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This paper consists of a descriptive analysis that explains how the successful performance of the wine cluster is followed by improvements in local development indicators. To this end, certain local development indicators are proposed to describe and compare the wine clusters of Mendoza (Argentina) and Serra Gaúcha (Brazil). In Argentina, the Mendoza wine cluster has stimulated the local development of the region. For its part, Serra Gaúcha is the most successful wine center in Brazil and regards Mendoza as the benchmark in terms of local development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a tool for managing inoperative mines under the responsibility of the Mine Closure and Projects Management/Ferrous Planning and Development Department - Vale S.A., Brazil. Inoperative mines are defined as mines where mining operations are temporarily suspended and there is no definitive strategy regarding their closure. The main management challenges are to: (i) act in a variety of environments and conditions based on action priorities; (ii) identify the main company's image risks; (iii) plan for maintenance and monitoring; (iv) take care of environmental conditions of the sites and follow up audit recommendations; (v) coordinate the field operations and site rehabilitation; (vi) re-evaluate the rehabilitation performance of the site over time, (vii) support the mine closure team. The tool is based on the consolidation of field information through qualitative and quantitative analyses of the environmental risks and quality of each mine. These analyses support the decision-making process and the prioritisation of action to be taken. The tool provides a performance evaluation of the sites, allowing evaluation over time of the maintenance and rehabilitation actions carried out. The input for the tool consists of primary and secondary data (geotechnical and environmental) collected during fieldwork, which is then processed in spreadsheets. These assign prioritisation values based on two main themes: environmental risk and quality. Each of these themes has specific groups of subjects. The prioritization spreadsheet generates thematic maps that present the classification of the mine areas and the action priorities. The tool output is an action plan that guides management, considering all the structures of each site under its responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of the article is the analysis of the social-educational process that occurs as a result of the participation of individuals and groups in solidarity economy movements and the contribution of the university in this process, through university extension projects. Thus, as an object of study presents a project of university extension in low-income sector in the Grande ABC Paulista. Three questions assisted in this analysis, they are: 1. The solidarity economy movements enable the development of the sense of citizenship of those who participate in them? 2. What are the characteristics of the social-educational process in these solidarity economic movements? 3. The action of the university accelerates the social-educational process of individual and groups participating in the solidarity economy movement? Thus, one of the objectives of the article was to understand the characteristics of the movements of the solidarity economy, specifically with regard to socio-educational processes present in such movements and to characterize the university involvement. The investigation sees the university as a possible subject present in these processes. In developing this analysis, the paper aims to develop an understanding of the contribution of the university to the learning process inherent to participation in the movement. The analysis was based on the concepts of solidarity economy, the process of individual and group learning and emancipatory education. We used a qualitative research method called action research. This method enables the researcher's participation both in decision making about the reality and the subsequent reflection on the process occurred and the consequent production of scientific knowledge about the process. The results showed that the entrepreneurs who participated in the extension project acquired knowledge and concepts necessary to manage their investments and might perceive themselves as active subjects in the process of strengthening the solidarity economy. The participants oriented on this discussion, also concluded about the possibility of mobilization and participation in public spaces with their difficulties and benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brazil is taking off, carrying on her wings entire parts of the economy including the aviation sector. What are the reasons for this takeoff? How big will it be? How long will it last? What obstacles will it encounter on its path? Since the first decade of the 21st century, the so-called BRICS countries have emerged to such an extent as to challenge the developed economies; infrastructure is expanding, populations are exploding, and consumption and investments are reaching vertiginous heights. Just as it is all over the world, in Brazil the aeroplane is becoming increasingly popular among social strata that previously could not afford it. Despite these developments, Brazilian airports are already struggling to adapt to this growing demand. This tendency will be even more pronounced in the coming years. Politicians have become aware of this and have decided to act and to invest in the enhancement of Brazil's aviation infrastructure, increasingly having recourse to privatisations. This paper explores the advantages and disadvantages of such privatisations to foreign investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais is the property of Centro de Estudos Sociais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: In Piriápolis (Uruguay) and Paraty (Brazil), artisanal fishers view fishing as a way of life, rather than just a job. The freedom of fishing and an inherent satisfaction in the occupation figure large in fishers'' attachment to it. There are strong indications, however, that the relationship of fishers to fishing is changing. First, while fishers from both areas wish to keep fishing in the future, they are moving into different occupations or supplementing their work in fishing with other employment. Second, artisanal fishers from Piriápolis and Paraty identified fishing as an undesirable occupation for their children because they believe that in the future fishing will no longer be a viable occupation. Nonetheless, despite the wishes of their parents, young men and women in Piriápolis and to a much lesser degree in Paraty continue to become involved in fishing and fishing-related activities. The paper uses a social wellbeing perspective to interpret fisher responses to the changing circumstances they face. Wellbeing is a lens to understand the distinctive features of artisanal fisheries and helps to understand fishers'' disenchantment with fisheries governance processes, in a scenario where participation is being promoted by the state in Uruguay and Brazil. The implications of these findings for state efforts to promote fisher participation in governance are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Revista Brasileira de Políticas Públicas is the property of Revista Brasileira de Politicas Publicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The existing literature on e-learning implementation is either descriptive or normative and falls short on explaining how managers act in introducing and disseminating e-learning projects in school settings. In this paper, we follow a symbolic approach in order to offer a grounded model for explaining how managerial framing of the introduction of e-learning gives rise to different patterns of action and intended outcomes. Our model is grounded in the study of seven business schools in Brazil, where the competitive and institutional settings offer significant variety for formulating propositions through the grounded theory methodology. We conclude that managers act to integrate e-learning using cultural incongruity reduction strategies when they perceive e-learning as a way of improving existing teaching practices. They may also aim at insulating e-learning through incongruity avoidance when they perceive e-learning in economic terms. These results offer new empirical evidence and fresh explanations when the phenomenon of managerial action in e-learning implementation is looked at in symbolic terms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Ensayos Economicos is the property of Banco Central de la Republica Argentina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The costs of international trade have become an increasingly important item in trade negotiations (under the heading 'trade facilitation') and element of trade theory, but definition and measurement of trade costs remain in their infancy. This paper argues that the most conceptually appropriate measure is the gap between cost-insurance-freight (cif) and free-on-board (fob) values of traded goods, but that this must be measured on a consistent volume of trade. Such data are only available for a few countries. We calculate cif-fob gap values for the three largest trading nations that report such data (Australia, Brazil and the USA). These values provide plausible estimates of ad valorem trade costs for the three importing countries and for all countries' exports. The estimates indicate that although trade costs have fallen over the last two decades, average trade costs now exceed the average tariff rate on imports into the USA and Australia. Country rankings by the cif-fob gap values differ significantly from those by commonly used proxies for trade costs, such as the indicators of time and cost in the World Bank's Doing Business database, and analysis based on such proxies is likely to produce misleading results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Política & Sociedade: Revista de Sociologia Política is the property of Revista Politica & Sociedade and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Business & Projects / Revista de Gestão e Projetos is the property of Revista de Gestao e Projetos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Sociologia e Política is the property of Revista de Sociologia e Politica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista FAMECOS - Mídia, Cultura e Tecnologia is the property of EDIPUCRS - Editora Universitaria da PUCRS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the backdrop of the strict patent regime flatly adopted by the World Trade Organization (WTO) for all countries, a few countries constantly challenge this system through aggressive patent bargains. Within the pharmaceutical sector, noticeably, some countries now threaten to issue or otherwise actually issue compulsory licenses that may sway large pharmaceutical companies into selling drugs with large discounts or into granting voluntary licenses domestically. That is conspicuously the negotiation strategy adopted by Brazil in its negotiations with big international pharmaceutical companies. This paper explains Brazil's aggressive bargaining approach based on an analysis of two aspects of its political economy. The first has to do with the international context of patent bargaining in the post-WTO era. Accordingly, the existence of large and fast-growing domestic markets position countries like Brazil as strategic destinations for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and trade. Combined with a near absence of pharmaceutical product innovation, these conditions boost Brazil's bargaining power for issuing compulsory licenses over pharmaceutical products. The second aspect, more exploratory, is related to political economy dynamics inside Brazil. Accordingly, the political framework in Brazil undermines long-term policies and favors short-sighted ones also vis-a-vis research and development (R & D) investments in the pharmaceutical industry. Thisremains true regardless of the strictness of the patent regime in place. The lesson of Brazil is particularly relevant for other, more powerful, developing countries which presently examine Brazil's approach while further challenging the WTO's strict patent policy for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses rural tourism as a form of promoting local development through direct commercialization of local food products along the Gastronomic Tourist Route of Santa Maria — Silveira Martins, Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. The study is based on qualitative and quantitative/descriptive methods, and which data was recollected through directly through the application of 14 semi-structured interviews and questionnaires applied to those who were responsible for the tourist establishments. The results obtained reveal that tourist activity and the commercialization of products on the route brings several benefits to a portion of the population directly involved with the activity, as well as to those who are indirectly involved. The results permit us to conclude that the development of tourism in this location requires greater specialization, needs extensive planning, investment in infrastructure and in human resources, in the quality of the commercialized products and also a greater involvement of the local population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate change induced by the emission of greenhouse gases may pose challenges to energy security. The vulnerability of energy sources, in particular of renewable sources, to climate change raises the need to identify adaptation measures. This paper applies an integrated resource planning approach to calculate least-cost adaptation measures to a set of projected climate impacts on the Brazilian power sector. The methodology used has the advantage of finding optimal solutions that take into consideration the whole energy chain and the interactions between energy supply and demand. Results point in the direction of an increased installed capacity based, mostly, on natural gas, but also sugarcane bagasse, wind power and coal/nuclear plants, to compensate for a lower reliability of hydroelectric production, amongst other impacts. The indirect effect of these results is the displacement of natural gas from other consuming sectors, such as industry, in favor of its use for power generation. Results obtained are, however, based on the techno-economic premises used in the simulation, which may vary in the long term. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The financial and investment decisions are influenced by the degree of risk concerning variables that explain the decision making process. This paper focus on the risky variables of the economic sectors and segments that influence the decision making process of credit concession in financial institutions. The aim is to present a pragmatic method for evaluating the risky variables using an alternative approach that aggregate multiples criteria in a single evaluation system. Hence, the AHP method is used and as a result we have a purpose of risk rating of sectors and segments of the Brazilian economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ensaios FEE is the property of Fundacao de Economia e Estatistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ensaios FEE is the property of Fundacao de Economia e Estatistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Summary: This paper examines the relationship between the employment of children and their mothers, with the aim of informing discussion on efforts to reduce child labor in Brazil. The analysis builds on the largely separate literatures on children’s time use and mothers’ work in two ways—by examining characteristics of employment which are often not available in survey data, and by modeling both children’s work and mothers’ employment. The results suggest that the relationship between children’s and mothers’ work is complex, with substantial evidence of positive correlation. The findings are consistent with the argument that anti-poverty programs that target women’s employment could result in increased child labor. This possibility warrants further analysis in order to better inform policy regarding child labor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The aim of this paper is to discuss in a succinct way the dynamics of the Brazilian productive structure from  on, and its deployments inthe context of ST&I. It gets clear that there is low technological insertion in the country when its comes to the new techno-economical paradigm and the consequent fragility of its productive structure, which is greatly concentrated in low worth products and/or in mid level properties from the structuralist thought. Moreover, it presents the perspectives of a nucleus of knowledge from the viewpoint of the Economics of Innovation and considerations on forms of funding for introduction of new technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite presenting a considerable potential for photovoltaic (PV) solar energy conversion, many times larger than the country’s current and future energy needs, PV generation still plays a negligible role in the Brazilian energy mix, lacking a proper market, legislation and incentives to make use of this benign energy source. The still high capital costs involved in PV project implementation, associated with the perception that grid-connected PV is only suitable for developed countries, are the typical arguments used to justify the lack ofinterest in PV as an energy alternative for urban grid support in metropolitan areas. It is possible to demonstrate that in the near future, the price of energy generated by a residential consumer with a roof-mounted, grid-connected PV system can be lower than the corresponding residential tariff paid by this electricity consumer to the local distribution utility. It is then argued that, from this moment on, this consumer has the right to decide for the least-cost alternative, and that the Brazilian legislation has the duty of enabling this option. In this article we present the situation in Brazil regarding the application of grid-connected PV, and we demonstrate the potential benefits of this energy generation technology. We also summarize the current legislation and commercialization aspects related to grid-connected PV installations. Furthermore, the paper presents bottlenecks to a more widespread use of PV generation in the Brazilian energy mix, and identifies the need for the creation of an incentive mechanism that can assist in bridging the gap to grid parity, which is expected to take place in Brazil in the coming decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cayapa is the property of Universidad de Los Andes (Venezuela) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ensaios FEE is the property of Fundacao de Economia e Estatistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ensaios FEE is the property of Fundacao de Economia e Estatistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ecosystem services are public goods that frequently constitute the only source of capital for the poor, who lack political voice. As a result, provision of ecosystem services is sub-optimal and estimation of their values is complicated. We examine how econometric estimation can feed computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling to estimate health-related ecosystem values. Against a back drop of climate change, we analyze the Brazilian policy to expand National Forests (FLONAS) by 50 million hectares. Because these major environmental changes can generate spillovers in other sectors, we develop and use a CGE model that focuses on land and labor markets. Compared to climate change and deforestation in the baseline, the FLONAS scenario suggests relatively small declines in GDP, output (including agriculture) and other macro indicators. Urban households will experience declines in their welfare because they own most of the capital and land, which allows them to capture most of the deforestation benefits. In contrast, even though rural households have fewer opportunities for subsistence agriculture and face additional competition with other rural agricultural workers for more limited employment, their welfare improves due to health benefits from conservation of nearby forests. The efficiency vs. equity tradeoffs implied by the FLONAS scenario suggests that health-related ecosystem services will be underprovided if the rural poor are politically weaker than the urban rich. In conclusion, we briefly discuss the pros and cons of the CGE strategy for valuing ecosystem-mediated health benefits and evaluating contemporary policies on climate change mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the Second World War British and American companies competed to gain the contract for the electrification of the central Brazilian railway. The British Foreign Office used this case to establish a broader principle with the U.S. government that the conditions brought about by war would not be used by one country to gain commercial advantage at the expense of the other. While the U.S. government supported this principle in theory, this article argues that they failed to adhere to it in practice. U.S. actions in this case shed new light on the country's economic diplomacy with Britain during the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the tremendous economic potential of the Brazilian, Russian, Indian, and Chinese (BRIC) economies, few studies have compared technological innovation in these countries. This study investigates three main issues related to technological innovation in BRICs: 1) indicators of technological innovation were evaluated and used to compare capability of technological innovation between the four countries; 2) differences in innovative configurations were mapped based on constructs of "fundamental vs. applied innovation "and "incremental vs. radical innovation "; 3) the absolute and relative innovative strengths of these four countries were examined in 31 different technological fields. The empirical findings are based on analysis of a patent and citation data set comprising all utility patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to BRIC inventors from 1976 to 2006. These findings elucidate the comparative development of technological innovation in BRIC countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses environment subject present in public policies for Legal Amazonia, including the Public Forests Management Law (Law 11.284/06), approved with the purpose of regulating public forests management in Brazil and promoting sustainable development. The Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is suggested as a forest conservation mechanism. Through an hypothetical "zero" deforestation scenario and 100% of not emitted carbon linked to forest conservation projects, an economic revenue equivalent to the logging activities was estimated, and could be obtained in carbon market, contributing to maintenance of climatic equilibrium reducing Greenhouse Gases emissions, as well as keeping preserved biodiversity and environment services values related to standing forest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the merits of contemporary economic analysis is its capacity to offer accounts of choice behavior that dispense with details of the complex decision machinery. The starting point of this paper is the concern with the important methodological debate about whether economics might offer accurate predictions and explanations of actual behavior without any reference to psychological presuppositions. Inspired by an exercise of rational reconstruction of ideas, I aim to offer an interpretation of the process of freeing economic analysis from psychology at the end of the 19th century and the contemporary resurrection of behavioral approaches in the late 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Sociologia e Política is the property of Revista de Sociologia e Politica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper a static, inter-regional and bottom-up general equilibrium model of greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil is used to analyze the impact of different types of carbon taxes on the economy. The core database is calibrated with Brazilian economic data from 1996, while the emissions module is based on the Brazilian Initial National Communication to the United Nations Convention about Global Climate Change for the 1994 reference year. The gas module in the model comprises all known sources of greenhouse gases emissions except emissions from land use change (deforestation). The simulations comprise scenarios with carbon taxes on emissions, either on fuel use or on the activity level of industries. Results show that taxing activities is more relevant for greenhouse gases emissions reductions in Brazil than just taxing fuel use, due to the importance of activity related emissions in the Brazilian emissions matrix. Livestock is found to be one of the most important emission sectors in Brazil. Carbon tax on activities, however, generates the higher increase in food prices, with negative implications for poverty alleviation. Different carbon tax schemes would also have different regional impacts inside Brazil, with taxation on fuels harming more the Southeast and Northeast regions, and taxation on activity levels affecting negatively more the South and Center west regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defines the relative role of firms' characteristics on both their likelihood to innovate and the intensity of innovations. Specifically, on the basis of a survey of food firms, it identifies which innovative and complementary assets, when combined in a multivariate framework, are firstly statistically significant in distinguishing innovating from non-innovating firms in the Brazilian Food Industry (BFI), and secondly in distinguishing more from less innovating firms. The objective requires that the analytical model should be adequate to explain firstly the differences observed between an individual firm's likelihood to innovate, and secondly the differences in innovation intensity between innovating firms. Thus, a double-hurdle approach involving censored and truncated models was applied. The findings confirm that firms' innovative assets investment in external technology, investment in R&D, and external alliances, alongside firm size are the significant variables in determining firms' likelihood to innovate, whereas external alliances, firm size and market orientation are related to intensity to innovate in the BFI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Economia e Administração is the property of INSPER Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines the determinants of worker's remittances. Variance decompositions, impulse response functions and Granger causality tests derived from a vector error correction model are used to test if remittances are affected by the macroeconomic conditions of the host (remittance sending) or home (remittance receiving) country. Data from Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico and the US are used. The results indicate that remittances respond more to changes in the macroeconomic conditions of the host country, than to changes in the macroeconomic conditions of the home country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Maternity leave policies are designed to protect gender equality and the health of mothers in the workforce and their children. However, maternity leave schemes are often linked to jobs in the formal sector economy. In low- and middle-income countries a large share of women work in the informal sector, and are not eligible to such benefit. This is worrisome from a social justice and a policy perspective and suggests the need for intervening. Costing the implementation of potential interventions is needed for facilitating informed decisions by policy makers. Methods: We developed and applied a costing methodology to assess the cost of a maternity leave cash transfer to be operated in the informal sector of the economy in Brazil and Ghana, two countries with very different employment structures and socioeconomic contexts. We conducted sensitivity analysis by modeling different numbers of weeks covered. Results: In Brazil, the cost of the maternity cash transfer would be between 0.004% and 0.02% of the GDP, while in Ghana it would range between 0.076% and 0.28% of the GDP. The relative cost of rolling out a maternity intervention in Brazil is between 2.2 to 3.2 times the cost in Ghana depending on the benchmark used to assess the welfare measure. The differences in costs between countries was related to differences in labor market structure as well as demographic characteristics. Conclusions: Findings show how a standard methodology that relies on routinely available information is feasible and could assist policymakers in estimating the costs of supporting a maternity cash transfer for women employed in the informal sector, such intervention is expected to contribute to social justice, gender equity, and health trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An agent-based model was developed as a tool designed to explore our understanding of spatial, social, and environmental issues related to land-use/cover change. The model focuses on a study site in a region of the Amazon frontier, characterized by the development of family farms on 100-ha lots arranged along the Transamazon highway and a series of side roads, west of Altamira, Brazil. The model simulates the land-use behaviour of farming households on the basis of a heuristic decisionmaking strategy that utilizes burn quality, subsistence requirements, household characteristics, and soil quality as key factors in the decisionmaking process. Farming households interact through a local labour pool. The effects of the land-use decisions made by households affect the land cover of their plots and ultimately that of the region. This paper describes this model, referred to as LUCITA, and presents preliminary results showing land-cover changes that compare well with observed land-use and land-cover changes in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose oft/is paper is to explore the similarities and differences between selected behaviors of USA and Brazilian business people that can lead to unintended and unexpected conflicts when businesses from one country engage in business ventures in the other. Data were collected through informal interviews with business people and personal observations in both countries over several years. The Hofstede typology of Cultural Dimensions is utilized to compare and contrast the business behaviors typically found in each nation that can act as major sources of misunderstandings impeding the growth of business relations. Potential points of conflict are identified that can help members of the business communities in both nations better anticipate the issues and adapt their business practices to the requirements of successful Brazil-USA business ventures. Additional research and improved dissemination of results are needed to identify more clearly the issues and paths forward for overcoming these barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the growing salience of re-centralization in several Latin American countries that decentralized in the 1980s and 1990s, this paper examines presidential efforts to re-centralize fiscal power in the 1990s. In our study of re-centralization in Argentina and Brazil, we assess the utility of four common political economy explanations: the presence of economic crisis; the partisan powers of the president; the division of formal powers between the branches; and the extent of intra-bureaucratic conflict. We find that the success of economic stabilization measures facilitated re-centralization in both countries, though the pathways connecting the two phenomena were partially distinct. In Argentina, key re-centralization measures were rapidly achieved after stabilization as the result of the president's strong partisan powers and in the form of political deals within the Peronist party. Subsequently, the dissipation of President Carlos Menem's powers over the course of his second term facilitated the "return of the governors." In Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso re-centralized despite weak partisan powers, largely by using his reputation as a successful stabilizer to build a broad reform coalition. In Cardoso's Brazil, strong partisan cohesion in important cabinet posts also served as a partial substitute for the lack of partisan power in the legislature. These findings suggest the need for a closer examination of recentralization efforts, particularly in the wake of macroeconomic stabilization and economic reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an annual report by the president of the Econometric Society for 2002. The society promotes economic research using quantitative approaches. First part of the report is dedicated in the discussion of the publication "Econometrica." It is emphasized that the publication releases quality papers concerning economic theory, econometric theory and empirical economics. Six regional meetings, including one in Atlanta, Georgia and another in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The significant decisions undertaken by the executive committee of the society are also reported.

The welfare effects of PTAs are most directly linked to changes in trade prices, i.e., the terms of trade. This paper employs a simple strategic pricing game in segmented markets to measure the effects of MERCOSUR on the pricing of “nonmember” exports to Brazil: As Brazil exempts its MERCOSUR partners from tariffs, the resulting competitive pressure leads other exporters to reduce their prices. Working with detailed data on unit values and tariffs we find that the creation of MERCOSUR was associated with significant declines in the prices of nonmembers' exports to the region. (JEL F13, F15). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges for healthcare systems and political leaders across the globe. In this case study of Brazil, we argue that leadership failings at the highest level contributed to Brazil's relatively high and escalating death rates during 2020. Drawing on an analysis of a large amount of textual documentation drawn from media reports, we emphasise the role and consequences of President Jair Bolsonaro's political discourse and prioritisation of the economy. We focus on the first wave that swept across the globe between January and late June of 2020, arguing that Bolsonaro underplayed the seriousness of the epidemic, leveraged misinformation as a political strategy, promoted pseudoscience, and undermined the Ministry of Health. He also confronted subnational governments for adopting lockdown measures – a move that enabled him to blame regional governors for the short-term economic costs of COVID-19 related restrictions. We suggest that his denialist approach to climate change paved the way for his subsequent denialism of the seriousness of COVID-19 and for his undermining of social distancing, mask-wearing and other preventative responses supported by science. These sobering findings highlight the role that national leaders can play in undermining scientific approaches to both public health and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A remarkably consistent feature of economic growth has been the shift in sectoral output shares towards more secondary and less primary production as per capita income rises. In his study of a cross section of countries, researcher H. Chenery termed this the pattern of industrial growth. Chenery and researcher L. Taylor found the same pattern in international time series. Researcher K. Gupta's cross-section description of Indian states also exhibited this sectoral shift. The paper examines the behavior of sectoral shares across states in Brazil, as well as over time in the various states. There are two main results of this extension of Chenery's work. The cross-section estimates correspond quite closely to those observed in other studies, including in many cases the magnitude of the estimated coefficients. On the other hand, the time series results for the various states are less consistent. A number of states follow the expected pattern, but there are many which are at variance, particularly among the low-income states. This result will be seen to add another dimension to the widely noted tendency towards unequal growth in the Brazilian development process.

This article examines the experience Brazil has had with indexing its economy, a policy that was undertaken in 1964 as a response to inflation. Brazilian indexing or monetary correction was applied in some fashion to taxes, financial instruments, exchange rates, and wages. Monetary corrections in the first three nonwage areas succeeded in restoring to prices and the market place the allocative role they had lost during the preceding hyper-inflation years. Interest rates and exchange rates were made meaningful once again and some workable private financial instruments were created. But nonwage indexation has served as a vehicle for government intervention rather than as a substitute for it. Export subsidies and incentives have been used alongside the crawling peg; indexing as applied to mortgage loans has undergone extensive revision at various times; tax rulings concerning financial assets have been changed, providing favorable treatment to certain assets at the expense of others. It was stressed that wage indexing was more a form of price control than a step toward better functioning markets. Instead of serving as an automatic correction for inflation, wage indexing in practice was a completely discretionary instrument of policy.

This paper examines the effects of the complex set of Brazilian soybean sector policies on the world soybean and products market. Brazilian policy makers have intended to encourage domestic crushing of soybeans and exports of processed rather than raw soybeans. Removal of the Brazilian policy set for the period 1960-78 is simulated with an econometric model of the world soybean market. The results indicate that the intervention objectives were not achieved. Moreover, the U.S. soybean industry has benefited from the policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deepening democratization in Brazil has coincided with sustained flows of domestic migration, which raises an important question of whether migration deepens or depresses democratic development in migrant-sending regions. Whereas earlier perspectives have viewed migration as a political "brain drain," we contend that out-migration can generate resources that promote democratic processes back home. We investigate the role of migration in two aspects of democratization: electoral participation and competition. The analyses are based on spatial panel data models of mayoral election results across all municipalities between 1996 and 2012. The results show that migration increases electoral participation and competition in migrant-sending localities in Brazil. This study also identifies the sociopolitical context that conditions the impact of migration: the effect is most often present in the context of rural-urban migration and is more pronounced in sending localities with less democratic political structures. Moreover, using spatial network models, we find evidence for the transmission of political remittances from migration destination municipalities to origin municipalities. The present study extends the research on the migration-development nexus to the political arena, thus demonstrating the value of integrating demographic processes into explanations of political change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]