Viewing 8 posts categorized under Economic History
February 1, 2026
The paper asks whether Portugal ended up better off inside the euro area than in a plausible world where Portugal did not join. The question sits at the centre of recent debates: after the financial crisis, the euro‑area debt crisis and austerity, the pandemic, and the recent inflation shock, some view the euro as a straitjacket that makes downturns harder to handle, while others see it as a stability anchor that limits currency turmoil and lowers financing costs.
September 17, 2025
Portugal’s 2009-2011 woes with sovereign debt draw considerable attention to its long and eventful credit history. The commentators saw Portugal as a serial defaulter crippled by mismanagement, deficits and ballooning debt since the Age of Discoveries. In Reinhart and Rogoff’s iconic phrase this time was no different.
However, looking back to pre-1800 public debt reaches very different conclusions. This study, of the original sources, builds long-run series on variables like the emissions of the main debt instrument (“juros”), interest rates, debt stocks, debt-to-GDP and debt-to-revenue ratios.
December 21, 2024
Migration studies often overlook the economic effects of return migration, despite its growing relevance due to wars, political and climate-induced displacements. This paper investigates this topic through the unique case of Portugal’s so-called “retornados” (returnees), nearly half a million individuals repatriated from former colonies (Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, S. Tomé and Príncipe, and Mozambique) during the mid-1970s. This influx, which increased Portugal’s workforce by up to 15% in some municipalities, provides a compelling natural experiment (see figure).
March 15, 2024
Two shocks hit the world during the 1500s: a technological shock and a monetary shock. The technological shock was the decrease in trading costs obtained with new sea routes between Europe and Asia. The monetary shock was the discovery of gold and silver in America. Portugal had a prominent participation in these events. The difficulty is to isolate the effects of the precious metals from the effects of the sea routes.
January 31, 2023
Throughout history, women were not always engaged in paid work. In the United States, for example, female labor force participation jumped from 9% in 1890 to 60% in 1999. Nowadays, there are working women everywhere, and no one is surprised to see a policewoman, a female bus driver or airplane pilot.
To explain this unprecedented increase in female labor force participation, economists have stressed the importance of intergeneration transmission mechanisms during the 20th century.
June 15, 2021
“Behold rich lands! May you know how to govern them well!” Hernández Puertocarrero to Cortés in 1519
How did the discovery of large deposits of gold and silver in the “New World” affect the world economy? This paper argues that the long-run consequences were not the same everywhere. In Western Europe, the colonizers par excellence – Spain and Portugal – suffered negative consequences in the long run. The Spanish government enjoyed increased revenues, but it squandered those revenues on ultimately unsuccessful European wars.
December 3, 2019
In Portugal, in 1940, only 40% of the population knew how to read. The causes of this backwardness, as well as the the rapid increase of literacy rates in the subsequent decades have been the focus of considerable research, and some controversy.
This paper measures the contribution of the increase in the number of primary schools since the 1940s to the increase in school enrolment and literacy rates by the beginning of the 60s.
November 8, 2016
When did Portugal’s economy diverge from the European core? This paper constructs the first time-series for Portugal’s per capita GDP for 1500-1850, drawing on a new and extensive database. Starting around 1550 there was a highly persistent upward trend on per capita income, which accelerated after 1700 and peaked 50 years later. At that point, per capita incomes were high by European standards. Portuguese per capita GDP was about as high as that of Britain, Italy and the Netherlands, and higher than that of France, Spain, Germany and Sweden.