We know from experience that weak economic growth increases the unemployment rate. In 1962 Okun proposed to measure potential output in terms of unemployment gap. From this relation a direct link between increase in unemployment and output growth was deduced, known as the Okun Law. This Law is...

Procuramos com este estudo fazer uma identificação, seguida de quantificação, de possíveis choques de natureza macroeconómica a que a economia portuguesa esteve sujeita durante os finais dos anos 80. Propomos para isso um modelo resumido para representar o seu comportamento. As variáveis...

This study analyses the effects of public and private investment on Portuguese GDP in the period 1960-2013. After a brief review of the literature based on works developed primarily in the context of VAR analyses, such as those by Pereira and Andraz (2005), and Afonso and St Aubyn (2008), an...

It is well known and widely accepted by economists that the characteristics of the European countries that become the Eurozone in 1999 did not match the requirements of an Optimum Currency Area (OCA). The only criteria for membership of the new area were nominal. A strict level of convergence in...

One of the main implications of the basic target zone model developed by Krugman (1991) is that there is a trade-off between exchange rate volatility and interest rate differential volatility. Using an M-GARCH model we find evidence that such a trade-off existed, prior to the introduction of the...

Por razões de natureza política, sem fundamentação económica, a atual crise que se vive em Portugal é apontada como tendo por causa exclusiva a crise financeira internacional. Aos argumentos de responsabilização externa juntam-se, por vezes, os argumentos, também de natureza política,...

As despesas públicas em educação e saúde constituem, em muitos países, dois dos principais instrumentos através dos quais o Estado exerce as suas funções sociais, sendo todavia identificadas por vários autores como incompatíveis com um bom desempenho económico, tendo por base, entre...

From the mid-1980s to the late-1990s a considerable number of empirical studies investigated the impact of the Welfare State (WS) on economic growth with no definite conclusions on the sign, transmission mechanisms and direction of causality of the relationship. More recently, globalization,...

The Portuguese convergence and growth experience after EU membership can be divided into two periods: 1986-1998, a convergence period during which growth in the Portuguese economy accelerated and Portugal grew faster than the EU15/14 average; and a stagnation/divergence period from 1999 onwards...

Growth and real convergence in Portugal are usually analyzed after EU accession on January 1st 1986 based on real GDP per capita. There is however a lack of literature approaching the subject from an European distribution of income perspective and for a longer time period. We fill this gap by...