NSBE - Economics
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- The Balassa-Samuelson Effect: Empirical evidence for PortugalPublication . Franco, Alexandra; Cunha, Luís Campos eThis work investigates the hypothesis that the episode of real appreciation in Portugal has its roots on the real convergence process. We test the existence, from 1995 to 2008, of three economic relationships considered to support this hypothesis. No evidence of the presence of these relations is found in the data. Nevertheless, the failure to find the predicted mechanism in the data does not invalidate the hypothesis. Instead, it highlights the necessity of finding a new explanation for the observed relationship between the country’s living cost and the per capita income.
- Economic Analysis of the Recycling Process in PortugalPublication . Monteiro, Vânia; Duarte, Clara CostaThe economic analysis of the Portuguese recycling process developed within this Project intends to be an introductory work in this field of study. It seeks to show another perspective of the relatively recent theme of recycling, by explaining and analysing the various components of one of the recycling processes Portugal adopted to comply with the recycling obligation. Furthermore and given the information about these components, it tries to figure out whether this specific recycling process presents sustainability for the near future, namely if the quantities recycled in Portugal within this process will achieve the objective established and if this recycling process is able to maintain a financial equilibrium.
- Health Expenditures in the OECD: A Political Economy Analysis Using Structural BreaksPublication . Cardosa, João; Tavares, JoséWe write this paper with the main purpose of investigating whether or not political factors influence the structural changes in health expenditure. We are not concerned about shocks as most researchers do; but instead we search for significant structural break dates and try to find a correlation between them and political changes. We choose to study health expenditure due to its relevance in terms of share on GDP and share on public expenditure and because of the continuous growth it shows over the last decades. We use probit models for our empirical tests. Public health expenditure share on GDP is found to have a statistically significant higher probability of breaking in election years which is a clear indication of possible political effects. By opposition break dates on Private health expenditure share on GDP show no correlation with elections. In addition, the probability of occurrence of breaks in public current health expenditure significantly increases in election years and the coefficients are higher and more significant in this case than the case of total public health expenditure. However, this is not verified in investment expenditure which means that elections seem to have a higher impact on short term expenses. Majority governments show a lesser probability of inducing breaks during their term in office but a higher probability before elections. Although we sometimes found statistically significant differences depending on the ideology of the respective government (i.e. left or right) we failed to achieve consistent and coherent results to allow us to establish a clear conclusion. We based our study on a data set of 23 OECD countries between the years 1960 and 2006.
- Lawyers, judges, and judicial reform: a conceptual framework and a quantitative explorationPublication . Vicente, António Luís; Tavares, José AlbuquerqueThere is growing evidence on the importance of institutions for growth but limited understanding of the mechanisms of institutional divergence, persistence and change. Focusing on the judicial, starting from formalism indicators developed under the legal origin theory, but following different explanatory paths, we propose a thought experiment assessing reasonable preferences of judges and lawyers regarding formalism. We find a striking divergence, with lawyers showing preferences for high, and judges for low, formalism. This may generate institutional conflict, resistance to reforms and a dynamic equilibrium at an inefficient level. The analysis offers paths for reform, potentially addressing limitations of institutional approaches.
- Hope, change, and the financial markets: can Obama’s public speeches drive the U.S stock market?Publication . Sazedj, Sharmin; Tavares, JoséBarack Obama arose as President of the United States of America during a financial crisis, that has harmed everyone. While he talked of hope and change, the media praised his rhetoric. This paper proposes a methodology based on word occurrence and manual content analysis to analyse whether his public speeches drive the financial markets. The econometric evidence suggests that even though his speeches per se do not have an impact on the markets, some of his specific oratorical features do. This impact is visible both on contemporaneous daily returns and on cumulative (three days and seven days) returns.
- How differently do our non-large companies listed on the Portuguese stock exchange perform?Publication . Mourato, Pedro; Costa, J. C. Rodrigues daBehind the glamour of the largest and more mature companies listed on Stock Exchanges all over the world there is a much larger segment of companies also listed that tend to perform differently from the most visible ones. This visibility is also magnified by the fact that those large companies are part of the sample indices computed for most markets in order to translate the entire listed market with a small but manageable sample of companies. However, on many exchanges new indices have been created to place the different segments of the remaining listed market – micro, small and medium capitalization companies under the spotlight of investors. This not only brings more visibility to these non-large firms, but also contributes to improving the liquidity of these companies and, more importantly, to uncovering the so-called Size Effect. Through the construction of a new MidCap share Index, this work aims to bring visibility to our companies that are not included in the PSI20 Index and check the existence of the above mentioned Size Effect in our market.
- Liberalisation in interconnected markets: the case of natural gasPublication . Rocha, Marta Proença de Almeida Oliveira; Seabra, Maria do Carmo; Rodrigues, Paulo M.M.The purpose of this work is to analyse whether the ongoing liberalisation of the natural gas market is achieving its goal, namely the attainment of significant price decreases and technological innovations, through the liberalisation of some non-subadditive market segments. The potential benefits of liberalisation will be stronger the weaker the link between natural gas and oil prices. Hence, in this work we investigate the evolution of the relationship between gas and oil prices in an attempt to determine the level of integration of the submarkets. Using a series of gas, oil and electricity prices for the period 2004-2009, a vector autoregressive model is estimated, and the Johansen procedure and an impulse response function are applied. Empirical results indicate that there is a long-run relationship between gas and oil prices. In the short-run, the relationship between electricity and gas prices is stronger than the oil and gas relation. Thus, interconnection among the energy submarkets should be considered when implementing a liberalisation process
- Risky behaviour and HIV/AIDS-related stigma in ZimbabwePublication . Soares, Marisa Amarante; Delavande, AdelineHIV/AIDS-related stigma and discrimination have been getting more and more attention by researchers and policy-makers. Since stigma has direct impact on the way-of-living of PLHA1 and their decision-making process, it can be an important key in the spread of HIV. Zimbabwe is one of the countries with the highest HIV prevalence rates and, thus, it would be interesting to investigate whether stigma had any impact on the course of the epidemic in that country. My goal in this Work Project was to investigate the determinants of stigma at the individual level and the impact of stigma on individual behaviour (namely condom use and testing).
- Does corruption drive the stock market?Publication . Pinheiro, Ana Raquel da Costa; Tavares, JoséWe estimate the effect of corruption on the stock markets returns using as controls gross domestic product growth, inflation, unemployment growth, monetary base growth and institutional variables. The results show that in more developed countries corruption is inversely related to the stock market returns. In developing economies, on the other hand, there is empirical evidence supporting the second-best theory: higher levels of corruption impact positively on the stock markets returns. Furthermore, while per capita gross national income cannot account for corruption coefficients on the stock market, inflation seems to be positively related to the latter.
- Lawyers, judges, and judicial reform: a conceptual framework and a quantitative explorationPublication . Vicente, António Luís; Tavares, José AlbuquerqueThere is growing evidence on the importance of institutions for growth but limited understanding of the mechanisms of institutional divergence, persistence and change. Focusing on the judicial, starting from formalism indicators developed under the legal origin theory, but following different explanatory paths, we propose a thought experiment assessing reasonable preferences of judges and lawyers regarding formalism. We find a striking divergence, with lawyers showing preferences for high, and judges for low, formalism. This may generate institutional conflict, resistance to reforms and a dynamic equilibrium at an inefficient level. The analysis offers paths for reform, potentially addressing limitations of institutional approaches.