The recent global financial crisis and the European sovereign-debt crisis have put financial constraints on Governments limiting their capacity to increase public investment and to promote economic growth. Also, in periods of high uncertainty firms tend to postpone the implementation of their projects, which has a negative impact on the economic growth. In this paper, we study different policies that can be set by governments in order to stimulate private investment. We develop an extended real options model that takes into account some relevant macroeconomic factors (namely, different types of taxes, asymmetric investment multipliers, and public inefficiencies) that do not appear in the related literature. The optimal incentives for the different types of stimuli are derived and discussed. We show that the optimal subsidy that prompts the private investment must be subject to a maximum that accounts for the Government's incremental tax-related benefits. Additionally, the required optimal subsidy can be reduced if the Government acts as a competitor fighting for the project. This would diminish the public spending while achieving the same objectives. We also show that a subsidy policy is always better than tax reductions. Finally, we illustrate the implementation of the model with an example that applies to the Portuguese economy. JEL codes: E22; E62; G31; H32.
Conducting research and development (R&D) software projects, in an environment where both industry and university collaborate, is challenging due to many factors. In fact, industrial companies and universities have generally different interests and objectives whenever they collaborate. For this reason, it is not easy to manage and negotiate the industrial companies' interests, namely schedules and their expectations. Conducting such projects in an agile framework is expected to decrease these risks, since partners have the opportunity to frequently interact with the development team in short iterations and are constantly aware of the characteristics of the system under development. However, in this type of collaborative R&D projects, it is often advantageous to include some waterfall practices, like upfront requirements modeling using UML models, which are not commonly used in agile processes like Scrum, in order to better prepare the implementation phase of the project. This paper presents some lessons learned that result from experience of the authors in adopting some Scrum practices in a R&D project, like short iterations, backlogs, and product increments, and simultaneously using UML models, namely use cases and components.
In a world where online shopping and digital interactions are growing constantly, one must be aware of their consequences for retail and how it can benefit from this. Big retail chains are keeping up with the phenomena by reinventing its way to attract more shoppers, either by creating very complete online portals or by bringing technology to its physical spaces. This paper brings some data on how consumers are using digital platforms for buying goods while inside a physical store. It concludes that a growing number of consumers are using mobile as an in-store support device as well as retailers are using it to attract consumers to stores. The paper also shares some data from a small inquiry made to Portuguese users about their use of mobile for in-store shopping purposes.
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