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Neste artigo é desenvolvido um modelo de crescimento baseado no progresso tecnológico endógeno, em que o crescimento econômico é induzido por melhorias contínuas na qualidade de cada produto diferenciado. A inovação, "motor" do crescimento, tem como "combustível" essencial o capital humano. Partindo dos modelos de base de Grossman e Helpman (1991a, 1991b), mas considerando, diferentemente, um índice de consumo constituído por bens diferenciados e um bem homogêneo, o modelo proposto destaca a influência determinante da procura no crescimento econômico, aspecto negligenciado pela literatura do crescimento endógeno. Do esforço de modelização decorre que consumidores pouco sofisticados, com reduzida preferência por produtos diferenciados em termos de qualidade, geram, seguramente, incentivos insuficientes para a investigação, enquanto que consumidores mais sofisticados podem gerar excesso de incentivos. Assim, se a quota dos produtos diferenciados na procura estiver positivamente correlacionada com o nível de desenvolvimento do país, então países menos desenvolvidos tendem a apresentar taxas de inovação relativamente reduzidas, ao contrário de países mais desenvolvidos, em que essas taxas podem até ser (socialmente) demasiado elevadas.

The importance of promoting innovation has been elevated up to a status of official standard since the Lisbon European Summit in 2000. Here research and development (R&D) has been singled out as an essential element of the foundation on which innovation could be built. R&D has
been a growing area of investigation namely at level of firms micro studies aimed at uncovering firms' innovation capability. At the macro level, the relevance of R&D for countries' innovation capability has been, in a dynamic perspective, more often presumed rather than effectively tested.
This latter limitation is, to a large extent, explained by the paucity of aggregated continuous time series on innovation indicators specifically those based on R&D expenditures. This paper aims at filling this gap by providing an estimate of the Portuguese innovation capability over the
two last four decades based on the accumulated R&D efforts. Such indicator, albeit preliminary, will desirably endorse new investigation on the Portuguese catching-up process and, in this way, might inform present and future public programs related to R&D policies in particular and
innovation policies in general.

Recent studies conclude that human capital should be a high priority because it is a key growth input, particularly in an increasingly knowledge-based economy and an important lever of social cohesion policy. However, country-specific studies involving human capital and economic performance
are scarce both for Portugal and for other countries. The small number of such studies is explained to a large extent by the increased complexity and difficulty of estimating continuous time series for human capital stock giving data paucity. This article tries to facilitate the emergence
of further empirical works on the relation between human capital and long-term economic growth by providing an improved measure of the stock of human capital for the Portuguese economy from 1960 up to 2001.

Although considerable research has been devoted to the study of the effect of entrepreneurship on economic growth, fewer studies have analyzed the effect of the types (opportunity vs necessity) of entrepreneurship on economic growth. Moreover, the latter set of studies overlooked the relevance of human capital as a mediating factor in the relation between (types of) entrepreneurship and economic growth. The aim of the present study is to fill in this gap by assessing the extent to which the direct and indirect effect of (the types of) entrepreneurship, via human capital, matters for countries' economic growth. In methodological terms, we resort to fixed effects panel data estimations, involving a large set of (OECD and non-OECD) countries, over a relatively long time span (1990–2016). The results suggest total entrepreneurship has a positive effect on economic growth. Distinguishing between types of entrepreneurship, there is clear evidence that OE fosters economic growth, whereas necessity entrepreneurship inhibits it. Interestingly, human capital tends to mitigate the negative effect of necessity entrepreneurship on economic growth. In the case of opportunity entrepreneurship, the direct positive effect observed is reduced in contexts characterized by high levels of human capital, which might reflect increased opportunity costs.

Considerable research has been conducted in the field of entrepreneurship. However, very few studies have explored the impact of entrepreneurship on the life satisfaction/happiness of individuals. Furthermore, they have yet to analyze the extent to which the impact of entrepreneurship is mediated by national cultures. The present study explores the effect of entrepreneurship on the life satisfaction/happiness of individuals and analyzes the extent to which such impact is mediated by 'national cultures.' Resorting to fixed effect panel data techniques, this study was conducted using the 2016 World Values Survey dataset, encompassing 90350 individuals from 60 countries over the 2010–2013 period, combined with information provided by the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Framework on cultural measures. We found that being an entrepreneur increases the chances of happiness across the entire set of countries analyzed. Culture does matter in such relation as the impact of entrepreneurship on happiness varies across the sample, being positive for sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe and negative for the Middle East culture cluster. Governments should implement active policies to foster the emergence of new businesses because new ventures enable countries not only to increase their output per capita, but also to achieve economic development by stimulating well-being and happiness. Nevertheless, this study highlights the danger of 'blind' recipes/formulas to promote entrepreneurship without considering the 'entrepreneurship ecosystem' and, at a more general level, the countries' culture.

The commercialization of research done by universities and research institutes is seen as a key element of entrepreneurship, justifying a better understanding of the entrepreneurial process within those institutions. Despite efforts in recent decades, there remains a widespread ignorance about who are the individuals with a greater vocation for research and marketing of knowledge. Focusing on a relatively unexplored context — the field of life sciences in a moderate innovator country, Portugal — this study adds new empirical evidence to the precedents of academic entrepreneurship. The results, based on 247 responses, evidence that entrepreneurship (including patent production, consultancy work and creation of start-up companies) is still very incipient. The econometric analysis of the "Index of entrepreneurial activity," shows that: (1) the phenomenon of academic entrepreneurship is within everyone's reach, but embraced by very few; and (2) academic entrepreneurship feeds on the exchange of knowledge and resources among universities and research institutes and their socio-economic environment. Thus, to increase academic entrepreneurship in life science in Portugal, the mechanisms to facilitate the interactions between universities and the business community must be strengthened, promoting the development of business clusters with the integration of the academic world, which will enable the transformation of knowledge into market products and services.

Despite connections and common traits between geopolitics and International Business based on geography and location, literature on this matter is scarce. This study aims to contribute to this literature gap, by assessing the importance of Poland's geopolitical factors in FDI location decisions. By applying a hybrid methodology which combines qualitative and quantitative analyses we conclude that there is a connection between Poland's geopolitical factors (stable, variable and interactional) and the volume, origin and distribution of the FDI received.