In addition to Nova, José taught at Harvard University, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and Universidade Católica Portuguesa. His research focuses on a broad set of issues, including the relationship between democracy and economic growth, the macroeconomic cost of gender discrimination, and the role of globalization in countering corruption, and it has been published in academic journals, including the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Public Economics, having participated as author in volumes edited by Harvard University Press, MIT Press and Princeton University Press.