Abstract
Considering lean thinking inside and beyond the organisation's boundaries, in the extended supply chain, this paper aims to fill a literature gap clearly stating some outsourcing practices as lean practices and establishing a deployment evolution parallel between both practices. A literature review was carried out collecting cases of lean deployment in healthcare, from both scientific and grey literature. Cases were classified according to lean deployment taxonomy in healthcare settings, showing some differences in lean journey stages in 15 countries. There is an alignment between SCM thinking in healthcare and lean thinking that places a SCM decision as outsourcing as a lean practice serving not only strategic intent but solving operational efficiency. There is a match between different outsourcing drivers (transactional, strategic and transformational) and lean maturity levels. The main constraint to deployment of both lean and outsourcing practices are cultural differences. Understanding lean and outsourcing different deployment maturity levels under the national cultural umbrella can open new perspectives to study lean sustainability factors and better outsourcing relationships in healthcare organisations. This paper presents a merger between the state?of?the art of both lean and outsourcing practices in healthcare settings and suggests an outsourcing and lean evolving pathway. © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract
Healthcare organisations, especially in public sector, have been adopting Lean management practices with increasing outcomes’ evidences in several parts of the world, since the beginning of this century. However, Lean deployment in Healthcare services has been addressed in the literature in a surgical way by an array of case reports addressing the “hard” side of Lean deployment, sometimes with no result’s consistency or even follow-up analysis. This thesis seek to add to the operational side of Lean deployment in Healthcare, a complementary understanding of Lean deployment approaches, addressing both “hard” and “soft” sides, identifying the real constraints of Lean in Healthcare sector and the sustainability factors. Supported by two main literature reviews and a multi-case approach, a deep research on the eligible Portuguese cases was conducted answering the questions: (i) What are the different outcomes from Lean deployment in Healthcare?; (ii) What are the barriers to Lean implementation in Healthcare?; (iii) What enables Lean implementation in Healthcare?; (iv) What are the risks of Lean in Healthcare?; (v) How to measure Lean achievements in Healthcare services?; and (vi) How to develop a sustainable Lean culture? This contribution to the academic debate on Lean deployment in Healthcare creates clarity on what can be called Lean practices in Healthcare settings under the light of the concept’s founders; what pattern of a Lean deployment journey was followed by Healthcare organisations; and how different cultural (organisational and national) contexts can influence the pace in pursuing that pattern.;As organizações de saúde, nomeadamente públicas, têm vindo a adoptar práticas de gestão Lean com crescente evidência de resultados em várias partes do mundo, desde o início deste século. Contudo, a aplicação do Lean em serviços de saúde tem tido um tratamento cirúrgico na literatura, recaindo apenas nos aspectos “hard” e sem grande consistência ou seguimento de resultados . Esta tese pretende acrescentar aos aspectos “hard” do Lean, um entendimento complementar juntando os aspectos “hard” e “soft”, identificando as restrições e factores de sustentabilidade da aplicação do Lean no sector da saúde. Tendo por base duas revisões bibliográficas primordiais e uma abordagem empírica multi-caso a partir de casos portugueses elegíveis, esta tese fornece respostas às questões: (i) Quais os diferentes resultados da aplicação do Lean na Saúde?; (ii) Quais as barreiras à aplicação do Lean na Saúde?; (iii) Quais os facilitadores da implementação do Lean na Saúde?; (iv) Quais os riscos do Lean na Saúde?; (v) Como medir a implementação do Lean na Saúde; e (vi) como desenvolver uma cultura Lean sustentável? Este contributo para o debate académico sobre a aplicação do Lean na Saúde introduz clareza sobre o que pode ou não ser chamado de práticas Lean na Saúde tendo como referência os conceitos dos fundadores; que padrão de implementação é seguido pelas organizações; e de que forma diferentes contextos culturais (nacionais e organizacionais) influenciam o ritmo desse padrão de implementação.

Abstract
This paper studies inefficiencies arising in oligopolies subject to environmental regulation based on tradable emission permits. We propose a duopoly model of upstream-downstream strategic competition: in the permits market a leader sets the price, whereas in the output market Cournot competition occurs. We find that strategic interaction in the output market gives rise to an additional distortion in the permits market where both firms adopt rival's cost-rising' strategies to gain a competitive advantage in the output market. As a result, the price of permits is always higher than firms' marginal abatement costs.

Abstract
A free daily newspaper distributes news to readers and sells ad-space to advertisers, having private information about its audience. For a given number of distributed copies, depending on the type of audience (favorable or unfavorable), the newspaper may either have a large readership or a small readership. A large readership provides a greater return to advertisers, because ads are visualized by more people. A favorable audience has also the advantage of requiring a lower distribution cost (for a given number of distributed copies), because readers are willing to exert more effort to obtain a copy of the free newspaper and are less likely to reject a copy that is handed to them. We find that when the audience is unfavorable, the number of distributed copies and the price of ad-space coincide with those of the perfect information scenario. In contrast, if the audience is favorable, the newspaper prints extra copies to send a credible signal to the advertisers that the audience is favorable. Overprinting is not necessarily welfare-detrimental since readers benefit from the existence of additional copies.

Abstract
At present, the financial market is facing severe constraints arising by household bankruptcy, mortgage debtor defaults and over-indebtedness. It is a common belief that improving economic (and financial in specific) literacy will improve the awareness of individuals about complex issues surrounding them and their ability to take financial decisions. The lack of basic knowledge about the functioning of markets may have detrimental consequences, in particular higher exposure to credit and financial risk. In spite of these wider developments, the importance of economic literacy on the making financial decisions about credits has been scarcely explored in empirical terms. This paper contributes to this line of research. Our purpose is to empirically demonstrate the influence of economic literacy on the financial decision making process, and, consequently, on the ability to meet the contracts. We analyse the Portuguese case, a country about which there is scant empirical evidence on these matters, and we use an original database built under the Economicando project. We assess how much knowledge individuals have with respect to economics lato sensu (i.e. including aspects of financial literacy). We seek to understand the relationship between economic literacy and over-indebtedness. The study has been conducted under the research project Research project "Economicando" (PTDC/EGE-ECO/100923/2008), financed by FEDER funds through the Programa Operacional Fatores de Competitividade - COMPETE and by national funds through the FCT Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia.

Abstract