Portugal as a development case study

Last updated 12 August, 1999

While Portugal is generally acknowledged as an instance of successful response to the challenge of development, it  is not an easy case study - for at leat two reasons. First, the date of the response is subject to controversy as political and social developments interacted with economic growth, leading to several reversals in the process. Second, there are only three reference works, one of which is an annotated collection of data and the other two are in Portuguese:

  • João César das Neves, The Portuguese Economy: a picture in figures XIX and XX centuries, Lisbon: Universidade Católica Editora, 1994.
  • António Barreto, editor, A situação social em Portugal, 1960-1995, especially "A economia Portuguesa desde 1960" by José da Silva Lopes, Lisbon: Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 1996.
  • Abel Mateus, Economia Portuguesa desde 1910, Lisbon: Verbo, 1998.

    • In my own work, I have attempted to answer the first question in terms of a negative interaction between international economic interdependence and mutual political responsiveness, which became evident in the 1960s and did not disappear until the 1990s. There are three pieces where the story is told. The earlier ones are more systematic about the political and social dimensions of development:
  • External Liberalization under Ambiguous Public Response: The Experience of Portugal, from Unity Diversity in the European Economy. The Community´s Southern Frontier, edited by Christopher Bliss and Jorge Braga de Macedo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp 310-354.
  • Portugal and Europe: The Dilemmas of Integration  (including a Comment by Paul Krugman), from Portugal in Development: Emigration, Industrialization and the European Community, edited by Thomas Bruneau, Victor da Rosa and Alex MacLeod, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984, pp. 211-234.
  • Portugal and Europe: The Channels of Structural Interdependence, from Portugal since the Revolution: Economic and Political Perspectives,  edited by Jorge Braga de Macedo and Simon Serfaty, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981, pp.153-202.

    • More recently I attempted to investigate the historical roots of Portuguese monetary and fiscal institutions and interpret the change in economic regime towards currency convertibility and price stability in that light
  • Moving the escudo into the euro (with Luís Catela Nunes and Francisco Covas), Nova Economics Working Paper, 1999
  • War, taxes and gold: the inheritance of the real, (with Álvaro Ferreira da Silva and Rita Martins de Sousa), March 1998, paper presented (in Portuguese) at the Lisbon Academy of Science on  July 19, 1998 and at the  12th IEHC on August 23
  • Crises? What Crises? Escudo from ECU to EMU, December 1997
  • Portugal and European Monetary Union: Selling Stability at Home, Earning Credibility Abroad, in Monetary Reform in Europe, edited by Francisco Torres, Lisbon: Universidade Católica 1996
  • Converging towards an European currency standard: convertibility and stability in the 1990s, in Currency Convertibility: The Gold Standard and Beyond, edited by  Barry Eichengreen e Jaime Reis), London: Routledge 1996.
  • Convertibility and Stability 1834-1994: Portuguese Currency Experience Revisited, in Ensaios de Homenagem a Francisco Pereira de Moura, Lisboa: Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, 1995, pp. 421-438.

    • From these various pieces, and from my collaboration with José Adelino Maltez, a political scientist at the Technical University of Lisbon, and Mendo Castro Henriques, a philosopher at the Catholic University, I obtained a story which has appeared in book form and, with notes in
    Governo, Pertenças e Liberdades, Economia e Prospectiva, vol. II nº3/4, Outubro 1998/Março 1999, pp. 75-122 e Brotéria
    I am currently working on a World Bank project on the lessons for EU accession countries that may be gathered from Portugal's experience. The tentative outline is available.