Óscar Afonso - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Óscar Afonso

Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 2021

We devise a North-South endogenous growth model with international trade and money to study the e... more We devise a North-South endogenous growth model with international trade and money to study the effects of inflation (and monetary policy) on wage inequality, specialization, and growth. The relationship between monetary policy and wage inequality depends on the fact that skilled-production firms are less credit constrained than unskilled-production firms. Interestingly, inflation affects the structure of production by increasing the production share made by skilled-intensive firms, and decreases economic growth. Furthermore, inflation decreases the difference of wage inequality between countries; shrinking the skill premia difference. Moreover, inflation and trade have opposite effects on wage inequality and on specialization: while trade tends to decrease intra-South wage inequality, inflation tends to increase it; while trade tends to increase the number of different intermediate goods produced with unskilled technology in the South; inflation acts the other way around. Results a...

Review of World Economics, 2020

Offshoring, either as FDI or offshore outsourcing, is a phenomenon of increasing importance that ... more Offshoring, either as FDI or offshore outsourcing, is a phenomenon of increasing importance that has been widely studied in the economics literature. Studies analysing the impact of offshoring on the labour market report divergent results. In this paper we develop a meta-analysis of the empirical literature that estimates the effect of offshoring on wages. We find that, after correcting for the presence of publication bias, the average effect is not significantly different from zero in either the origin or the destination countries. We also find that the wage impact of offshoring depends on methodological characteristics of the primary studies, such as the way offshoring is measured, the nature of goods/services that are offshored, the workers’ skill level, the unit of analysis, the structure of the data, and the estimation technique.

The Quadruple Innovation Helix Nexus, 2017

Innovation is today more than the result of technological research and development, and constitut... more Innovation is today more than the result of technological research and development, and constitutes the main engine of growth in an increasing number of economies. According to the Quadruple Helix (QH) innovation theory, an innovation economy is based on four helices—Academia, Citizens, Firms and Government—and their interactions. We believe that the QH’s conceptualised relationship between these four helices and their joint impact on economic growth deserves to be conveyed and demonstrated mathematically. We develop a one-sector idea-based growth model with complementarities between intermediate goods and services, and productive public expenditure. With an idea-based growth model, we can identify innovation as the main source of economic growth. The one-sector structure is chosen so as to capture the QH concept that all economic agents are equally important in the innovation process. By assuming the existence of complementarities between intermediate goods and services, we intend to convey analytically the economic feature that we believe characterises an innovation economy, in which profit-seeking firms benefit from cooperation, collaboration and information sharing. We introduce public expenditure with the purpose of highlighting the government’s irreplaceable role in a growing innovation economy. We analyse the growth effects of an increase in productive public expenditures, which we find positive in the short, medium and long run.

Technological Change, 2012

This paper studies the effects of the diffusion of a General Purpose Technology (GPT), that sprea... more This paper studies the effects of the diffusion of a General Purpose Technology (GPT), that spreads first within the developed country of its origin (North), and then to a developing country (South). We use a general equilibrium model of growth, where each final good is produced by one of two available technologies. Each technology is characterized by a specific set of intermediate goods complemented by specific labor. The quality of intermediate goods is enhanced periodically by Schumpeterian R&D. When quality reaches a threshold level, a GPT arises in one of the technologies and spreads first to the other one, within the North. Then, it propagates to the South, following a similar sequence. Since diffusion is not even, neither intra nor inter-country, the GPT produces successive changes in the direction of technological knowledge and in inter and intra-country wage inequality.

Journal of Economic Surveys, 2013

International Economics and Economic Policy, 2012

International Economic Journal, 2007

In the standard models of North-South technological-knowledge diffusion, the larger the initial t... more In the standard models of North-South technological-knowledge diffusion, the larger the initial technological-knowledge gap between countries, the greater the Southern catching up. However, this result does not adjust well to Southern reality as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the disparity between the theoretical outcome and the empirical findings can be reduced by considering that:

FEP Working Papers, 2006

Downloadable! The creation of the European Monetary Union has led to a substantial increase in th... more Downloadable! The creation of the European Monetary Union has led to a substantial increase in the discussion of the importance of fiscal discipline and adequate fiscal rules in such a monetary union. The European solution has been challenged by many authors and politicians ...