PZ

Portugal Sustains: Roots of the Problem

Perhaps economic geography may be of some relevance to Portuguese case?

Portugal is located on a far end of European periphery. Given that economic activity level is decreasing both westwards and eastwards from the European economic 'center of gravity', isn't that one reason for Portugal's inability to catch up? In other words, perhaps reaching 70% of EU15 GDP per capita level is simply adequate to country's remote location? True, there is a wide gap between Portugal and Spain in terms of GDP per capita but even within Spain incomes strongly fall east to west and part of the difference may be recent Spanish bubble.
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