In this paper we propose a discrete time model to measure the default spread for Bank loans. The model provides a closed-form solution for the short and medium term default spread, which we assume to be dependent on the default probabilities, the losses given default, the risk grades transition...

The process of European integration seems to be difficult for portuguese firms, which have to meet several problems regarding a single market and a single currency. This paper focus on the evaluation of manufacturing industry capacity, in terms of their main structural change, to cope with the...

It has been a long way, until both gender and development were recognized as important issues in academic and political arena. Several fields of science, such as sociology, anthropology, and economy contributed to the knowledge in this area, in addition to recent developments in feminist and...

In the middle of the twentieth century S.M. Lipset sustained that various indicators of economic development were higher in democratic countries than in authoritarian ones, suggesting that development was as a condition to democracy. More recently, though, several authors have shown that there...

This paper was replaced by CEFAGE-UE Working Paper 2009/13.

This work aims at studying regional wage differentials both in a static and in a dynamic perspective. Previous studies have typically studied this issue using the Blinder and Oaxaca static decomposition. This approach does not provide clear information about the sources explaining the change in...

Water being essential to human survival, a political economy directed to satisfying human basic needs, should be especially concerned with the issue of water availability and distribution. Why is there such inequality in its distribution? This inequality represents a serious violation of a human...

Os criterios de avaliacao sao declaradamente importantes para o desempenho escolar dos alunos. Apesar da diversidade dos criterios de avaliacao pelos quais os alunos, habitualmente, passam ao longo da sua formacao escolar, nao sao, geralmente, analisadas as diferencas nos resultados escolares...

Um dos aspectos mais marcantes da realidade económica e social actual de cada território, e mais determinante para o seu desenvolvimento económico, é o modo de organização territorial dos processos produtivos que lhe é característico, bem como, a natureza das estratégias empresariais...

The biggest producers and exporters of agricultural products have been adopting the genetic engineering in order to improve the factors productivity and the firms profits In the last decade, the United States of America (US) and the European Union (EU) have established a high divergent...