Economic Performance, Beliefs, Values, and Attitudes of the Portuguese Population

We are working within a research program concerning beliefs, values and attitudes of the Portuguese population and their relations with economic development. A spatial, regional approach has been pursued. An inquiry is being launched in five municipalities that are statistically representative of the Portuguese population.

Different dimensions are being considered, namely a more or less pro market, pro state and/or pro “third sector” attitude, more or less risk aversion, variable inclinations towards consumption and/or saving, different levels of entrepreneurship and social capital. These concepts are being submitted to theoretical discussion as well as reformulation inasmuch they are applied to empirical research.

We hope (and expect) to be able to present a rather broad set of both results and problems as a result of the scheduled launching of the inquiry, and subsequent treatment of data.  Particularly important will be to extract causality relationships of social values and norms with economic performance as measured by per capita GDP and employment rate.