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In this article, we argue that the Costa I Socialist government (2015–2019) managed to combine responsiveness to voters with responsibility towards domestic and international actors by pursuing some kind of 'austerity by stealth', which we define as less visible fiscal contraction that is not displayed by the government in its public discourse. The radical left parties implicitly agreed with this strategy in exchange for the adoption of a long list of visible anti-austerity policies. This allowed the Costa I government to fulfil its electoral pledges and maintain the support of the radical left on the one hand, whilst also reducing the country's deficit and consequently the costs of interest-debt repayments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent economic crisis has created momentum for party system change in most European democracies. While Portugal has shown more predictable patterns of interparty competition, since the 2015 elections it has experienced incremental changes in the electoral, parliamentary and governing arenas. This study explores several dimensions of the Portuguese party system (including volatility, alternation in government and innovation) from a longitudinal perspective, and provides new explanations for its development. Focusing on the post-bailout period, it argues that abstention and party strategy go a long way to explaining the patterns of continuity and (marginal) change in the Portuguese party system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starting point of this study is the implementation of seemingly similar youth‐oriented labour market policies in Greece and Portugal. Both countries have suffered high youth unemployment rates and have been pressured to restructure their labour market as part of the rescue programmes adopted during the European sovereign debt crisis. Despite convergence in terms of policy trajectories, there is a significant divergence in employment outcomes. In Portugal, youth‐oriented policies were better‐targeted and structured. Their implementation has been more effective and has involved the social partners from the outset of the crisis. In Greece, policy design failures, administrative weaknesses and unfavourable macroeconomic conditions have limited the dynamics of youth‐oriented policies thus increasing youth insecurity. Τhe analysis suggests that convergence in policy content can be compatible with divergence in terms of outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores state-economy relations in an understudied European country, i.e. Portugal. Main research questions are: How does the country fit into the Varieties of Capitalism conceptual framework? Are there specific patterns that define the case as a distinct model of statist economy? The research is influenced by Becker's open, historical institutionalist approach to capitalism (Becker, U. 2009. Open Varieties of Capitalism. Continuity, Change and Performances. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). The paper offers a macro-account of major transformations in state ownership, in democratic Portugal, followed by analysis of state-economy relations at a sectorial level, namely in the waste management sector. Findings suggest that Portuguese capitalism has evolved from statist socialism into a formally liberalised economy but, in reality, it re-configured into a model of state-dependency perpetuated by the allocation of vast external resources. From large-scale owner to large-scale privatizer, the state adjusted its role as a large-scale aggregator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Portuguese household debt increased above GDP between 2000 and 2007. This article uses conspicuous consumption to explain credit demand dynamics. The author develops an institutionalist framework and consider how rapid high inequalities and increasing top income share favored conspicuous consumption and climbing household debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the evolution of private returns to schooling in the Portuguese economy along the 1986-2013 period. We estimate the returns separately for men and women, at the mean and along the conditional wage distribution. Returns to schooling are found to be high, particularly for women, and to increase along the distribution. The magnitude of the returns increased throughout the 1986-2013 period, but particularly in the 1990s. We also provide estimates of the relative wage premium associated with specific levels of educational attainment and find that they are highest for tertiary education. In the first decades under analysis, relative wage premia associated with the 9th grade stand above those estimated for secondary education, whereas in the most recent period these differences are negligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an increasingly data-rich environment, the use of factor models for forecasting purposes has gained prominence in the literature and among practitioners. Herein, we assess the forecasting behaviour of factor models to predict several GDP components and investigate the performance of a bottom-up approach to forecast GDP growth in Portugal, which was one of the hardest hit economies during the latest economic and financial crisis. We find supporting evidence of the usefulness of factor models and noteworthy forecasting gains when conducting a bottom-approach drawing on the main aggregates of GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals with low socioeconomic status generally have worse mental health outcomes than their wealthier counterparts; a tendency that is exacerbated during financial crises. However, social support might buffer the effects of stress on mental health. In this study, we tested whether social support mitigated the effects of economic hardship on psychological distress on an at-risk sample from two of the European countries most affected by the 2008 economic downturn: Spain and Portugal. Participants were 249 caregivers enrolled in Child Welfare Services (73.0% women). Results showed that economic hardship and a negative indicator of social support (network dysfunctionality) were significant predictors of belonging to the psychological distress clinical group (OR: 2.35 and 1.80, respectively). However, no significant interaction effects were observed, thereby refuting the buffering effect hypothesis. When we conducted an in depth analysis of the clinical group, a significant moderation effect emerged. Our results suggest that, for at-risk populations, the detrimental effects of dysfunctional networks on mental health can outweigh the benefits of positive assistance and that social support is a potential stress buffer only for individuals in the clinical spectrum. These findings indicate that the protective effect of social support during circumstances of intense economic adversity is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition is a public good that supports the proper functioning of the market economy and democracy itself. Competition is the priority public good in a market economy since only through it can the goal of efficiency of affectation and well-being be achieved. It is necessary to assess, in terms of their impact on the wellbeing of citizens in general, those that are consumers, as well as the impact of competition on preservation and self-preservation of companies. The behavior of economic agents, which we will mainly address as violators of competition law, has a large impact on the private sphere of citizens and other companies. From immemorial times, this reality has been, at least, intuitive and its function attributed to the Law. Unlawful competition may, from a legal point of view, invest distinct types, as becomes evident from a geographical and temporal comparison. In our study we address the evolution of the Competition law in Portugal throughout he years, and its implications. We conclude that the non-criminalization of acts that violate the provisions of Competition Law promotes a repetition, as reiterated behavior, since these are highly profitable actions, even in the case of very high pecuniary sanctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do attitudes towards the welfare state change in response to economic crises? Addressing this question is sometimes difficult because of the lack of longitudinal data. This article deals with this empirical challenge using survey data from the 2008 European Social Survey and from our own follow-up survey of Spring 2013 to track welfare attitudes at the brink and at the peak of the socio-economic crisis in one of the hardest hit countries: Portugal. The literature on social policy preferences predicts an increased polarisation in opinions towards the welfare state between different groups within society - in particular between labour market insiders and outsiders. However, the prediction has scarcely been tested empirically. A notoriously dualised country, Portugal provides a critical setting in which to test this hypothesis. The results show attitudinal change, and this varies according to labour market vulnerability. However, we observe no polarisation and advance alternative explanations for why this is so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In last years, the Portuguese economy has gone through a severe adjustment process, affecting almost all industrial sectors, the building blocks of economic structures. Research on economic structural changes has made use of input/output tables to define networks of industrial relations. Here, these networks are induced from output tables of the Portuguese national accounting system, being each inter-industry relation defined by the output made by any two industries for the products that they both produce. The topological analysis of these networks allows to uncover a particular structure that comes out during the Portuguese adjustment program. The evolution of the industrial networks shows an important structural change in 2011–2014, confirming the usefulness of inducting similarity networks from output tables and the consequent promising power of the graph formulation for the analysis of inter-industry relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses Portugal's 2014 national debt crisis and the proposed sale of a state-owned Miro collection in the context of three paradigms of national deficit and debt, i.e., deficit hawks, deficit doves, and functional finance. Through this analysis, the paper directly applies three prominent and influential, but widely differing views of national debt in the context of a decision that has important economic and social implications. By analyzing the proposed sale through the three paradigms of deficit and debt, the paper reveals not only the social, but also the economic cost that can be incurred with important policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Industrial Relations / Relations Industrielles is the property of Universite Laval, Department of Industrial Relations and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this work, we intend to evaluate the triangular sustainability of not-for-profit organizations, putting a special emphasis on the study of economies of scale. After a collection of raw data from the historical archives of the institution (a 'Santa Casa da Misericordia de Barcelos'), we constructed a panel database. Using this database, we estimated cobb-douglas costs functions, by applying fixed and random effects. We found that Portuguese institutions as the one here studied (belonging to the Portuguese Social Economy and as a representative of the Holy Houses of Mercy) exhibit economies of scale, which ask for a renewed perspective of the sector by the regulating entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a rare event in transport infrastructures: the case of the Portuguese merger of its road and railway infrastructures companies. There is little evidence internationally of mergers in transport companies, and most of it is focusses on mergers in the same sector. This merger was based on the need for Portugal to optimize the use of its road and railway network, and also to increase the efficiency of the large investments made. The new company no longer positions itself as an investor and constructor of infrastructures, but is rather as a provider of multimodal mobility. This merger created scope for a better service, increased revenues, the reduction of costs, all through synergies which allow for a more financially-sustainable operator. This paper describes the merger, its strategic and operational objectives, and also the changes in the management. This paper presents some policy implications, as mergers in transport sector infrastructures are not very common, particularly between different sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evidence is accumulating on the impact of the recent economic crisis on health and health systems across Europe. However, little is known about the effect this is having on physicians - a crucial resource for the delivery of healthcare services. This paper explores the adaptation to the crisis of public sector physicians and their ability to keep performing their functions, with the objective of gaining a better understanding of health workers' resilience under deteriorating conditions.Methods: We conducted a survey among 484 public primary care and hospital physicians in Portugal's capital city area and explored their perceptions of the crisis, adaptation and coping strategies. We used ordinal and logistic regression models to link changes in hours worked and intentions to migrate with physicians' characteristics and specific answers.Results: We found little evidence of physicians changing their overall allocation of working time before and after the crisis, with their age, types of specialisation, valuation of job flexibility and independence significantly associated with changes in public sector hours between 2010 and 2015. Being divorced, not Portuguese, of younger age, and working a high number of hours per week, were found to increase the probability of physicians considering migration, the same as having a poor opinion of recent government health policies. On the other hand, enjoying their current working environment, not wanting to disrupt provision of service, and leisure time were found to protect against scaling down public sector hours or considering migration.Conclusions: Our work on Portuguese physicians contributes to the debate on health workers' resilience, showing the value of understanding the influence of personal characteristics and opinions on their adaptation to changing circumstances, before designing policies to improve their working conditions and retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses responses to supply and demand shocks in PIIGS countries. We compare the results obtained for PIIGS with those of Germany and the USA, and also with those of France, which despite its government's efforts demonstrate relatively poor recent economic performance. The main objective of this paper is to establish whether it is still reasonable to consider PIIGS as a group apart. Our methodological strategy is based on the Okun Law (OL) which is incorporated in a Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) model with Blanchard-Quah (BQ) restrictions. We address two drawbacks that usually present in the OL: the interdependency problem and the non-stationarity problem. By using a non-parametric representation of OL, we identify the heterogeneity between countries. We build stable VAR models for each of the economies and use the BQ SVAR impulses to analyse the importance of contemporary and long-run effects of supply and demand shocks. The main conclusion of this paper is that it does not make any sense today to identify PIIGS as a separate group. Additionally, a country that stands out from our analysis is France. The question can thus be posed that if "PIIGS" signifies "countries with poor economic performances" then should not France also belong to this group? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the mechanisms that shape the gender wage gap in Portugal and provide a clear measure of the impact of the allocation of workers to firms and jobs. We find that one-fifth of the gender gap results from the segregation of workers across firms, and another one-fifth results from job segregation. We also conclude that the 'glass ceiling effect' operates mainly through worker allocation to firms rather than occupations. Our results are based on the application of Gelbach's decomposition method to the conditional wage gap obtained from a wage equation with high-dimensional fixed effects. This approach may prove to be equally useful in applications to other problems in economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares how Portuguese voters and deputies evaluated the role of legislators and the representation process before and after the economic crisis (2008 and 2012, respectively). It makes use of a set of six issues characterising two views of representation: one institutional–independent and another participatory–mandatory. It also includes an analysis of two core policy issues. The research draws upon surveys of Portuguese voters and deputies carried out in 2008 and 2012. Findings reveal significant changes in the patterns of representation, a tendency for greater deputy–voter correspondence on the issues of representation, and lesser correspondence among government parties on core policy issues. Finally, voters’ views of representation seem equally significant when explaining levels of congruence both before and after the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efforts made by most countries to accelerate economic development have included a significant investment in education. It has been argued that investment in education, particularly higher education, was itself a potential factor in economic development. Education has become a relatively easy means of improving access to the labour market. However, in Portugal, the recent trend has been reversed, and the country now faces a growing number of university graduates in several fields of education and training that do not have a job based on their formal qualifications. Despite the differences of unemployment by area of education and training, unemployment of the young skilled has been a problem in recent years. Therefore, following this unemployment trend, there has been growing the exodus of highly skilled professionals from the Portuguese economy, leaving it with a reduced supply of skilled people. This article discusses the employability of graduates from several academic areas and discusses the educational and economic policies that generate a real brain drain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Portugal. It mentions the accumulation-based economic model in the country made through expropriation which involves profit increases without investment. An overview of the renegotiation of the nation's public debt requested by the left position in Parliament such as the Left Bloc and the Communist Party is also presented.

The paper complements Abu-Orf's theory about violent settings by setting out a theory of fear in urban planning in ordinary urban contexts around three arguments: spatialization of fear; (modernist) spatialities and the encounter and political economies of urban fear. The three theoretical arguments are used to re-frame the planning history of Chelas, an affordable housing district in Lisbon, Portugal, and debate the way fear shapes, and is shaped in turn by, planning practice. Confirming that (growing) fear in ordinary urban contexts is not just an effect of the contemporary organization of cities, the paper argues for a theorization of fear that combines global (hegemonic) and a local (discursive/contingent) perspectives in the theorization of urban fear, and advocates for the need to put fear, and its capacity to create a crisis in urban policy, at the heart of planners' agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional economic growth in Portugal has mainly been studied from the perspective of convergence with data ending by the early 2000's. The country as a whole has stopped converging to the output levels of the richest European countries by this period and has also become one of the most unequal EU member-states in terms of income distribution in the meantime. It is thus important to analyze the growth performance at the regional level in a more recent period, 1995-2007, emphasizing regional disparities in inequality as explanatory factors. This study examines the relationship between inequality and regional growth in Portugal at NUTS III level exploring the explanatory power of earnings and education inequality measures computed with data from the Quadros de Pessoal database. The results point to a positive relationship between initial inequality and regional growth, stronger for education than for earnings inequality, but with earnings inequality measures revealing a higher explanatory power. Moreover, there is evidence that it is inequality at the top end of the distribution that is relevant to explain regional growth, a result that reinforces the higher propensities to save of the richer and the incentives mechanisms of transmission from inequality to growth. Additionally, the evidence on the existence of convergence among Portuguese NUTS III regions during the period under analysis is mixed. These findings are robust to the introduction of most additional control variables and the consideration of alternative measures of earnings and education inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anthropologica is the property of CASCA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Starting in the late 1970s, Cape Verdean labor-power became indispensable in a number of sectors of the Portuguese economy, no longer merely filling gaps but serving as a vital part of the workforce in key industries such as civil construction and cleaning services. Assuming a central role in the productive process, these largely 'low-skilled' immigrants came to form a reserve army of labor in the fragmented service-sector economy of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Although they come from diverse backgrounds and belong to different migratory phases, Cape Verdeans continue to be concentrated in the most precarious and poorly paid strata of the Portuguese labor market. The tenuous situation of most Cape Verdean immigrants has made them especially vulnerable to the post-2010 economic downturn and the accompanying IMF-mandated structural changes and liberalization measures. In this paper, I examine the trajectory of four Cape Verdean workers in the Portuguese labor market prior to 2010 and during the current 'crisis economy.' While these accounts differ in the details, they are alike in how my interviewees have seen their daily lives become more difficult and insecure. In addition to exploring this sequence of events, I contextualize these case studies within the extant literature on precarity. In this regard, I identify a temporal gap in concept of precarity as it has been theorized to date. Whereas most scholars juxtapose the stability of the Fordist period with the precariousness of our post- Fordist times, I wish to highlight how my interviewees simply long for a return to pre-crisis post- Fordism, not Fordism per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]