5.Faculdade de Economia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FEUNL)
5.1 Presentation of the Department
The Faculdade de Economia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa was created in 1978
with a strong commitment to research, international cooperation and updated
education both at the undergraduate and graduate level. The Doctoral and Master
programmes in Economics were immediately introduced and stood out, at that time
and for many years, as the only graduate programmes in Portuguese universities that
followed the north-american structure (comprising two years of course work,
qualifying and field examinations at the doctoral level). Almost all faculty members
were trained abroad and the department actually follows a policy of not hiring its own
students to prevent endogamy.
The department offers two four-year undergraduate programmes, one in economics
and another in Business Administration, with an entering class of two hundred
students in each. In spice of the current demographic trend that has prevented many of
national competitors from filling up the quota of admissions, this department has far
more candidates than admissions in both undergraduate degrees and these have been
ranked at the top level by the Ministry of Education. Also, the Ministry of Science
periodically conducts an assessment of 12 major national research centres in
Economics and Business and the department has always ranked alone in the top
category. The reputation of the department also extends beyond the teaching and
research activities: many studies are commissioned by national and international
organizations and several faculty members had key appointments in the cabinet or at
the central bank board. The department also launched the first Portuguese M.B.A.
programme, initially affiliated with the Wharton School of Business and still faitful to
this north-american inheritance.
5.2 “Supply for each person of the group their individual expertise and the foreseen
extent of their involvment (in percentage of full time employment)”
Mario R. Pascoa (Coordinator) is Professor of Economics and is the Head of the
European QED programme gathering 6 universities of this Network. His research
interest includes default and bubbles in infinite horizon financial economies,
endogenization of collateral requirements, bankruptcy laws and repo markets. G.
Carmona's research comprises fundamental models of money, bank runs and
purification of Nash equilibrium in large finite games. M. Faias is working on the
strategic creation of assets in two-stage models using random selections for the equilibria
of the Walrasian second stage. P. Corte-Real works on mechanism design and is also
interested in cooperative games approaches to bankruptcy laws. A. Seghir has worked
on overlapping generations with incomplete markets and is currently interested in Ponzi
schemes and default penalties in economies with collateralized assets.
5.3 List of Participants (with a web site)
Guilheme Carmona, www.fe.unl.pt/~gcarmona
Paulo Corte-Real, www.fe.unl.pt/~ppc
Marta Faias, assistant professor of applied mathematics
Mario R. Pascoa (Coordinator), Professor of economics, director of graduate studies
Abdel Krim Seghir, pos-doctoral fellow
5.4 Two papers from the research team (listed above)
Araujo, A., M.R. Pascoa and J.P. Torres-Martinez, Collateral Avoids Ponzi Schemes in
Incomplete Markets, Econometrica, 70 (2002), 1613-1638
Herves-Beloso, C., E. Moreno-Garcia., C. Nuñez-Sanz and M.R. Pascoa, Blocking
Efficacy of Small Coalitions in Myopic Economies, , Journal of Economic Theory, 93
(2000), 72-86
5.5 Themes of research and research interests
5.6 Themes
-Differential Information and Asymmetry of Information: competitive markets with
asymmetry of information
-Social Interaction and Voting Processes: mechanism design
-Communication and Information: strategic interaction and coordination (Equilibrium
of large games)
-Market Analysis: market failures – monopolistic competition
-Financial Markets: default, collateral, bubbles; firm objective; formation of asset
prices
5.7 Interaction at the research level
Faias has written three papers with Pascoa (and Moreno-Garcia) or under his
supervision on themes 4 and 6. Carmona has interacted with Pascoa on theme 3, on
equilibrium for large games. Seghir is writing a paper with Pascoa on theme 6.
Gouveia is being supervised by Pascoa in his thesis on theme 1.
5.8 Cooperation and joint papers within the consortium
The group has cooperated with U.Warwick: Pascoa, Carmona and Wooders have
interacted on equilibrium for large games; Faias is co-authoring a paper with
Wooders. The group has cooperated also with U. Paris I: Pascoa wrote a paper with
Florenzano and Gourdel on theme 6 (Overlapping generation models with incomplete
markets, J.Math.Ec.36 (2001) 201-218) and was a member of the doctoral committee
of A. Seghir (now a pos-doctoral fellow in Lisbon). The whole group has cooperated
with other participants in the consortium through the QED joint doctoral programme.
5.9 Experience of training at research level
The group is involved in teaching and supervising within the doctoral programme of
the department. Pascoa supervised Faias thesis (completed 1999), is supervising
Gouveia’s thesis and has co-supervised other doctoral thesis at other institutions
(Orrillo’s, Fajardo-Barbachan’s and Torres-Martinez’s at IMPA, Brazil, completed in
1999-2001). Pascoa supervised Moreno-Garcia’s three-year pos-doctoral studies
(1996-19999 and is now supervising Seghir two-year pos-doctoral studies.
The group is also active in the two weakly seminars of the department, where faculty
and graduate students present their research work, and at several regular international
worshops (annual QED workshop, annual European general equilibrium conference
and the biannual Economic Theory conference).
5.10 Experience of administration
The Faculty of Economics of Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FEUNL) has participated
in the organization and management of international and national research networks.
At the international level, FEUNL participates in the QED programme, since 1994,
having organized two of the annual meetings of this network and benefitted from the
exchange of doctoral students and lecturers, namely from Bielefeld (three lecturers
came to Lisbon this year to teach and interact with our faculty). M. Pascoa has been
the QED coordinator at Lisbon. FEUNL has participated in another large international
network, ASSET, since 1992, and organized twice the annual conference of this
southern-european association of economic theorists. M.Pascoa has been also the
representative of FEUNL at ASSET. At the national level, FEUNL has been actively
involved in SPIE, the Portuguese society for research in Economics, since 1994. M.
Pascoa was chairman of the programme committe for the 1997 conference of this
organization. Also at the national level, FEUNL and U. Catolica de Lisboa set up a
research network, in the 1994-1999 period, coordinated by M. Pascoa, which was
funded by the Portuguese Ministry of Science and whose research themes comprised
theory, econometrics, macroeconomics and industrial economics. Several publications
in international journals resulted from this joint project.