Up to now, the analyses of the current "Great Recession" have been mainly confined to the national and international scale leaving aside the differential effects of the crisis upon regions and smaller areas. Although the current crisis has a strong international and global flavor, it must be...

We propose a structural alternative to the Economic Complexity Index (ECI, Hidalgo and Hausmann 2009; Hausmann et al. 2011) that ranks countries by their complexity. This ranking is tied to comparative advantages. Hence, it reveals information different from GDP per capita on the deep underlying...

Implicit in the text-book monopoly is an assumption of complete and instantaneous information or knowledge available to economic agents at free of charge. Under such circumstances, knowing the certain price and cost functions, the monopolist can make an optimal decision of price and output to...

In the United States, regions with more human capital tend to attract skilled workers (e.g., see Glaeser and Berry, 2005), and as a result, convergence between regions does not occur (e.g., see Barro and Sala-i-Martin, 1992). Presently, many of the most productive European workers try to migrate...

The present study aims to verify whether the balance-of-payments constrained growth approach is suitable for explaining the Portuguese growth performance during the last decades. For that, we adopt "Thirlwall's Law" that predicts actual growth by the ratio of the exports growth relative to the...

Along time the European Union (EU) has been pointed as the most succeeded example of regional integration. Now, this example has been cruelly shaken by the EZ (Euro Zone) crisis, originating increasing doubts about the integration process. It is evident that the proposed solutions for attacking...