Deriva

  Over the last ten years, artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed successively from the stages of machine learning and deep learning to the phase of generative AI, eventually reaching, in recent years, an industrial stage in which its use by businesses and public administrations has become increasingly widespread. Its application in scientific research significantly accelerates the processes of data collection and processing, as well as the generation of results. I have recently carried out several experiments illustrating this advantage of AI. In one case, I used a programme that I had developed some forty years ago, whose source code extended to twelve A4 pages and which required between three and four hours to produce each 50 × 50 matrix of results. The GEMINI platform very quickly converted the programme from the old QUICKBASIC language into modern Python, and within approximately one minute I obtained the first matrix of results. The approach in question, which at the tim...

Ao longo dos últimos dez anos, a IA passou, sucessivamente, das fases de machine learning e deep learning , à fase de IA generativa, até atingir, nos anos mais recentes, a fase industrial, em que é cada vez maior a sua utilização por empresas e administrações públicas. O seu uso na investigação científica acelera muito significativamente os processos de recolha e tratamento de dados, bem como de obtenção de resultados. Fiz, recentemente, várias experiências sobre esta vantagem da IA. Num dos casos, com um programa que construí há uns quarenta anos, cuja extensão corresponde a doze páginas A4, e que levava três a quatro horas a produzir cada matriz (50X50) de resultados. A plataforma GEMINI converteu, muito rapidamente o programa, da velha linguagem QUICKBASIC para a  moderna Python e, em cerca dum minuto, obtive a primeira matriz de resultados. Essa abordagem que, na época,  surgiu como inovadora, acabou por cair rapidamente em desuso, precisamente devido ao elevado...

Mario Draghi’s report, The Future of European Competitiveness, published in September 2024, is invoked as the guiding document through which the European Union may achieve the objectives of closing the innovation gap that separates it from the United States and China, advancing the processes of decarbonisation and increased competitiveness, and reducing its dependence on the United States in matters of defence. The report argues that Europe’s technological lag behind the United States and China is observed essentially in the field of information and computing technologies, rather than across the remaining sectors of economic activity. However, when comparing productivity between the European Union and the United States across a set of twenty-one sectors of the economy, Draghi acknowledges that the European Union holds a clearly visible advantage in only six sectors, and a marginal advantage in two others. One of the obstacles which, according to the report, prevents European companies...

The proper functioning of any economic union depends, to a large extent, on its gravitational capacity — that is, on the attractive force exerted by a large economy acting as the center of gravity for the union’s trade and financial flows. This idea is supported by the gravitational model of international trade developed by economists Elhanan Helpman and Paul Krugman. This model starts from the observation that the volume of trade between two countries tends to be greater the larger their economies are and the shorter the distance between them. In the case of the European Union, the gravitational center is the German economy, and the volume of trade transactions and capital flows between Germany and the other Member States is the fundamental element in maintaining the stability of the European area. Bilateral trade and financial flows among the remaining countries are also important for maintaining the cohesion of the European economic area, but they cannot fully compensate for a sharp...

The Greek Minister of Finance and current head of the Eurogroup, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, recently stated at a European Investment Bank Forum that the digital euro, currently being prepared by the European Central Bank and which, according to him, will begin to be issued in 2029, is a fundamental initiative for the European Union’s competitive capacity and its strategic independence. Anyone who has carefully followed, over the past half dozen years, the preparatory process for the creation of digital currency underway at the ECB and at dozens of other central banks around the world cannot help but be surprised to see a senior European official expressing such ambitious expectations regarding the effects of this innovation. Let us first examine what we mean when we speak of the digital euro, which is a particular case of central bank digital currency or, using the current international designation, Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).The digital euro will be a retail digital currency, int...

The normal purpose of customs tariffs on imported goods is to ensure that certain sectors of the economy are able to maintain levels of production and prices above those which they would be capable of sustaining under conditions of free competition in the world market. The effectiveness of tariffs in achieving this objective is greater in new and expanding industries, and is more difficult to achieve in declining industries, where the incentive for new investment is weak. Trump’s tariffs have the peculiar characteristic of applying to all goods imported by the United States from a large number of countries. Through his tariff schedule, Trump aims to achieve an extremely ambitious objective: correcting the US current account deficit with the rest of the world, which has persisted chronically for more than sixty years and currently stands at around 800 billion dollars annually. This contrasts with the surpluses recorded by China, amounting to 400 billion dollars, and by the countries of ...

  O ministro das Finanças da Grécia e actual líder do Eurogrupo, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, declarou recentemente, num Fórum do Banco Europeu de Investimento,   que o euro digital, em preparação   no   Banco Central Europeu, e que, segundo ele diz, começará   a ser emitido em 2029, é uma iniciativa fundamental para a capacidade competitiva da União Europeia e para a sua independência estratégica. Quem, ao longo da última meia dúzia de anos, tiver seguido cuidadosamente o processo preparatório   da criação de moeda digital, em curso no BCE e em muitas dezenas   de bancos centrais do resto do   mundo, não pode deixar de ficar surpreendido ao ver um alto responsável europeu expressar tão ambiciosas expectativas acerca dos efeitos dessa   inovação.   Vejamos em primeiro lugar do que falamos, quando falamos do euro digital, que é um caso particular de moeda digital do banco central ou,   se quisermos usar a   designação internacional cor...

No seu último discurso de Ano Novo, enquanto Presidente da República, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa brindou-nos com a leitura dos últimos parágrafos do romance A Ilustre Casa de Ramires, de Eça de Queirós. Ouvir essa leitura despertou o meu interesse por várias razões, uma das quais é o facto de o personagem central desse romance, Gonçalo Mendes Ramires, ser a figura da obra queirosiana que me inspirou mais simpatia, bem mais do que o diletante personagem central de Os Maias, ou o afrancesado Jacinto, da Cidade e as Serras. Gonçalo Ramires é um descendente da antiga e decadente aristocracia rural, que se defronta com o dilema entre casar com uma viúva nova-rica, para se proteger da ruína, ou optar por aquilo que podemos designar, em termos aristotélicos, uma vida boa, mas com privações materiais. Outra particularidade que, no plano pessoal, me liga a esse romance, está no facto de um colega inglês, professor numa universidade americana, que costumava encontrar em congressos da nossa área co...