The relative attractiveness of cities as places to live determines population movements in or out of them. Understanding the appealing features of a city is fundamental to local governments, particularly for cities facing population decline. Pull and push attributes of cities can include...

Several countries extend collective bargaining agreements to entire sectors, therefore binding non-subscriber workers and employers. These extensions may address coordination issues but may also distort competition by imposing sector-specifc minimum wages and other work conditions that are not...

Although activation services such as monitoring, training, or job subsidies have been shown to increase exits from unemployment, there is little comprehensive evidence about the effects of activation during recessions. Here we evaluate a large activation programme introduced in Portugal in 2012,...

PISA uses a complex sampling procedure based on stratification variables chosen by the participating countries’ authorities. In this paper we analyse the representativeness of the samples used in terms of the distribution of students per grade and track of studies for Portugal. For the three...

We conduct a systematic study of the impact of European Union (EU) regional policies on regional economic growth that controls for national policies and geographic characteristics. Special care is taken in distinguishing between the impact of EU policies and of national policies on economic...

In this paper we investigate, for the first time, how individual determinants of entrepreneurship - such as age, income, education, work status, skills, access to networks and fear of failure - differ between males and females. We conduct our exercise using individual data provided by the Global...

This paper analyses the efects of public funding of higher education on the welfare of the diferent agents. It takes into account the hierarchical nature of the educational system and also the fact that parents always have the possibility to complement basic public education with private...

The crisis has drawn attention to the fact that not only emerging powers but other regions of the world as well may be offering different development models and may constitute into alternative, in some dimensions more positive agents, in the conduct of the present stage of globalisation....

From 1995 to 2010 Portugal has accumulated a negative international asset position of 110 percent of GDP. In a developed and aging economy the number is astonishing and any argument to consider it sustainable must rely on extremely favorable forecasts on growth. Portuguese policy options are...