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- Os determinantes do crescimento económico português: significância e causalidadePublication . Andraz, Jorge Miguel; Rodrigues, Paulo M. M.Este artigo pretende avaliar a importância destes factores no crescimento económico portugês.
- On the impact of public infrastructures in Portugal: a sector–specific analysisPublication . Andraz, Jorge Miguel; Pereira, AlfredoOn the impact of public infrastructures in Portugal: a sector–specific analysis
- Modelling and forecasting the UK tourism growth cycle in AlgarvePublication . Andraz, Jorge Miguel; Gouveia, Pedro; Rodrigues, Paulo M. M.Over the past three decades, Portugal has developed a strong economic dependence on tourism, which has several implications for the country's overall economic development. Tourism is an activity that is interrelated strongly with the economic system since Portugal as a whole and specific regions in particular rely on the performance of tourism for their economic activity. Moreover, because economic cycles affect tourism development, it is highly vulnerable to economic fluctuations. Most tourists who visit Portugal are from the European Union, especially Western Europe. Statistics are based on the number of overnight stays in hotel accommodation and other similar establishments. In 2005, the main source markets were the UK (30.7%), Germany (16.5%), Spain (11.5%), the Netherlands (6.8%), France (4.7%), Ireland (3.6%) and Italy (3.1%). These values show that the UK has the greatest share of visitors to Algarve. The purpose of this paper is to propose a modelling approach that best fits the tourism flow pattern in order to support forecasting. The paper contributes to our understanding of the relationship between economic cycles and tourism flows to Portugal (Algarve) and explores the potential of applying the diffusion index model proposed by Stock and Watson (1999, 2002) for tourism demand forecasting.
- Public investment in transportation infrastructures and economic performance in PortugalPublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Andraz, Jorge MiguelThis paper uses a VAR approach to investigate the effects of aggregate and disaggregate measures of public investment in transportation infrastructures on private investment, employment, and output in Portugal. Estimation results suggest that public investment in transportation infrastructures crowds in private investment and employment and, therefore, has a strong positive effect on output. Indeed, we estimate that one euro invested in public investment increases output in the long-term by 9.5 euros. This figure suggests that public investment pays for itself 3.3 times in the form of tax revenues over the life span of the public capital asset. Furthermore, this figure corresponds to a rate of return of 15.9%, which is clearly higher than the rate of return expected on private investment activities. A close look at the effects of different types of public investment is very informative, since it shows which types of public investments are the most productive. In terms of marginal productivities, the highest effects on private investment come from public investment in ports, airports and national roads. In terms of job creation, the highest effects come from public investment in ports, municipal roads, and national roads. Finally, in terms of the effects on output the largest effects come from investment in ports followed by national roads, municipal roads, airports, and railroads. The results in this paper are very important from a public policy perspective. This is because they suggest that public investment in transportation infrastructures has been a powerful instrument to promote long-term growth and that the strategy followed by the Portuguese authorities of investing in public infrastructures isjustified both from a long-term development perspective as well as from a public budgetary perspective.
- Social security and economic performance in Portugal: after all that has been said and done how much has actually changed?Publication . Pereira, Alfredo; Andraz, Jorge MiguelThis paper provides an empirical estimate of the macroeconomic effects of the Portuguese pay-as-you-go social security system based on data for the period 1970–2007 and on VAR estimates using GDP, the unit cost of labor, the unemployment rate, the savings rate and social security spending. The major findings are twofold. First, growing social security spending has had detrimental effects on all of the private sector variables under consideration suggesting the existence of sizable inefficiencies. Second, these inefficiencies persist despite the successive reforms that took place over the last two decades. These results highlight the need for structural reforms of the pay-as-you-go system thereby addressing the sources of these inefficiencies, regardless of whether or not the system is financially sustainable. Furthermore, any reforms designed to address sustainability concerns cannot ignore these inefficiencies or risk making them even worse and thereby hindering the quest for sustainability itself.
- On the economic and fiscal effects of investment in road infrastructure in PortugalPublication . Pereira, Alfredo; Andraz, Jorge MiguelThe objective of this paper is to investigate the economic and fiscal impact of road infrastructure investment in Portugal, focusing on the effects for each administrative region of both local investments and investments in other regions. We estimate VAR models for the national economy as well as for each of the five regions, and using the associated impulse-response functions we find that investment in road infrastructures has been a powerful instrument to increase private investment, to create new permanent jobs and to promote long-term growth in all regions. More importantly, investment in road infrastructure, both at the aggregate level and for each one of the five regions, generates fiscal effects that largely exceed the initial investment itself. Accordingly, there is no trade-off in the long-term between the potentially positive economic effects and the potentially negative budgetary effects of such investments, i.e., both economic and budgetary effects are positive. As a corollary, policies that would reduce current road investment as a response to the current budgetary concerns will result in lower long-term growth as well as worse budgetary conditions in the future.
- Are the portuguese regions converging to a single steady state?Publication . Andraz, Jorge Miguel; Norte, NéliaThis paper is concerned with examining the economic performance of the Portuguese regions Nuts III. In particular, it seeks to present empirical evidence about the degree of convergence in their economic performance since 1990 when regions became the recipients of the European Community Structural Funds. Panel data regressions are estimated and the results suggest structural differences among regions leading to the existence of different steady state levels of income. Moreover, regions are converging to different steady states at an annual rate of 2.15%. As a corollary, results suggest that national policies, while contributing to improving the country's living standards relative to the European average, might not have been able to achieve the economic cohesion of the country.