This paper focuses on the relationship between the regional firm density and the growth of firms in the Portuguese textile and clothing industry to investigate how their geographic clustering influences said growth. Despite the concentration of this industry in the Northern region of Portugal in only four poles, our results show that the location of firms in the cluster is not relevant for growth when the whole industry is considered. However, disaggregate analysis shows that the clothing industry does exhibit both location externalities and cross-location effect, while textile manufacture exhibits neither. In addition, our empirical evidence reveals that the growth of firms located in the cluster is positively correlated with external finance. This result suggests that location becomes a solvency signal for firms, and, specifically, this might help to explain why textile manufacturers firms are located in the cluster. These findings are relevant for entrepreneurs and Portuguese policymakers, as it jeopardizes the optimal allocation of scarce resources in the Portuguese textile cluster.

This paper deals with the determinants of education-job match for higher-education graduates, using a logistic regression model to identify explanatory variables related to sociodemographic, academic trajectory and institutional characteristics. The empirical analysis is based on an anonymous online questionnaire administered to a sample of graduates, from 2014 to 2019, in Portuguese institutions, of which about five hundred observations were made. Although the boundaries between universities and polytechnics are less obvious today, there are still some differences between the two higher-education subsystems regarding education-job match. The main ones are related to the field of study, gender, and the need to move away from home to study and work. Factors that improve the probability of education-job matching, common to both subsystems, were also found, such as having i) studied ‘social sciences, commerce, and law’ and ‘engineering, manufacturing and construction’, ii) attained good final grades, and iii) participated in extracurricular activities involving complementary training.

Real life mechanisms used to assign doctors to hospitals inherit properties from matching theory, it enhances the welfare of interns and allows to implement interns to hospital in a stable way. We briefly review matching theory, then discuss the advantages and drawbacks of these centralized markets vs decentralized ones using the property of assortative matchings as main analytical tool.

This study applies the “value get, value give” framework to explain how gamified loyalty programmes create value for firms. This study proposes a model which has been tested and whose aim is to analyse whether the perceived value offered by a gamified loyalty scheme generates enough customer satisfaction and whether this subsequently transforms into customer engagement behaviour that adds value to firms. Data from 134 active users of the gamified loyalty programme ‘Más Renfe’ belonging to Renfe, the Spanish leader in rail transport for passengers and goods, were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The findings show that hedonic and financial value increase user satisfaction, whereas preferential treatment and personalisation value do not. In addition, greater satisfaction with loyalty schemes facilitate customer engagement behaviour. This study contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence of the effectiveness of real gamified loyalty programmes in promoting engagement behaviour that creates value for companies.