This chapter analyses the architecture of the International Monetary System (IMS) and the role of reserve currencies in it. We begin by describing the evolution of the IMS from the Gold Standard to the Bretton Woods system and the European integration process that led to the creation of the...

This paper analyses the spread of the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone. To this end we employ three approaches. The first approach employs univariate autoregressive models. These allow the identification of shocks to government bond yields in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain and...

The rise of nontradable sectors has been mentioned as one of the causes of low economic growth and external imbalances in the Portuguese economy. In this paper we describe the main trends and jumps in the evolution of nontradable sectors, since the mid-1950s, using four different databases to...

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...

Parameter uncertainty has been a recurrent subject treated in the financial literature. The normative portfolio selection approach considers two main kinds of decision rules: expected expected utility maximization and mean-variance criterion. Assuming that the mean-variance criterion is a good...

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...

This work uses a simultaneous equation system approach to analyze the relationship between the Management and Business Quality of companies and their market Price Quality. Using panel data we found that both the Management and the Business Quality of companies positively influence the Market...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the Chinese foreign exchange policy on foreign trade with the European Union. After describing the importance of the exchange rate in an open economy and some of the methodologies employed to calculate its equilibrium value, we examine whether...

This paper examines the presence of political cycles inside the Portuguese governments’ aggregate expenditures by using annual data for 10 expenditure components. The results indicate that the choice of the expenditure components to be increased during election periods by Portuguese...

This paper proposes a new way to measure and deal with risk within the portfolio selection problem using a skewness/semivariance biobjective optimization framework. The solutions of this biobjective optimization problem allow the investor to analyse the efficient trade-off between skewness and...