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Summary: Brazil, the world’s largest coffee exporter, encouraged efforts in the 1960s to form the International Coffee Agreement (ICA), which restricted total coffee exports via country export quotas. The quotas led to significant domestic quota rents in producing countries. This paper analyzes the effects of rent seeking in Brazil. The Brazilian Institute of Coffee (IBC), which was responsible for coffee policy, was the focus of rent seeking. The paper models the policy instruments used by the IBC; shows how rent seeking affected policy, industry efficiency, and the distribution of rents; explains the causes and effects of IBC reforms in the late 1980s; and draws lessons from the experience. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Exporting has been upheld as the “Golden Standard” for industrial upgrading. However, research using the value chain approach shows that upgrading for developing country firms is often limited to the lowest value-added activities. Based on comparative research carried out in two Brazilian clusters (furniture and footwear industries), this paper shows that domestic and regional value chains can offer greater upgrading opportunities, providing space for activities of higher value-added, better remunerated and difficult to replicate, notably design, marketing, and branding. Moreover, this study highlights that many firms simultaneously serve multiple value chains (multichain) and that multichain firms have better upgrading prospects than those primarily exporting via Global Value Chains. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Terra Legal had no overall impact on deforestation as of 2012. • Deforestation levels increased following Terra Legal in highly registered counties. • Spatial spillovers from Terra Legal were minimal in the short term. • Temporary crop cultivation decreased with greater registered area. • Investment loans increased in counties with more area registered by small and medium farms. This paper estimates the early impacts of Terra Legal , a large property rights reform, on deforestation and farming in the Brazilian Amazon. Twelve and a half million hectares, more than 2.5% of the Brazilian Amazon, have been registered under this program. The establishment of property rights may increase a farmer's incentive to invest in his land and expand his farm due to a lower risk of expropriation. On the other hand, the enforcement of conservation requirements may be easier when farmers have legal titles to their land. We use county level data from 2007 to 2012 on farm registrations, deforestation, crop choice and bovine management to test the impact of the Terra Legal land reform. While we find no overall impact of the program on deforestation during the period in our sample, we do show that there is substantial heterogeneity in impacts across counties. Counties with the largest area registered do have an increase in the level of area deforested, but they also have a decrease in the rate of deforestation. We investigate the extent to which changes in deforestation are related to the amount of registration that occurs among small, medium and large farms, and find limited support for less deforestation among counties with more area registered by small farms; more area registered by large farms is associated with a higher level of deforestation, but a decreased deforestation rate. Our results suggest that land tenure reform can create incentives to decelerate deforestation. Farm size has a strong impact on the farm management changes generated by improved property rights; coupling land tenure reforms with incentives to intensify production rather than expand could lead to reduced deforestation, particularly among small farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]