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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 Miguel

This 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.

2012Journal article

Restricted

Persistence change in tourism data

Publication . Andraz, Jorge Miguel; Rodrigues, Paulo M. M.

The authors apply recently proposed persistence change tests to inbound tourism series in order to evaluate whether their properties have changed over time. By using quarterly series of the number of overnight stays in hotel accommodation and similar establishments in the Algarve, from 1987:01 to 2008:03, they gathered evidence of persistence change in all series. In particular, a change from I(1) to I(0) was detected for some countries, while for others the direction change was not clear-cut. These results have implications from a policy perspective and shed light on the generally accepted conviction that policy decision processes should not ignore the fact that, in general, tourism inbound series display mean reverting behaviour, being only temporarily affected by external shocks.

2010Journal article

Open Access

Modelling and forecasting the UK tourism growth cycle in Algarve

Publication . 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.

2009Journal article

Open Access