Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the main determinants of the probability of a household being poor, middle class, or rich. Design/methodology/approach – A new and integrated approach to the measurement of inequality in income distribution, poverty, and richness was...

There is scant evidence on the determinant factors of structural similarity between geographical spaces; moreover, it has been produced considering only the national level. The present study provides evidence on this topic at the regional level, based on the analysis of 275 Portuguese counties....

The aim of this work is to find patterns for products included in the customs tariffs of the USA and the EU (composed of over 5000 products disaggregated at the 6 digit-level) which share similarities, defined by a set of international trade variables, namely the index of revealed comparative...

Adopting a long term perspective, we evaluate the trade performance of less developed African countries. Besides some general trade indicators, we apply a constant market share analysis in order to decompose export performance into several components with specific economic interpretation. Our...

Proximity to the markets is a key determinant of the location of firms because distance still matters, as recently reported in the literature. Based on an adapted version of the most standard centrality index we propose a decomposition method that allows isolating the influence of: (i) internal...

We propose a concept of structural similarity, incorporating three dimensions (sectoral weights, inter-sectoral similarity and intra-sectoral similarity), and suggest indicators that include all these dimensions.

The traditional approach to evaluate trade competition considers the competition between two countries in a given destination market and quantifies it through a measure of structural similarity such as the Krugman index. We explore this topic further through the discussion of six distinct...

The aim of this work is to find patterns for products included in the customs tariffs of the USA and the EU (composed of over 5000 products disaggregated at the 6 digit-level) which share similarities, defined by a set of international trade variables, namely the index of revealed comparative...

With data for Portugal we propose an index of housing comfort based on the Household Budget Survey. This index covers housing and durable goods grouped in two dimensions: basic comfort and complementary comfort. Taking this index as starting point we make two contributions. First we quantify the...

International trade grew substantially throughout the last decades and international relations became more important for the economic performance of the countries. Simultaneously new poles emerged in the international arena leading to growing competition for higher market shares. Therefore,...