One of the primary responsibilities of economics is to build a good indicator of the magnitude of short term disequilibrium. Knowledge of the magnitude of the excess demand in the economy is essential for conducting fiscal and monetary policy. In a period of contraction when monetary policy is...

This chapter analyses the spread of the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone. To this end we employ three approaches. The first approach employs univariate autoregressive models. These allow the identification of shocks to government bond yields in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain and...

The increase in both public and private indebtedness has been one of the main macroeconomic developments in recent years. This trend has been accompanied by large current account deficits, especially in smaller countries, such as Greece and Portugal. One possible explanation for this behaviour...

Since its creation, the euro has raised high expectations among the investors and within the countries that chose to adopt it. This chapter aims to study the possibility of the European single currency becoming an international reserve currency. With the financial crises that started in August...

Portugal was the first country in Europe to join Great Britain in the Gold Standard, in 1854, having abandoned the principle of free gold convertibility in 1891. By elucidating the historical choice of the Gold Standard by the Portuguese authorities, and analysing its macroeconomic behaviour, we...