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The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of food insecurity on the school performance of Brazilian students. Therefore, the empirical approach used to correct the selection bias was the Propensity Score Matching (PSM), based on the data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) in 2013. The main results indicate that food insecurity has a statistically significant and positive impact on agegrade distortion (school performance proxy). The effect for any level of food insecurity is approximately 4%, however, it intensifies as the degree of food insecurity increases, being 11% in the case of students classified as having severe food insecurity. This study provides the first empirical evidence for Brazil that food insecurity is associated with the academic performance of Brazilian students, a fact that can compromise the country's social and economic development in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between fiscal and monetary policy coordination and fiscal multipliers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. To do so, we first look at the theoretical framework of the New Consensus Macroeconomics (NCM), and then analyze the trends in the four countries for variables including consumption, investment, government spending, and interest rates. Finally, we present an estimate of the spending and monetary multipliers with proxy variables. The contribution of this paper consists of one, showing the inexistence of the crowding out effect, and two, quantifying the multipliers for the aforementioned countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many international analysts claimed that the Brazilian protests of June 2013 were a consequence of the country's rapid economic growth over the past few years, the rise of new middle classes, the heighten of expectations on government, the increase of citizen participation and the weakness of political institutions to handle all the above-mentioned situations. This explanation relied, explicitly or implicitly, on the modernization theory of Samuel P. Huntington, despite the fact more than forty years have gone by since the first appearance of Political order in changing societies (1968) -Huntington's most famous book on the political impacts of modernization. The purpose of this paper is to question whether Huntington's causality model actually explains the Brazilian protests. In order to do this, ethnographies of the protests that pay particular attention to their causes are contrasted with the model raised by Huntington. Based on the above, the scopes and limits of the modernization theory to explain contemporary social movements are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last years, Brazil has gained international visibility especially due to the capacity of its economical development and the progress of its public policies on fighting poverty. Though there reason for celebration exists with respect to the country's recent achievements, Brazil still has a lot to do if it wants to gain international prominence. In this paper we address two issues that are fundamental for Brazil to achieve real leadership: education and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expects to prove that, between 1958 and 1962, Brazil and Argentina converged towards a national project with similar characteristics, reaching its highest point at the Uruguayana Accords. This successful outcome of the collaboration promoted by Kubistchek and Frondizi, and then further pursued by Quadros, was the result of a mutual decision to leave behind the traditional competitive relations and evolve towards a period of important joint action. In order to understand this paradigm shift, the elements relating to the configuration and influence of the internal and external context, the implementation of an independent foreign politics and the pursuit of objectives that would overcome economic dependency have been explored, while keeping in mind the different theoretic approaches of the main players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to present recent changes in the macroeconomic policy framework in Brazil and its effects on social policy, particularly with regard to poverty reduction. From 2003 onwards, a new pattern of economic growth prevails, reducing poverty and inequality on the grounds of domestic market expansion and low income groups consumption. This paper also outlines the remaining challenges for achieving social equity and inclusion, highlighting a major issue in the pending agenda: a progressive tax reform in order to leverage the financing of universal social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the relationship between the performance of Latin American stock markets with their real economies, applying seven econometric models for the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. The relationship between stock market yields in these countries and their respective GDPS is examined and compared, applying to the series for each country unit root tests, cointegration analysis, error correction model analysis, Granger causality modeling, self-regression vector analysis, stimulus and response functions, and variance decomposition analysis. The series comprise the following stock markets: Argentina's MERVAL, Brazil's BOVESPA, Chile's IGPA, and Mexico's IPC, as compiled by Economática. The GDP series were obtained from the Cepalstat data base. The series are monthly and are for the period 1993-2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this paper is to verify whether the world tendency to have the financial capital as the main sponsor of university research is also true in Brazil and the consequences of this move to education and to economic development. The objective is to prove, through comparing Brazilian data to international data, the level of government expenditures on basic university research and its effects on education and improvement of knowledge basis. Furthermore, the lack of incentive to the innovative process in the private sector and its effects on firm and country competitiveness are also shown. Figures point to a very low governmental expenditure on R&D as well as on university research in Brazil. The incentives for the business sector to promote innovation and expand competitiveness are also very poor and insufficient to compensate for the public sector deficiency. The conclusion is that in order to have a positive effect on education and economic development Brazil must change its industrial and technological policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]