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Since the 1970s, Brazil has carried out the most successful world program of commercial biomass for use and production of energy by stimulating its sugarcane industry and promoting the large-scale production of ethanol nationwide in response to the first oil shock. Today, the technologies behind ethanol production are well established. Brazil is the world's largest sugarcane supplier, producing its ethanol at a competitive price. If other sugarcane producing countries decided to join Brazil's move toward the production of this biofuel, what impacts might there be for each country's economy and employment? This is what we investigate in this paper. Prime candidates for ethanol production include Australia, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States of America. We evaluated the potential socioeconomic impacts of developing this promising industry by using an input–output approach. More specifically, we adapted the Brazilian method of producing ethanol to these countries' distinct economies. We augmented the input–output table of each country, inserting a new ethanol industry based on the Brazilian ethanol production model. We also augmented their new ethanol industry's sales following a hypothetical hydrous and anhydrous ethanol consumption scenario. Thereafter, we reconcile the national accounts, concluding our analysis by quantifying and comparing the different net effects of this new industry for each of the assessed countries for the year of 2009. We demonstrate which industries would be expected to be positively or negatively impacted by this substitution in each country; and find that not all of the countries we assessed would experience positive socioeconomic results from emulating Brazil's production of ethanol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to evaluate the environmental cost of the production process of broilers from the approach of emergy accounting and carbon sequestration potential for broiler farms. The study assessed a standard farm of the conventional system containing ten houses in 19 ha. We evaluated the following indices solar transformity (Tr), renewability (%R), emergy yield ratio (EYR), emergy investment ratio (EIR), environmental loading ratio (ELR), emergy sustainability index (ESI), and emergy exchange ratio (EER) and carbon sequestration potential of eucalyptus plantation. The total emergy input was 2.79E-06 seJ ha−1 y−1 for the broiler growth process. The highest investment in the production process was related to materials, which came from feeding and electricity. The renewability index indicated the low sustainability of the system with increased consumption of economical materials and equipment, with a low proportion of the emergy use of renewable resources. High investment in broilers production in the conventional system generates an environmental loading ratio that indicates high environmental degradation. Planting trees in the surrounding areas of the farm facilities can minimize the externalities of the production system with the plantation carbon sequestration potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article evaluates the potential economic losses from flooding in São Paulo (SP), Brazil from 2008 to 2012. Topics covered include the difference between direct economic loss and indirect economic loss, the cost-advantage of structural projects to reduce flooding, the factors that cause floods in SP including urbanization and climate change, and the hotspots that may have caused the enormous losses to the economy of SP.

This article attempts to elucidate one of the mechanisms that link trade barriers, in the form of port costs, and subsequent growth and regional inequality. Prior attention has focused on inland or link costs, but port costs can be considered as a further barrier to enhancing trade liberalization and growth. In contrast to a highway link, congestion at a port may have severe impacts that are spread over space and time whereas highway link congestion may be resolved within several hours. Since a port is part of the transportation network, any congestion/ disruption is likely to ripple throughout the hinterland. In this sense, it is important to model properly the role nodal components play in the context of spatial models and international trade. In this article, a spatial computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that is integrated to a transport network system is presented to simulate the impacts of increases in port efficiency in Brazil. The role of ports of entry and ports of exit are explicitly considered to grasp the holistic picture in an integrated interregional system. Measures of efficiency for different port locations are incorporated in the calibration of the model and used as the benchmark in our simulations. Three scenarios are evaluated: (1) an overall increase in port efficiency in Brazil to achieve international standards; (2) efficiency gains associated with decentralization in port management in Brazil; and (3) regionally differentiated increases in port efficiency to reach the boundary of the national efficiency frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies aiming to evaluate the structural distribution of economic impacts usually treat consumption demand as an exogenous variable. In this case, the Leontief matrix multiplier lacks the multiplier process via the consumption function that one customarily finds in a Keynesian model. To regard the consumption as a fictitious production activity is not the appropriate procedure. Instead, the Keynesian consumption function is introduced at a disaggregated level. For that, a matrix multiplier was formulated in order to combine Leontief's propagation process with the Keynesian propagation process. This matrix includes the effects of endogenous changes in consumption demand. Based on the present production structure in Brazil, the results show how the propagation effect directs the induced income towards capitalists, depriving wage earners. The model also allows for evaluation of diverse effects of the propagation process according to income and consumption coefficients by sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]