Loading...
15 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 10 of 15
- Does earnings quality impact firms’ performance? The case of Portuguese SMEs from the mold sectorPublication . Duarte, Ana Filipa; Lisboa, Inês; Carreira, PedroPurpose: This work aims to study the impact of earnings quality on firms’ financial performance. Design/methodology/approach: An unbalanced panel data of 237 small and medium-sized Portuguese companies from the mold industry, using 2010-2018 yearly data was analyzed. While most studies focus only on earnings management when assessing earnings quality, in this study six proxies for earnings quality are used, namely accruals quality (a proxy for earnings management), earnings persistence, earnings predictability, earnings smoothness, earnings timeliness, and earnings conservatism. Moreover, two proxies of financial performance are considered, the return on assets and the economic value added. An econometric model was estimated using either a fixed-effects or a random-effects specification to account for the individual firm-specific effects and ensure heteroscedasticity corrected estimates. Findings: The results show that managers must be concerned with the quality of reported earnings, as it can affect positively firms’ financial performance, especially regarding accruals quality. Persistence, predictability, smoothness, timeliness, and conservatism are shown not to exert significant influence on financial performance in the sample. Research limitations/implications: This work contributes not only as a literature review on these thematic but also to firms’ managers and stakeholders, who have information that helps them select strategies that guarantee earnings quality and improve firms’ financial performance. Originality/value: We proposed an econometric model that studies the relationship between earnings quality (using several proxies for it) and financial performance that can be applied to all companies.
- Employment variables and the work-study relation: a portuguese case studyPublication . Lopes, Ana Sofia; Carreira, Pedro
- Drivers of academic pathways in higher education: traditional vs. non-traditional studentsPublication . Carreira, Pedro; Lopes, Ana SofiaDropout rates in higher education (HE) are particularly high for nontraditional students which may be due to unadjusted educational policies. Considering as non-traditional the students who are employed at the enrolment moment and using a longitudinal database containing information on 5351 students from a Portuguese HE institution, an event history analysis approach is employed to distinguish the main drivers of graduation and dropout risks for traditional and non-traditional students and to test a set of research hypotheses. The results show significant differences between the two types of students, confirming the need of discretionary policies. For non-traditional students, policies that assist them in an early stage are shown to be of critical importance, for example by offering pre-enrolment preparatory courses or by joining them, in the classroom, with students with similar characteristics. For traditional students, providing solutions for financial limitations and promoting academic integration seem to be more effective.
- Vulnerability to COVID-19 unemployment in the Portuguese tourism and hospitality industryPublication . Lopes, Ana Sofia; Sargento, Ana; Carreira, PedroThis paper seeks to address the immediate effects of the COVID-19 crisis in the Portuguese tourism and hospitality industry by examining whether some specific characteristics make people more vulnerable or more immune to unemployment. Using an extensive micro-level dataset of personal and job-related attributes containing all unemployed individuals in the Portuguese tourism and hospitality industry, a logit model with 56,142 observations is estimated to assess how each characteristic contributed to the unemployment odds during the COVID-19 crisis (until end-July 2020), relatively to the pre-COVID period. The most vulnerable workers to COVID-19 unemployment seem to be older, less educated, less qualified, women and residents in regions with a higher concentration of people and tourism activity. Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis is generating a new type of unemployment by also affecting those who were never unemployed before, with more stable jobs and more motivated at work, while reducing voluntary disruptions. Public effort should be made not only to increase workforce education but especially to reinforce job-specific skills. The COVID-19 crisis has broken traditional protective measures against unemployment and separated workers from their desired occupations, which justifies new and exceptional job preservation measures. Policy recommendations are given aiming at strengthening worker resilience and industry competitiveness in the most affected sub-sectors and regions. This study extends the current understanding of worker vulnerability to economic downturns. Herein, we used a three-level approach (combining socio-demographic, work-related and regional factors), capturing the immediate effects of the COVID-19 crisis and focusing on the tourism and hospitality industry (the hardest-hit sector worldwide).
- Mature vs Young Working Students: Similarities, Differences, and Drivers of Graduation and DropoutPublication . Carreira, Pedro; Lopes, Ana SofiaThe high dropout rate among working students in higher education in Portugal, including both those who are older and at a mature stage in their professional careers and those who are young and recent workers, is one of the main concerns of educational policy. Identifying the drivers of the academic pathway for these students is essential to promote successful education and increase labour productivity and business competitiveness. Using an extensive longitudinal database of personal, course, and employment variables of 1,561 working students from a Portuguese higher education institution, we perform a duration analysis to determine and compare the factors that drive the dropout and graduation risks of mature and young working students in higher education. The results show that, in general, young working students are more positively influenced by financial aid, their motivation for the course, and the desire to find a new qualified professional career, while mature working students depend more on social and academic integration. The accumulation of knowledge/skills in the 'out of class' experience seems to contribute positively to academic performance.
- The academic performance of student-workers in higher education – increasing rapidly regions’ intellectual capitalPublication . Carreira, Pedro; Lopes, Ana SofiaAlthough in recent years access to higher education in Portugal has expanded, there are still some people who interrupt their academic progression and enter the labour market not because of lack of skills but because of monetary constraints. Thus, returning to school is considered of great importance to mitigate this discrimination and, at the same time, to reinforce regions’ intellectual capital and workers’ qualification, promoting labour productivity and firms’ competitiveness in the short run – being therefore important for both dimensions of equity and efficiency. Even though the determinants of academic performance, as a proxy for the effective acquisition of skills and growth of intellectual capital, have been deeply studied for the traditional students, the different characteristics, the lack of time and the multiple motivations of adult student-workers justify them to receive an independent treatment. In particular, it is expected for adult student-workers that job characteristics play an important role determining their academic success. Therefore, based on an extended set of observed attributes, which allow us to control for individual and degree characteristics, we develop two regression models to find out how job characteristics affect the academic performance (measured by the final grade point average – GPA, and by the completion time) of adult student-workers in higher education. We use a longitudinal dataset constituted by 332 student-workers that have enrolled in an undergraduate program at Leiria Polytechnic Institute (IPLeiria) in 2008 or 2009 and have completed it until 2015. The data was obtained by matching an internal dataset of IPLeiria with data from the Ministry of Education and Science, Portugal. The results show that student-workers who finish their degrees behave similarly to the non-worker students in their academic performance, but with different determinants explaining it, especially in the case of final GPA, where job characteristics play a more important role than individual and degree characteristics. In detail, we found that self-employment and enrolling in a degree from a scientific field unrelated with the professional activity have a positive effect in the final GPA of male student-workers, and that exercising a qualified job or being employed in the private sector may limit academic performance as these workers tend to choose more demanding degrees. In addition, flexible professional schedules, peer effects, higher average grades within-degree and improved academic integration all seem to contribute positively to the academic performance of student-workers. We expect that our work contributes to develop policies that improve the academic success of student-workers and increase the participation of adult workers in higher education, thus enhancing regions’ intellectual capital, labour productivity and firms’ competitiveness in the short run.
- Policy recommendations for improving academic achievement among IPLeiria student-workersPublication . Lopes, Ana Sofia; Carreira, PedroIn Portugal, student-workers represent 8.5% of higher-education students and observe higher dropout rates, partially because of a higher education system that is more fitted to the traditional students. Using an extensive longitudinal database with original information on individual, degree and employment characteristics of 1566 undergraduate studentworkers from IPLeiria, we determine the factors that drive the dropout and graduation risks of adult workers in higher education. We concluded that academic failure explains only a fraction of dropout behaviour among adult student-workers. Indeed, academic achievement is also affected by school-residence distance, financial difficulties, marital status, motivation, field of study, academic integration and professional background. We found that men are more likely to drop out and more influenced by employment variables (self-employment, job qualification and job-degree relation) while, for women, marriage (associated with household responsibilities) seems to increase the risk of dropout. Some policy recommendations are suggested for the higher education system to adapt better to the particular characteristics of adult workers, namely by: adjusting the schedule and composition of classes; appreciating the curriculum and orienting candidates, stopouts and poor performance students; providing scholarships; distributing the vacancies across admission regimes; and introducing shorter/simplified versions of the degrees.
- Pathways of adult student-workers in higher education: explaining the risks of early dropout, late dropout and graduationPublication . Carreira, Pedro; Lopes, Ana SofiaIn Portugal, student-workers represent 8.5% of higher education students. They are mainly adults with a less favourable socioeconomic and professional background that return to school while working and after experiencing some years in the labour market so as to find a new profession or a job promotion. However, due to their particular characteristics and time restrictions, adult student-workers observe high dropout rates, justifying the need of identifying their determinants of dropout and graduation risks in a separate way. With this purpose, we match five sources to obtain a unique five-year longitudinal dataset with extensive information on individual, degree and employment variables of 976 student-workers from Leiria Polytechnic Institute, Portugal. We then use event history analysis, with competing risks, to investigate if and when the event of dropping out or graduation occurs and how a set of covariates affects the risk of each event. In addition, we distinguish between those that drop out with few accumulated credits (labelled as early dropouts) and those that drop out despite having a significant number of credits completed (late dropouts). We found that early dropouts depend more on academic failure, school-residence distance, personal motivation and employment variables, while late dropouts are more influenced by other factors such as marital status and degree characteristics. Among policy recommendations, beyond the frequently referred actions to reduce academic failure, we highlight the adoption of measures to avoid stopout behaviour, the adequate definition of the schedule and composition of classes (daytime classes and higher proportions of student-workers in the classroom, and with distinct academic performance, seem to reduce dropout risk), and the curriculum appreciation at the admission moment (some employment variables seem to contribute to increase the probability of graduation while others seem to contribute to enhance the risk of dropout), including criteria for regional preference and personal motivation.
- COVID-19 impact on job losses in Portugal: who are the hardest-hit?Publication . Lopes, Ana Sofia; Carreira, PedroThe COVID-19 pandemic caused job losses to rise dramatically. Herein, the purpose of the article is to identify which personal and job characteristics make individuals more vulnerable or more resilient to COVID-19 unemployment in Portugal and thus to help policymakers, organizations and individuals themselves, in creating mechanisms to avoid unemployment within this new context.
- I. Film: Using Electrospinning to Create Bioactive FilmsPublication . Silva, António Raimundo; Carreira, Pedro; Santos, Cyril dos; Reis, Miguel; Mateus, ArturWith increasing competition between companies, they are increasingly striving to produce higher quality products and to improve their production processes, and the food industry is no different. In order to preserve food for longer, this type of company has dedicated its attention to intelligent packaging, capable of preserving food for longer and of acting as a sensor of the state of food. To develop a film capable of fulfilling the new ambitions of the companies various manufacturing processes have been studied. This document gives an overview of the electrospinning process, capable of producing nano-fibres of biological materials. This document aims to serve as a study base for the I.film project through the study of the process that will provide the polymer film with the necessary biological characteristics.