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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.)

Purpose-This article aims to analyze if the adoption of inflation targeting in Brazil contributed to an improvement in the conduction of monetary policy capable of increasing credibility and reducing inflation without an increase in the sacrifice rate. Design/methodology/approach-Considering the Brazilian experience, this article estimates, through GMM and VAR methods, the offsetting effects of a monetary policy change on the output-inflation and unemployment-inflation trade-offs. Findings-The findings denote that the disinflationary process implemented in Brazil, afterthe adoption of inflation targeting, is not associated with the emergence of the above-mentioned trade-offs. Furthermore, the development of credibility in the conduction of monetary policy is an important element responsible for the achievement of this result. Practical implications-Development of credibility is an important strategy for improving the conduction of the monetary policy. Originality/value-The results of the paper give some new insights about the conduction of monetary policy for developing countries, which have adopted inflation targeting. [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 investigates behavioral effects known as illusion of control and ambiguity aversion using an experiment with business and economics students in Brazil. Empirical results suggest that people present both ambiguity aversion and illusion of control. Nonetheless, most agents are not willing to pay a premium to reduce or eliminate ambiguity aversion and to gain "control." These results share some similarities with results for developed markets, but it seems cultural differences may play a role in these results. [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]

Several issues impact the water sustainability of a river basin. Among them are the social, economic, and environmental aspects. However, they are often treated separately, and not as an integrated, dynamic process. In order to integrate the hydrologic, environmental, life and policy issues, as well as the existing pressures and policy responses in one quantitative, dynamic, and aggregated indicator, a watershed sustainability index (WSI), which uses a pressure-state-response function, was developed and is proposed in this paper. Applied to a 2,200 km2 Unesco-HELP demonstration basin in Brazil (SF Verdadeiro), the value obtained for WSI was 0.65, which represents an intermediate level of basin sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interdisciplinary model of firm performance based on a modified and extended Competing Values Model of Organizational Culture combines elements drawn from three different research traditions-organizational culture and climate from organizational behavior, innovativeness from economics, and market orientation from marketing. The model has been used to analyze firm performance in business-to-business markets in a number of countries in the industrial and the industrializing worlds. In general, successful firms are found to be innovative, market oriented, and to have organizational cultures and decision-making climates which are externally oriented. In most countries, there are also identifiable national culture-specific patterns. In this paper, we focus on the inter-relationships among the streams of research upon which the model is built. Using Brazil, previously unstudied in this context, we attempt to identify a structure among the model elements to test hypotheses about (1) the inter-relationships of the explanatory variables, and (2) the relationships of the explanatory variables to each other and to firm performance. We find that the contributing disciplines produce interpretable results, and that performance is improved by achieving good results simultaneously along several inter-related dimensions. [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.)

Multi-factor models are useful tools to explain cross-sectional covariance in equities returns. In this paper a new estimation method is proposed that makes use of irregularly spaced returns and an empirical example is provided with the 389 most liquid equities in the Brazilian Market. The market index shows itself capable of explaining equity returns while the US$/Brazilian real exchange rate and the Brazilian short interest rate do not. The example shows the usefulness of the estimation method in further using the model to fill in missing values and to provide interval forecasts. [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]

In recent years, scholars of “contentious politics” have paid increasing attention to the dynamics of space and place in the construction of organized resistance. To date, however, the literature has tended to focus on the social construction of space rather than the equally important spatial constitution of the social. In this paper, I analyze how particular understandings of space, or what I call “spatial imaginaries”—cognitive frameworks, both collective and individual, constituted through the lived experiences, perceptions, and conceptions of space itself—influenced the formation of the largest grassroots social movement in Brazilian history, the Movement of Rural Landless Workers (the MST). I analyze the decision to join the MST among small family farmers in southern Brazil and rural plantation workers in northeastern Brazil. People from both groups decided to join the movement, but the farmers from southern Brazil used their spatial imaginaries to embrace the act of occupying land and to create new frontiers for colonization while the rural workers from northeastern Brazil overcame the spatial imaginaries produced through the plantation labor system and joined the movement because they had few other options available to them. Because such imaginaries stay with people long after they engage in the initial acts of mobilization, incorporating this sort of analysis introduces an important dynamic component into the analysis of movement formation. [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]

The paper investigates the relationship between profit margins and business cycle in the Brazilian industry during the 1992-1998 period, taking as reference a dynamic panel data model founded around a conjectural variation framework. The empirical results indicate procyclical behaviour of profit margins for the aggregate business cycle but is less clear in the case of sector-specific business cycle variables. Among the most robust results, one can highlight the roles of lagged profitability and import intensity and the negligible role of union density. Schmalensee in 1985 (American Economic Review 75, pp. 341-51) outlined three theoretical interpretations associated with the empirical model (classical, revisionist and managerial). Econometric tests on the related restrictions do not allow one to exclusively legitimate any of the three interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the on-going trade dispute between Canada and Brazil on export subsidies in the aircraft industry and the reasons for its escalation. This is a peculiar case of strategic trade policy insofar as the good, i.e. regional jets, is heavily dependent on sub-systems that are imported in the two countries. The hypothesis that the dispute solely derives from the search for rents and externalities is therefore incomplete. Without downplaying the role of interest politics, we argue that in both countries ideas about the goals of trade policy have an important place in explaining why this dispute drags on. For Canada, the belief in a rules-based trading regime has led it to strongly oppose violations, while insecurity about its competitiveness has led to a variety of government schemes to support firms in advanced sectors like aerospace. For Brazil, its place as a leader of the developing world acted as a rallying point for government and firms alike. The research also argues that the WTO process has actually made a resolution of the dispute more difficult by making it too costly for firms and countries to comply with the costs of losing. [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.

In this paper, the impact of the transnationalization in Economy localization patterns of the urban activities in an intermediate city -Mendoza, Argentina- and in a city linked with the global economy-San Pablo, Brasil- is evaluated. This study is based on the retrospective and comparative analysis of the aspects related to the land use and to the population, stemming from the definition of geographical typologies and geographical associations. It has been established that the distribution patterns differ according to the consideration of "traditional" or "new" activities. Also, the territorial transformation and the process that originates them are considered. Among the conclusions, it is important to underline the existence of similarities between the localization patterns of urban activities in both cities, although there is a difference in there magnitudes. As a difference between both cities it is noted that while in one of them diversification prevails, in the other specialization develops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 purpose of this paper is to test the validity of the purchasing power parity (PPP) doctrine in Brazil. Historical data for the period 1855-1996 are considered. The period 1855-1990 is also analysed in order to compare the results with those obtained by Zini and Cati (1993) using the conventional cointegration analysis. This article uses fractional cointegration analysis, a flexible methodology which allows for more subtle forms of mean reversion. The tests performed are those of Geweke and Porter-Hudak (1983), and of Hurvich and Ray (1995). The critical values for both tests are generated by simulation because they are non-standard. The empirical results do not support the absolute PPP hypothesis but the relative PPP holds in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates firm specific indexes of technical efficiency for the Brazilian plastics and steel industries. Two different indexes are employed for the empirical estimates—the Farrell index and an index developed from a linear programming approximation of a nonstochastic frontier production function specified in the Cobb-Douglas functional form. Evidence of substantial relative technical inefficiency is revealed. In both industries only a very small proportion of all the observed firms were producing amounts of output greater than 80 percent of that technically possible on the estimated frontier. Relative efficiency of the firms in the two industries was not seen to be significantly related to ownership (foreign or government), but tests did suggest a tendency for larger firms, possessing larger market shares, to be closer to the frontier than smaller firms. [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 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]

This paper examines the stagnation of Brazilian exports of products other than coffee during the postwar period. Export stagnation led to a pattern of autarkic development. The combination of growing domestic demand and income-inelastic supply of imports put pressure on the real exchange rate. As the external value of the cruzeiro depreciated more rapidly than the internal inflation, relative prices moved to favor domestic producers for many new products, leading to the establishment of many new industries producing only for the internal market, and very rapid growth based on import substitution. This process was self-sustaining, as import substitution coupled with export stagnation in one period lowered the equilibrium exchange rate for imports, and stimulated further import substitution in the next. Because of the increasing inelasticity of domestic production with respect to downward movements of the exchange rate, however, import substitution became a progressively more expensive way both of saving foreign exchange and of generating growth.

There have been many efforts to improve sugarcane cultivation and conversion technologies in the ethanol industry. In this study, an economic assessment and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions analysis are performed on ethanol produced conventionally from sugarcane sugar and on an emerging process where the sugarcane bagasse is additionally used to produce ethanol. The combined conventional plus lignocellulosic ethanol pathway is found to be less economically favorable than the conventional ethanol pathway unless a series of technical challenges associated with cost reductions in lignocellulosic ethanol production are overcome, reaching a production cost at 0.31 $/L. This is expected to be achieved in a prospective 2020 scenario. GHG emissions savings against gasoline for both the conventional ethanol and the conventional plus lignocellulosic ethanol pathways are confirmed and found to increase with technological developments projected to occur over time. However, the absolute numbers are highly sensitive to the way of claiming credits from surplus electricity co-generated in the mill. These are 86%, 110% and 150% for the conventional ethanol in the 2020 scenario when the surplus electricity is assumed to replace the average electricity, the ‘combined-sources’ based electricity and the marginal electricity, respectively. For the conventional plus lignocellulosic ethanol pathway, they are 80%, 85% and 95% respectively in the 2020 scenario. Finally, a series of sensitivity analyses found the comparison in the GHG emissions between the two production pathways is not sensitive to changes in the sugarcane yield or the emissions factor for the enzymes used in the lignocellulosic ethanol process. However, the plant size is an influential factor on both the ethanol production cost (a lowest MESP of 0.26 $/L at the scale of 4 MM tonne cane/yr) and the GHG emission factors, partially because of the important role that transport of feedstock biomass (sugarcane and trash) plays in both elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article presents information on the value-added tax VAT) competition among the states in Brazil between 1985 to 2001. The several states of the country have their independent when it comes handling their bases and VAT rates and all of them are using the tax as equipment of industrial policy. However, these states are strongly reacting if there are some modifications in VAT codes in their neighboring states and they both tend to move in their policy. On the other hand, the intervention of the federal government will alleviate the cost of horizontal VAT competition.

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.