NSBE - International Development & Public Policy
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- Towards a United Nations convention on the rights of young people: conceptual framework for understanding youthPublication . Silva, Sofia martins Duarte; Peralta, SusanaYouth constitute a significant proportion of the global population, yet their recognition as rights-holders within international law remains fragmented and inconsistent. This Work Project combines a collective and an individual contribution. The group component maps the position of youth within international law and governance, identifying conceptual gaps and institutional limitations. Building on this analysis, my individual component focuses on the definitional core of the project, examining how youth can be coherently conceptualized as a distinct legal category and identifying the key criteria for a transition-based, rights-centered definition suitable for a future United Nations Convention on the Rights of Young People.
- Believing the news, contradicting stereotypes? An experiment on the relative credibility of human and AI fact-checkersPublication . Casanova, Jonathan Conrad; Tavares, JoséThis study examines how corruption stereotypes, expectancy violations and fact-checker source influence trust in a fact-check. This research focuses on university students, who exhibit high baseline trust in AI technologies, but remain underexamined in research on trust in AI fact checking. Extending the literature, we show that fact-checks attributed to an AI are trusted less than identical fact-checks attributed to a human fact-checker, even among this AI-literate social-media generation. As the effectiveness of fact-checkers is mediated by source credibility, low trust limits AI’s potential to combat misinformation.
- Colonial wars, local trauma? War casualties as determinants of socioeconomic outcomes across Portuguese MunicipalitiesPublication . Carvalho, Mafalda Sanches Pires Figueiredo; Tavares, JoséThis dissertation examines how conflict exposure affected Portuguese citizens at the municipal level, exploring how variation in Colonial War casualty permillage translates into contemporary education, socioeconomic, and health outcomes, and support for anti-systemic parties, with findings indicating persistent negative impacts. This dissertation stems from "The Legacy of War on Socioeconomic Dynamics and Human Behaviour: Evidence from Portuguese Former Combatants", an investigation surveying 2500 Colonial War Veterans, their wives, and peacekeeping participants, assessing wartime experiences, post-war socioeconomic outcomes, and policy preferences. With Europe witnessing large-scale conflict in Ukraine, insights from this investigation can inform and support policies in future post-conflict contexts.
- EU accession and health system performance: frontier efficiency and conterfactual evidence from the 2004 new member statesPublication . Antunes, Beatriz Maria Martins; Barros, Pedro Pitahe New Member States relative to incumbent members. Using panel data from 1995-2015, it combines Difference-in-Differences, frontier efficiency methods and Synthetic Control analyses. The results show no robust changes in health outcomes or efficiency due to accession. Estimated effects are generally small and insignificant, while synthetic control evidence points to heterogeneous and gradual country and outcome-specific trajectories. Overall, improvements appear to be driven by longer-term convergence trends rather than causal effects of EU accession
- Money, money, money: funding and financing options for public investments – healthcare and defence infrastructurePublication . Ferreira, Inês Pereira Lino; Gouveia, Ana FontouraThis thesis examines how diversified financing instruments can provide stable funding for long-term, large-scale infrastructure investments in Portugal across eight key sectors: transportation, roads and bridges, housing, digital and AI, energy, healthcare, space, and defense. Departing from the Portuguese framework, we conduct a cross-country, desk-research comparative analysis of funding mechanisms and offer concrete recommendations for Portuguese authorities. This research aims to develop a comprehensive framework for the upcoming investment planning cycle, demonstrating that Portugal can reduce its reliance on EU funding and overcome fiscal constraints by adopting a tailored mix of financing instruments across different investment sectors.
- Shaping climate concern: how perceived threats of conflict and immigration alter the salience of climate risk-global analysisPublication . Coccia, Nayra Maria; Tavares, José; González, José Antonio ReyesThis study analyses how climate change worry varies in relation to other salient societal risks. Using individual-level data from the World Risk Poll and the European Social Survey, it examines associations between climate concern and objective exposure to conflict, defined as living in or near countries experiencing armed conflict, subjective insecurity, captured by identifying conflict as the greatest personal threat, and perceived immigration threat within Europe. The results show that objective conflict exposure and immigration threat reduce climate worry, while subjective conflict perception increases it. These relationships vary across development contexts and demographic groups, highlighting how competing risks shape public climate concern.
- The impact of markets in crypto-assets fregulation on venture capital funding for cryptocurrency startups in EuropePublication . Soares, Raquel Fidalgo; Santos, Fernando Martinez; Martins, PedroThis paper examines whether the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation increased venture capital funding for European centralised cryptocurrency startups. A difference-in-differences design exploits variation between European startups subject to the regulation and untreated firms in California, Hong Kong, and Singapore over 2021 to mid-2025. The analysis finds that the regulation increased quarterly venture capital funding by seven to nine percent. Effects are concentrated in late-stage investment, where funding increased by fourteen to seventeen percent, while early-stage funding shows no significant change. These findings provide the first causal evidence on investor response to regulatory compliance requirements in a previously unregulated market.
- Guinanos x brave generation academy: pilot project for e-learning teacher training program in Guinea-BissauPublication . Esteves, Vicente Mesquita Silvério Ferra; Reis, Ana BalcãoTeacher quality is a key constraint on education in Guinea Bissau. This study assesses the feasibility of a digital teacher training program using e-learning platforms. A pilot with pre and post-assessments examined short-term changes in teacher knowledge, digital skills, and professional motivation, while validating instruments and providing measures for a future impact evaluation. Results show short-term gains in knowledge, motivation, and self-assessed digital capacity scores, in addition to reliable testing instruments. Implementation challenges, notably attrition and low digital preparedness, were revealed. Overall, the pilot highlights both the potential of digital teacher training and provides essential information for further scaling.
- Citizens’ ability to discern between fake and actual news: the effects of exposure to manipulation techniquesPublication . Ferreira, Francisco Rocha Fernandes Hasse; Gouveia, Ana FontouraDoes exposure to videos presenting common manipulation techniques (known as prebunking) improve citizens’ ability to correctly classify online news? As fake news runs rampant, with high social costs, this assessment is important given the growing use of prebunking instruments by policymakers wanting to fight disinformation. We conduct a Randomised Controlled Trial and show that exposure produces no improvement in overall, true-item, or false-item accuracy. These results highlight the limits of these interventions and suggest, at most, that there may be a trade-off where increased rejection of fake news comes at the cost of increased rejection of non-fake news
- How to structure and communicate a national strategy for infrastructure investments? - International benchmarking and recommendations for Portugal: cases of France, Canada and the Netherlands”Publication . Santos, Ana Miguel Correia Domingues dos; Gouveia, Ana FontouraHow can national strategies for infrastructure investment be structured and communicated to support credible long-term delivery? Focusing on Portugal’s current National Investment Plan 2030, we apply a benchmarking framework grounded in principles of public investment governance to derive policy recommendations for the upcoming Portuguese planning cycle. Portugal is assessed against OECD countries with mature planning systems. The analysis highlights the strategic alignment and the diagnostic coherence of the current Portuguese framework, while revealing institutional gaps in governance, prioritisation, risk management, monitoring and communication. We provide six actionable policy recommendations aimed at addressing these gaps.