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- Functional public sector spending and SDGs: an efficiency map for the EU countriesPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Bazah, Najat; Fuentes, A. J. SánchezWe evaluate the efficiency of public expenditure in the 27 European countries in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda. Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we map performance over the period 1995-2023, incorporating Musgravian functional spending – redistribution, allocation, public services, and private activities – as input variables, and constructing synthetic indices for the five pillars of the 2030 Agenda – people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership – as outputs. Results indicate that input efficiency scores range from 0.77 to 0.95, while output scores range from 0.88 to 0.93, suggesting a potential 5%-23.5% increase in inputs or a 7%-11.7% improvement in outputs. Denmark, Ireland, and Finland are efficient throughout the entire period, with strategic reductions in public spending correlating with high SDG performance. Sweden also has high efficiency and leads in multiple pillars by 2023. Conversely, the peace pillar remains the least achieved, while the people pillar shows the greatest progress.
- Deforestation policies and the architecture of trade: a network perspectivePublication . Gonzalez, JuliaThis paper examines whether deforestation-related import regulations reshape the global trade network of forest-risk commodities such as soy, palm oil, timber, and paper. While existing research has focused on trade volumes and environmental outcomes, the structural effects of such policies on trade architecture remain underexplored. Using UN Comtrade data from 2004 to 2024 and a newly compiled dataset of import regulations, this study models global trade as a network of countries linked by bilateral flows. It applies a Difference-in-Differences framework to estimate how policy exposure affects country-level centrality, combined with community detection and modular realignment metrics to track changes in trade bloc configurations. Results show modest structural shifts. Treated importers often experience increased eigenvector centrality and reduced out-degree, especially under certification and market-based policies. However, effects are generally small and not consistently significant across all specifications. Modular realignment analysis reveals that only a few policies lead to measurable changes in trade community structure. The findings suggest that deforestation-related trade regulations can influence the architecture of global trade networks, but their structural impact depends heavily on policy design and enforcement. This paper contributes a novel network perspective to the literature on environmental trade governance.
- Government scale as a stabilizer: effects on output volatility and lossesPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Leal, Frederico SilvaWe examine the impact of government size on economic fluctuations and the role of fiscal policy in promoting macroeconomic stability in the period 1980-2024. The results indicate that indirect taxes, capital taxes, and social security contributions (as a percentage of GDP) are associated with lower output volatility, whereas direct taxes tend to amplify it, particularly over longer horizons. On the expenditure side, current spending – especially public wages and interest payments – also exerts a stabilising influence. We further provide new estimates of output losses from the two most severe recent recessions in the EU27 – the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic – and find evidence that the severity of these losses may be linked to the scale of the government, both before and after the crises.
- The economic effects of tensions in energy transportationPublication . Morão, HugoThis paper tackles the urgent issue of how tensions in energy transportation impact oil markets and the global economy. The study introduces an energy transportation uncertainty index, developed from over 50 global newspapers, to monitor fluctuations in uncertainty associated with significant events such as the Tanker War, major US sanctions, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Nord Stream sabotage, the Colonial pipeline cyberattack, and various Gulf incidents. Using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model, the analysis shows that these fluctuations in transportation uncertainty cause increases in real oil prices due to supply chain challenges. While oil production dips initially due to perceived risks, it quickly rebounds, though inventories are heavily used. These shocks also heighten geopolitical tensions and reduce global industrial output.
- Education spread, technology, and population densityPublication . Pontes, José PedroWe model the expansion of (higher) education in an economy composed by regions that only diƯer in population density. The schooling process takes place sequentially across regions in descending order of demographic density and it implies a substitution of modern industrial technologies for traditional land-based ones. Under the crucial assumption that young people may travel to school within the region where they live, but not across regions, the model explains why both the literacy rate and per capita income increase, albeit at a decreasing rate. Furthermore, is allows us to understand why the average students’ commuting distance tends to rise despite the geographical decentralization of the educational system.
- Measurement of distribution and redistribution of income with national accountsPublication . Santos, SusanaThe contribution of Richard Stone (1913-1991) to the development of national accounts, awarded him with the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1984. In the scope of the first versions of the system of national accounts (SNA), conceived under his chairmanship, his attention was mainly focused on the production and consumption of goods and services. However, the distribution and redistribution of income was also addressed by him, in a way that, from our point of view, continues to make sense. This perception motivated its adoption as the basis for the interpretation and adaptation to the latest versions of the SNA, now presented. Thus, after the measurement of the income generated in the production of goods and services and its distribution through the institutional sectors, a chain of redistribution is developed into four rounds. The description, accompanied by a numerical example, involves the so-called distributive transactions of the national accounts and ends with the identification of the institutional sectors’ use of income in goods, services and non-produced non-financial assets. A possible approach based on a so-called social accounting matrix (SAM) is also briefly presented, as a possible tool to measure and model the economic activity of a country, with emphasis on our topic. This is, in turn, an interpretation and adaption of the approaches of Graham Pyatt (1936-2023) and his associates.
- Gender differences in international research collaboration in European UnionPublication . Fontainha, Elsa; Araújo, TanyaThis paper investigates International Research Collaboration (IRC) among European Union (EU) countries from 2011 to 2022, with emphasis on gender-based authorship patterns. Drawing from the Web of Science Social Science Citation Index (WoS-SSCI) database, a large dataset of IRC articles was constructed, annotated with categories of authorship based on gender, author affiliation, and COVID-19 subject as topic. Using network science, the study maps collaboration structures and reveals gendered differences in co-authorship networks. Results highlight a substantial rise in IRC over the decade, particularly with the USA and China as key non-EU partners. Articles with at least one female author were consistently less frequent than those with at least one male author. Notably, female-exclusive collaborations showed distinctive network topologies, with more centralized (star-like) patterns and shorter tree diameters. The COVID-19 pandemic further reshaped collaboration dynamics, temporarily reducing the gender gap in IRC but also revealing vulnerabilities in female-dominated research networks. These findings underscore both progress and persistent disparities in the gender dynamics of EU participation in IRC.
- Too much in one basket? debt concentration and sovereign yieldsPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Grabowski, Wojciech; Monteiro, SofiaWe examine the effects of debt distribution characteristics, specifically skewness and maturity concentration, on sovereign yields across OECD countries over the period 1995Q1 to 2020Q4. After computing specific Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients, we find that positive skewness generally exerts a dominant influence. Employing Panel Cointegration Techniques, we show that greater skewness is associated with higher sovereign bond yields and higher short-term interest rates, whether measured in face or market value. In contrast, an increase in debt concentration tends to reduce both sovereign bond yields and short-term interest rates.
- The heterogeneous effects of motorways on urban sprawl: causal evidence from PortugalPublication . Rocha, Bruno T.; Melo, Patrícia C.; Colaço, Rui; Silva, João de Abreu e; Afonso, NunoAs urban land increased in mainland Portugal by 55.9% between 1990 and 2012 and the country developed an extensive motorway network between the 1980s and the early 2010s, we set out to investigate the effect of motorways on urban sprawl across mainland municipalities. We document the evolution of urban sprawl for these 275 municipalities across several dimensions, including the population density of urban land, its degree of fragmentation and shape irregularity (which we combine in a summary “total interface” indicator), and the differences between the central urban unit and the remaining “peripheral” urban land. Given that the spatial distribution of motorways is likely to be endogenous, we use road itineraries from the 18th century as an instrumental variable. Our results suggest that motorways contributed to the fragmentation of urban land into numerous urban patches. Also, we identify important within-municipality heterogenous effects, in that motorways did not cause the contiguous growth of the central urban unit (typically the largest urban unit in each municipality) but, conversely, appeared to contribute in a significant manner to the development of peripheral urban land. There is also some evidence that motorways contributed to an increase in the shape irregularity of urban areas. Finally, we show that motorways caused a decrease in urban population density, but only in the relatively small group of more urbanised municipalities.
- The devil’s dung? Money as a mechanism of generalized reciprocity in human societiesPublication . Ferraciolli, Eduardo C.; Renzini, Francesco; Araújo, Tanya V.; Squazzoni, FlaminioSt. Francis of Assisi (1181/82-1226) famously called money the devil’s dung, and indeed money is often associated with greed, inequality, and corruption. Drawing on Nowak’s five rules for the evolution of cooperation, we argue here that money promotes the formation of circuits of generalized reciprocity across human groups that are fundamental to social evolution. In an evolutionary tournament, we show that money exchange is an evolutionarily stable strategy that promotes cooperation without relying on the cognitive demands of direct reciprocity or reputation mechanisms. However, we also find that excessive liquidity can be detrimental because it can distort the informational value of money as a signal of past cooperation, making defection more profitable. Our results suggest that, in addition to institutions that promoted trust and punishment, the emergence of institutions that regulated the money supply was key to maintaining generalized reciprocity within and across human groups.