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Increased changes in the climate and ecosystems call for a sustainable economic development, where economic growth should be compatible with the environment goals. In order to do this, it is urgent to find new ways of life and new production systems that make our ecological footprint compatible with global sustainability. The concept of the circular economy has brought relevant contributions to this problem. The central objective of the study presented here is to highlight the main insights presented through scientific literature about the concept of the circular economy within the European Union. In practice, the intention is to show what has already been done about this topic and what can/should be implemented in the future. To achieve these objectives, 144 articles were considered from the Web of Science (Core Collection) for the topics "circular economy" and "European Union". These documents were, firstly, analysed through a proper literature review and later explored through bibliometric analysis, considering bibliographic data and the VOSviewer software. As the main findings have revealed, the increased importance of this concept within the European Union is recognized. However, this paper also identifies several challenges in the literature, namely the concentration of the identified publications in certain countries, organizations, and authors. ; This work is funded by National Funds through the FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology,I.P., within the scope of the project Refª UIDB/00681/2020. Paulo Mourão acknowledges the following:Thispaper is financed by National Funds of the FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the ...

ABSTRACT Introduction: In this study, we evaluated the proportional risk of Portuguese Prime-Ministers and Ministers leaving office. Materials and Methods: We used consecutive days in office for each one of the 432 citizens who served in a ministerial function since 1976. Results: Exploring several divisions in this population, we concluded that individuals supported by parliamentary majorities, who served after 1986, who had higher educational credentials, and who were members of political parties exhibited lower risks of being exonerated. Conversely, being an aged person, serving during bad economic conditions, assuming several ministries simultaneously and being in charge of too-specific ministries did not ensure longer political tenures for Portuguese ministers. Discussion: Besides being the first empirical assessment of all Portuguese Ministers after 1974, this work shows how higher skills are important assets for Ministers' tenures and how economic crises are highly stimulating for cabinets' changes in Portugal, which corresponds to the pattern observed in most recent democratic regimens.

AbstractSpain and Portugal are two neighbouring countries, sharing regions with specific socio‐economic challenges. These challenges arise now as promising sources of regional co‐operation, namely in supporting the design of more tailored regional policies. In this context, the main aim of this paper is to discuss how neighbouring spaces within the Iberian Peninsula can be identified as sources for positive economic effects on the surrounding area. For this purpose, we will use Eurostat regional data, taking advantage of spatial autocorrelation analysis. Based on the developments related to Verdoorn's law, we explored the spatial approach for studying the latent correlations between the Iberian regions, in terms of local production. The results show that there are several Iberian contexts of economic success that can be considered as benchmarks for other regions. We also posit that policies' frameworks between neighbouring regions should be enhanced. These findings are relevant outputs to be considered by public institutions in the design of regional policies that promote more regional co‐operation and support spreading effects from poles of development to neighbouring regions (reduction asymmetries).