Without coal in the age of steam and dams in the age of electricity : An explanation for the failure of Portugal to industrialize before the Second World War
We provide a natural resource explanation for the divergence of the Portuguese economy relative to other European countries before the Second World War, based on a considerable body of contemporary sources. First, we demonstrate that a lack of domestic resources meant that Portugal experienced limited and unbalanced growth during the age of steam. Imports of coal were prohibitively expensive for i