It is an empirical fact that low-level income countries manufacture low price commodities, using simple technology, with no investment in Research and Development. This constitutes a poverty trap where it is not advantageous for workers to get further training and poorly educated/trained workers...

To overcome market failures society creates common laws that stimulate or penalize individual actions, the enforcement of which depends on the actions of public authorities who may be susceptible to corruption. We model this behaviour for an autocracy versus a democracy, using a microeconomic...

Despite her sadly short academic life, Leonor Vasconcelos Ferreira has left us a set of publications of noticeable scientific quality and explicitly social relevance, focusing on the study and measurement of poverty and income inequality. The present article briefly summarises the outcome of her...

Using large-scale survey data for firms located in Portugal, we analyze which firm characteristics are conducive to establishing contacts with universities. Although almost half of the firms surveyed stated they had established some contacts with universities in the period 2001-2003, only a few...