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The state of Portuguese research in economics: 20 years after

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Abstract

In this paper we look at the state of Portuguese research in economics, with an emphasis on the 2000–2019 period. For this purpose we use three distinct data sets, namely on publications, citations, and the situation of economics researchers in Portuguese universities. Over the last 20 years, the number of publications in international journals that show affiliations to Portuguese institutions as well as publications by Portuguese authors with foreign affiliations increased considerably. However, after peaking in 2013, the number of publications has since decreased. This may be partly due to the 2010–2014 financial crisis that imposed several restrictions on Portuguese universities, but other factors may also have contributed to the decline.

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Notes

  1. WoS citations are collected by Clarivate. Nowadays, citation counts can be obtained from several sources (e.g., CrossRef, Google Scholar, Scopus, RePEc) but Hamermesh (2018) shows that the choice of the source is unlikely to affect conclusions drawn from the data.

  2. Data and code available at Harvard Dataverse (https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/DEKPFN).

  3. This was not always the case. For example, for articles published in the 1980s and earlier, EconLit, the primary source of information for our study, did not provide information about affiliation and would not identify all authors if the number of authors exceeded three.

  4. The link for the website is https://cefup-nipe-rank.eeg.uminho.pt/. This website is supported by the cef.up and NIPE research centers and is maintained by Miguel Portela and Paulo Guimarães.

  5. The list contains close to three hundred Portuguese surnames and is continuously updated. Internet searches and informal queries help identify whether newly identified authors are Portuguese nationals.

  6. See https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.portugal.html#authors, accessed in 09/06/2021.

  7. See Decree-Law No 15/96 published in Diário da República n. 56/1996, Série I-A de 1996-03-06.

  8. The yearly data sets can be downloaded from the following link: https://www.dgeec.mec.pt/np4/BD_Docentes/.

  9. Part of the information for the doctoral degree was obtained from RENATES (https://renates2.dgeec.mec.pt/ppsq.asp), the national register of thesis and dissertations. The rest was gathered from internet searches and from the ERPPI website. For some individuals, information for age had to be imputed based on the earliest available information for education.

  10. The Universidade de Lisboa resulted from the merger of two public universities in 2013: the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa and the former Universidade “Clássica” de Lisboa. For our analysis we merge the output of the two institutions for the entire period.

  11. We acknowledge that citations are an imperfect measure of quality (for a discussion see, Hamermesh 2018) and that they are unable to capture other dimensions of the contribution of a scholar towards society. Still, they remain the most objective way to judge scholar contributions.

  12. “The Log of Gravity at 15” (Santos Silva and Tenreyro (2022)), by the same authors, is a follow-up article published in this issue that reviews the contribution of the original article and provides an update to the literature.

  13. However, we should keep in mind that the set of authors that contribute to the output of Portuguese universities in economics is much wider. It includes researchers with non-economics degrees but in related fields, researchers with a part time-affiliation, graduate students, as well as visiting researchers and researchers affiliated with the university research centers.

  14. Before 2009, universities could hire teaching staff with an undergraduate or a masters degree. These staff had a certain number of years to obtain additional qualifications and could be granted a leave of several years to complete a doctoral degree.

  15. The new ECDU also allows for a “research track” that parallels the regular “tenure track”. Overall we found 5 individuals in our sample that were on the “research track”. The “research track” has three levels that map to the “tenure track”. In the tables presented we reclassified these five individuals in the corresponding levels of the “tenure track”.

  16. In Portugal, universities decide when to open public tenders for associate and full professors. Anyone qualified can apply and a jury of peers decides who gets the promotion. The new ECDU established that the jury must have a majority of elements external to the university.

  17. If an individual is not matched to the list of authors it means that he did not co-author an article in the set of 277 core journals of economics during the 2001 to 2019 period. This does not necessarily mean that he was not scientifically active.

  18. In the Portuguese academic system there are basically three categories: exclusivity, integral, and part-time. A professor in exclusivity works full-time at the institution and receives extra compensation to abdicate from working elsewhere. A professor in integral time is still a full-time professor on tenure-track but may have a secondary income-earning activity. Part-time professors have their main activity in other institutions and are not tenure-track.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge several contributions to this paper. First and foremost, that of Miguel Portela, who had a pivotal role in putting together the main data set for this paper, and who also contributed with many suggestions to improve the paper. We also thank Luís Costa, Octávio Figueiredo, Delfim Neto, Diogo Lourenço, Karl-Friedrich Israel and three anonymous referees for comments and suggestions. Any errors or omissions are our own responsibility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Banco de Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal

    Paulo Guimarães

  2. Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Paulo Guimarães

  3. Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom

    Mariana Barbosa

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  1. Paulo Guimarães
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  2. Mariana Barbosa
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Correspondence to Paulo Guimarães.

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Guimarães, P., Barbosa, M. The state of Portuguese research in economics: 20 years after. Port Econ J 21, 283–309 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10258-022-00211-4

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