PhD in Economics · ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon · 2025–present
Structural shocks, regional decline and institutional stability in the Eurozone
Why can institutional strain grow even while a national economy recovers? My doctoral research looks below the national level. It tests whether regions that persistently fall behind see measurable declines in institutional trust and stability, and whether good policy can soften the blow.
Funded by FCT From November 2026, this research is supported by a doctoral scholarship from FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (2026.00623.BD).
The question
A testable causal chain
Regions entered the last three decades with different industrial structures, energy intensities and housing markets. Those predetermined differences mean they were hit very differently by global trade and energy shocks and by housing affordability pressures. That gives a way to identify cause and effect.
The project traces what happens next. Exposure leads to relative economic decline, which leads to economic insecurity, which in turn affects institutional outcomes. I measure those outcomes with hard indicators such as trust, turnout, electoral volatility and non-mainstream vote shares, rather than personalities or rhetoric.
Three linked papers
How the thesis is built
01
Exposure → decline
Do regions with greater exogenous exposure to trade, energy and housing shocks experience larger and more persistent relative economic decline?
02
Decline → institutions
Does higher regional stress predict lower institutional trust, weaker participation and more electoral volatility?
03
Buffers as moderators
Do fiscal stabilisers and labour market institutions weaken the link between regional decline and institutional instability?
A measurement contribution
The Regional Relative Economic Stress Index (RRESI)
Unemployment alone doesn't capture what it means for a place to "fall behind". RRESI is a new, transparent composite index. It combines wage and income divergence from national trends, the persistence of long-term unemployment, and housing burden stress to track sustained regional decline from 1995 to 2025. It will be validated against survey measures of insecurity, and tested to show it adds information beyond standard unemployment and income measures.
Scope & data
Four economies, thirty years
The analysis uses a NUTS-2 region × year panel from 1995 to 2025, linked to harmonised survey microdata. All four countries share the constraints of monetary union, but they differ sharply in regional structure, adjustment paths and policy buffers.
- 🇵🇹 Portugal
- 🇮🇹 Italy
- 🇬🇷 Greece
- 🇫🇷 France
Methods
Results are reported by country and pooled. Robustness checks include leaving one country out at a time, a Euro-era subsample from 1999 to 2025, and alternative index constructions.