The phenomenon of population ageing and its influence on the economic growth of countries has long been the focus of major concern for both governments and the scientific community. Considering the scientific contributions that have been published on the matter in recent years, it seems timely...

An important characteristic of the role of foreign trade in the technological catch-up of countries is the complementary nature of technological change and human capital formation. In this context, the level of education is likely to have a crucial impact on total factor productivity because it...

Neo-Schumpeterian streams of research emphasize the close relationship between changes in economic structure in favour of high-skill and high-tech branches and rapid economic growth. They identify the emergence of a new technological paradigm, strongly based on the application of information and...

After a period of convergence where many perceived the country as a success case, Portugal’s economic performance proved to be disappointing in the last decade. In this study we focus on the relationship between technology and economic catching-up in order to answer to two major questions: (i)...

Given a panel of oil producing countries, we show that a higher oil concentration is associated with an increase in economic growth through capital efficiency in: (i) countries with medium and low income per head from East Asia & Pacific and Latin America & the Caribbean, classified as followers...

This study re-evaluates the impact of natural resources on growth using panel data and a factor-efficiency accounting framework. The resource-curse thesis is dismissed as capital efficiency is improved by geographically-concentrated natural resources, which hinder institutional quality in recent...

In this study we re-evaluate the impact of natural resources on economic growth. The reassessment is based on a growth model where, using panel-data analysis, natural-resource variables (geographically diffused and concentrated) affect the efficiency gains of labour and capital in production. We...

The increasing openness to international trade during the second half of the XXth century is an inescapable feature in the development of the Portuguese economy. Despite having been hit by several crises in its Balance of Payments over the century, Portugal did not suffer, apparently, from...

This paper presents a survey of literature on the `resource curse', a puzzling empirical result that associates natural resource riches with lower economic growth. We show the main theories that attempt to explain the curse ? ranging from the structuralist theses of the 1950s to recent and more...