Abstract
This paper assesses Brazil's real convergence (1822-2019) through unit root tests and Markov Regime-Switching (MS) models in three different scenarios: towards (i) other six Latin American countries (LA6); (ii) Portugal; and (iii) the technological frontier country, the US. The extended unit root test results favour Brazil's very long-run real convergence towards LA6 and Portugal, but not the US. The estimated MS models, involving two different regimes, real convergence and real non-convergence/divergence, capture institutional quality's positive effect in promoting Brazil's real convergence.

Abstract
Background. Traditional burning is a practice with social and ecological value used worldwide. However, given the often improper and negligent use of fire, this practice is often associated with rural fire ignitions.Aims. Systematise experts' understanding of traditional burning and identify its challenges in the Portuguese context.Methods. Twenty-eight Portuguese experts from industry, academia, NGOs and public entities with in-depth involvement in fire and forest management were interviewed to create a mental model of traditional burning in Portugal.Key results. Eight dimensions were identified: motivations behind traditional burning, alternative solutions, risks before a traditional burn, risks during a traditional burn, underlying causes of risk, exogenous elements and factors, potential impacts, and activities leading to a successful traditional burn.Conclusions. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of traditional burn practice in the Portuguese context and offers a baseline to support stakeholders and policymakers in managing traditional burning's social and environmental impacts in the future.Implications. This research offers several implications across the eight dimensions identified, including the need to improve regulations on the use of fire and fuel reduction policies, promote fire use education and feasible and affordable alternatives to traditional burning, and increase communities' commitment to mitigation actions.

Abstract
We consider a nondurable good monopolist that collects data on its customers in order to profile them and subsequently practice price discrimination on returning cus-tomers. The monopolist's price discrimination scheme is leaky in the sense that an endogenous fraction of consumers choose to incur a privacy cost to conceal their identity when they return in the following periods. We characterize the Markov perfect equili-brium of the game under two alternative customer profiling regimes: full information acquisition (FIA) and purchase history information (PHI). In both cases, we find that, contrary to what could be expected, the monopolist's aggregate profit is not monotoni-cally increasing in the level of the privacy cost, but a U-shaped function of it, leading to ambiguous profit effects: a reduction in privacy costs increases the fraction of customers who choose to be anonymous (detrimental profit effect), but it also softens the firm's introductory price, reducing the pace at which prices targeted to new customers fall over time (positive profit effect). When comparing results under FIA and PHI, we find that market expansion is faster, and more customers conceal their identity under FIA than under PHI. Equilibrium profits are also higher in the FIA case. Although equili-brium profits are U-shaped functions of the privacy cost in both profiling regimes, they tend to be globally decreasing with the privacy cost under PHI and globally increasing under FIA.

Abstract
Leadership styles and human capital are important drivers of innovation processes. The way the leader interacts with the organization members can pre-empt or leverage innovation processes as leaders influence, empower and motivate other individuals in the achievement of their goals. Human capital is an important driver of innovation and competitiveness, as it will shape the uniqueness of the company as well as the process to obtain skills, capabilities, knowledge and expertise. As such, the main objectives of the paper are to analyze the impact of leadership styles on the innovation process and also to address the moderation effect of the human capital on the previous relation. Four leadership styles-autocratic, transactional, democratic, and transformational-were considered to measure their impacts on the innovation process, considering the alternative types of innovations. The 2018 Community Innovation Survey (CIS) database was used, encompassing Portuguese data, covering the 2016-2018 period, with a sample of 13702 firms. In regard to the empirical part, first, an exploratory analysis was run to better understand the connection between the leadership styles and the innovative strategies followed by an econometric estimation encompassing 28 logit models to disentangle the specific impacts of each leader on each innovation type. Evidence proves that autocratic and transactional leadership styles have a negative impact on innovation and transformational and democratic leadership impact innovation positively. Furthermore, human capital was found to moderate the relationship between leadership styles and the innovation process; i.e., under the same leadership style, the presence of additional skills leverages innovative propensity. The paper brings relevant insights for both managers and policymakers, highlighting that innovation will be accelerated if firms implement more participatory (democratic and transformational) leadership styles and also if they invest in competences to promote knowledge internalization and share. All in all, participatory leadership combined with the internal skills is proved to be an efficient combination for innovation to take place; as such, policy instruments must promote the coexistence of these two factors.

Abstract
Disentangling innovation from growth is unrealistic in the present times. Also, anticipating the future behavior of innovative firms is relevant to the entire innovation ecosystem; and assessing the persistence of innovation and appraising the role of factors affecting ongoing innovation activities in firms is essential. This chapter discusses a very important subject related to the concept of innovation persistence in relation to structural innovation characteristics of firms, with a focus on technological regimes, to better understand if there is change in innivation continuity accordingly to the technological intensity embedded in the sector. The empirical research is based on data from CIS database, comprising 3237 firms which present in the 2014 and 2018 waves. We analyze the innovative persistence behavior of these firms regarding proxies like firm dimension, innovation activities, types of innovation, government funding, and more importantly, technological regimes. To do this, we applied binary logistic regression for developing a model which can forecast the drivers of innovation persistency propensity. The presented study shows that some very important results are achieved. Besides demonstrating innovative persistency in 75% of science-based firms, the findings confirm that firms in high-tech and science-based industries are more prone to continue innovating and, as a result, this consistency in innovation will generate virtuous cycles of innovation. Furthermore, our data shows that complex innovators are more likely to persist than single innovators, proving the existence of complementarities among the innovation types.

Abstract
The purpose of this research is to demonstrate how retailers have used the digital transformation to mitigate the negative effects of COVID-19. As this research aims to understand a real-life phenomenon for which there is very limited knowledge, we created the opportunity to empirically explore the digital transformation in the retail industry during COVID-19 pandemic. In general terms, the research follows a qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory case study design. The results have shown that retailers should focus on technological innovations, adapt their business models, manage their distribution channels, and strengthen their customer-centric strategy. Moreover, it is necessary to emphasize that while smart retail is gradually standing out in the sector, there are also some factors that have not been overcome, such as lack of digital culture, training, and digital leadership. Despite these identified difficulties, the adoption of a digital strategy will allow a differentiating, safe and secure shopping experience, which today is one of the decisive factors for the survival of companies. The COVID-19 pandemic had social and economic effects in all industries - retail was no exception. In turn, the digital technologies already used by companies began to contribute to retailers being able to respond more quickly to customer needs, having been fundamental in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this research is one of the first to explore this topic, bringing new contributions to theory and managerial practice.