or the bite of taxes on emissions.

Research in a Tweet: Previous studies yield contradictory findings on the association between firms’ environmental and social responsibility and their tax avoidance strategies. A meta-analysis identifies the influence of study design on these results. It also suggests that the association is usually non-existent.

Research in a Tweet: The fashion industry has a significant environmental footprint. Consumers show concern, but it does not translate into changed purchasing behaviours. The perceived lack of style, quality and variety of sustainable alternatives is the main barrier to change.

Research in a Tweet: Wage inequality has decreased in Portugal. Bargaining power has shrunk for middle and high-wage earners. Wages and firm productivity have decoupled. Labour market institutions, such as those related to collective bargaining, are crucial in explaining these facts.

Research in a Tweet: Some measures of policy protecting borrowers may result in higher collateral requirements on new mortgages, raising issues of inequality. A low interest-rate environment may lead to riskier adjustable-rate mortgages. Mortgage heterogeneity endangers the effectiveness of the one-size-fits-all monetary policy of the ECB.

Research in a Tweet: Claiming prior borrowing experience bolsters a refugee entrepreneur’s chances to access crowdfunding. Refugee loan campaigns associated with local microfinance institutions of good repute are more successful and help break the vicious circle of financial exclusion in which refugees often find themselves.

Research in a Tweet: In the wake of the 2010-2014 Portuguese Financial Crisis, Energias de Portugal (EDP) was mired in controversy surrounding excessive rents and increasing electricity bills. Its CEO used several discursive strategies to navigate contradictory environmental pressures and legitimize the firm’s profit-seeking behavior.

Research in a Tweet: Doing a PhD is a worthy, albeit challenging, journey. Doing it at FEP ensures students can carry out innovative and world-class research in economics or management sciences. There are currently two PhD programmes at FEP: in Business and Management Studies and in Economics.

Research in a Tweet: A meta-analysis is a quantitative literature review that explains the variability across empirical studies and offers new estimates for theory testing or calibration. An example on knowledge spillovers illustrates this.

Research in a Tweet: Electricity consumption in Portugal has been impacted by rising average temperatures and is sensitive to extreme weather events. The benefits of the current energy transition go beyond their environmental effects.

Research in a Tweet: Governance structures and the composition of the board affect the performance of banks in times of crisis. Greater diversity and experience are associated with a better performance of European banks in the 2007-08 financial crisis. These insights are robust to different measures of performance and estimation techniques.

Research in a Tweet: Aurora’s research falls under an overarching concern with being of service to the community. Some of her most recent contributions in the fields of Economic Growth and of Innovation illustrate this.

Research in a Tweet: Four business models can be identified in the European banking sector. Individual banks adopting different models do not show the same performance and resilience. Still, a diversified banking sector is better prepared to deal with crises.

Research in a Tweet: 1st and 2nd cycle higher education graduates entering the labour market in occupations for which they are relatively overqualified suffer a wage penalty of up to 16.2% and a lower likelihood of changing jobs than similar graduates that are well-matched.

Research in a Tweet: Despite a significant decline after 2013, the last 20 years have witnessed an upsurge in the number of international publications by Portuguese economists. However, the body of researchers is worryingly aged, and significant gender imbalances remain.