Since Portugal joined the European Union (EU) in 1986, it has received on average 3.3 percent of GDP in transfers per annum from the EU. These transfers-primarily designed to promote infrastructure investment, human capital accumulation, and private investment-boosted the expansion of public investment (including capital transfers) from 4.8 percent of GDP in 1986 to 6.3 percent of GDP in 1998. As a result, gross public capital formation in Portugal (as a share of GDP) is currently the second highest in the EU area (see Figure 1). On average, the real value of the public capital stock grew by 5.1 percent during 1986-95, which is considerably above that of the United States (2.1 percent) but below that of Spain (see Table 1). However, the highest average change in the real value of the Portuguese capital stock was recorded during the 1974-85 period, just after the shift in the political regime,2 indicating that even before joining the EU a substantial share of resources was devoted to public capital accumulation
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 19-20)
Notes
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
English
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL