During the 1980’s, Portugal experienced a decrease in income inequality but this decrease was not uniform across the income distribution and, in recent years, income inequality seems to be following the opposite path. From around the year 2000, the Portuguese economy has become almost...

Financial constraints are a determinant factor that hinders firms' ability to carry out their investment growth. This chapter aims at analysing the impact of financial constraints upon Portuguese firms over the period 1996-2004, which covers the implementation and convergence towards the common...

This paper studies the Gold Standard in Portugal. It was the first country in Europe to join Great Britain in 1854. The principle of free gold convertibility was abandoned in 1891. For the purposes of a macroeconomic study, we also extended the analysis up to 1913. Our study points out the...

Two theses are presented and discussed throughout the paper. First, the limits on public deficits with the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) do not correspond to the imposition of restrictive fiscal policies, but instead to the abandonment of an ultimate goal of economic policy: full employment....

Recessions and financial crisis increase financial constraints and disproportionally affect constrained firms. This Chapter investigates the differences in firms’ financial constraints between sectors using a cash to cash-flow rationale (Almeida et al., 2004) and a firm specific index of...