Current economic developments in Portugal do not portend well. The Portuguese GDP is shrinking and the growth forecast for 2012 is gloomy - in the EU only the forecast for Greece is even worse (Figure 1). Moreover, Portugal is now having to pay double-digit interest rates on its bonds, its debt...

How do labor market reforms affect international competitiveness and net foreign assets? To answer this question, we build a two-region RBC model with labor market frictions, idiosyncratic consumption risk, and limited cross-sectional heterogeneity to establish a direct link between labor market...