Buying Citizenship? Chinese Golden Visa Migrants in Portugal

In 2011, Portugal launched a residence permit programme to attract foreign investment from non-EU citizens, with Chinese business migrants representing those taking most advantage of this initiative. This paper analyses this policy measure and assesses its social consequences, as a new way that Chinese migrants have to enter Portugal. Firstly, we characterise this programme by identifying its principles and legal requirements, using official data from 2012 to 2018. We then describe the emergence of this type of residence permit as a response to the financial crisis of 2011, and as part of a neoliberal political rationality that has guided a governance model since this time. Next, we characterise the profile of Chinese citizens who benefit from this initiative and claim residence permits on the basis of their economic power. Finally, we discuss the social and political implications of this kind of entrance to Portugal, to provide some insights for policymakers.     

A bicriteria approach to scheduling a single machine with job rejection and positional penalties

Single machine scheduling problems have been extensively studied in the literature under the assumption that all jobs have to be processed. However, in many practical cases, one may wish to reject the processing of some jobs in the shop, which results in a rejection cost. A solution for a scheduling problem with rejection is given by partitioning the jobs into a set of accepted and a set of rejected jobs, and by scheduling the set of accepted jobs among the machines. The quality of a solution is measured by two criteria: a scheduling criterion, F1, which is dependent on the completion times of the accepted jobs, and the total rejection cost, F2. Problems of scheduling with rejection have been previously studied, but usually within a narrow framework—focusing on one scheduling criterion at a time. This paper provides a robust unified bicriteria analysis of a large set of single machine problems sharing a common property, namely, all problems can be represented by or reduced to a scheduling problem with a scheduling criterion which includes positional penalties. Among these problems are the minimization of the makespan, the sum of completion times, the sum and variation of completion times, and the total earliness plus tardiness costs where the due dates are assignable. Four different problem variations for dealing with the two criteria are studied. The variation of minimizing F1+F2 is shown to be solvable in polynomial time, while all other three variations are shown to be $\mathcal{NP}$ -hard. For those hard problems we provide a pseudo polynomial time algorithm. An FPTAS for obtaining an approximate efficient schedule is provided as well. In addition, we present some interesting special cases which are solvable in polynomial time.     

THE MEXICAN STATE AND THE AGRIBUSINESS MODEL OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE GLOBALIZATION ERA

This article analyzes the relationship between the State and transnational capital manifested in capitalist agribusiness schemes in Mexican agriculture. It illustrates a model that has privileged one type of development in detriment to other forms of organizing rural agricultural production and labor (Real 1997). Current agricultural development in México is linked directly to the “Green Revolution”, México being prominent as its birthplace. Ironically, the Green Revolution contributed to a massive displacement of rural population to cities as human labor was replaced by machinery (1992). Development of capitalist agriculture in México and Latin America is closely related to the effects of the transnationalization of agroindustry. The importance of agribusiness has expanded in recent decades through a series of events, including the substitution of basic crops for more profitable ones and the contribution to the “new international division of labor” (Sanderson 1990). Recent trilateral transnational political and economic changes are linked to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between México, United States and Canada (Kearney 1995). In the case of agriculture, Palerm and Urquiola (1993) believe the relationship between United States and Mexico to be bimodal. From a perspective of Social Anthropology we provide firsthand information about two areas of agroindustry: production of vegetables for export and production of poultry where participation by different social actors was observed. Agro‐industrial entrepreneurs depend upon agricultural workers who wish to conserve a peasant way of life.     

An Intertemporal Analysis of Development Policies in the EU

In this paper, we focus on the effects of EU structural transfer programs on the evolution of the EU less developed economies. We develop a two-sector endogenous growth model of private and public physical capital and human capital accumulation in which the public sector and the current account balances play a crucial role. This model is applied to Portugal. Simulation results suggest that structural programs will bring Portuguese GDP per capita to 63.7% of the EU average (up from around 54% in the last two decades), thereby greatly contributing to the process of real convergence of the Portuguese economy to EU standards. Additional transfers, primarily targeted at infrastructure development, are necessary, however, if a greater degree of real convergence is to be achieved. Furthermore, the impact of transfers on public deficits, the current account, and real exchange rates might adversely affect the long run requirements of nominal convergence and might exacerbate the need for budgetary restraint in Portugal. Accordingly, a relaxation of domestic matching fund requirements might be desirable.     

Brownian Bridge and Other Path-dependent Gaussian Processes Vectorial Simulation

The iterative simulation of the Brownian bridge is well known. In this article, we present a vectorial simulation alternative based on Gaussian processes for machine learning regression that is suitable for interpreted programming languages implementations. We extend the vectorial simulation of path-dependent trajectories to other Gaussian processes, namely, sequences of Brownian bridges, geometric Brownian motion, fractional Brownian motion, and Ornstein–Ulenbeck mean reversion process.     

Webster‐Stratton Incredible Years Basic Parent Programme (IY) in child care placements: residential staff carers' satisfaction results

The aim of the present study was to investigate residential child care staff satisfaction with their involvement in the Webster‐Stratton Incredible Years Basic Parent Programme (IY). In an exploratory, not randomized study, 27 professionals from two different short‐term Portuguese residential child care centres (IG1, n = 15; IG2; n = 12) completed weekly IY evaluations and an overall satisfaction questionnaire at the end of their participation in the IY intervention. The weekly level of satisfaction was assessed with regard to each of the programme's components (content, DVDs, group leaders, group discussion). At the last session, they filled out a questionnaire aimed to evaluate the levels of satisfaction regarding the programme overall, the teaching format, the group leader(s) and the usefulness of specific educational techniques they learned. Data indicated that residential staff carers were highly satisfied with the weekly sessions and with the overall usefulness of the intervention programme. Results are discussed in terms of implications and future research directions.