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This paper presents an assessment of the factors associated with access to master’s degree programs in Brazil, investigating whether there is evidence of inequity arising from students’ personal and socioeconomic characteristics. A rich and novel dataset comprising microdata on undergraduate college graduates and new master’s students is used for the empirical analysis. Students’ decisions to progress to graduate education are modeled as a two-stage process, and the parameters are estimated separately for each broad academic field using a conditional logit model for the first stage, and a logistic regression analysis for the second stage. The main findings are: (a) there is strong evidence of low mobility of students starting graduate education, and they are far more likely to choose a master’s degree program in the same university or close to where they graduated from college; (b) academic performance and activities during undergraduate program in college are associated with an increase in the relative odds of progressing to graduate education; (c) in most broad academic fields, no evidence that women, black or brown students, economically disadvantaged students, foreigners and people with disabilities are less likely to start a master’s program is found; and (d) a significant association between the odds of enrollment and parental education is not observed in nearly all fields. The study points to different recommendations and to further research questions to understand and improve graduate education in Brazil.

The objective of this paper is to discuss the role of tax incentives as part of national innovation policies from a theoretical perspective. Tax incentives are commonly interpreted as closer to a market failure rationale, but they can also play a role as part of a broad evolutionary policy strategy. The theoretical debate provides a conceptual framework to explain the increasing relevance of tax incentives in different countries as from the 2008 economic crisis. The Brazilian experience seems inconsistent with this trend, as the reduction of public budget to innovation was not followed by an upsurge of tax incentives.

PurposeThis paper evaluates the effects of tax incentives on business innovation in Brazil that were established by Law 11,196/05 (the “Fiscal Incentives Law”) to test whether they have had a positive impact on beneficiary firms' innovation input and output and on their performance.Design/methodology/approachThe policy impacts are estimated using microdata on 13,706 firms available in the 2008 and 2011 editions of the Brazilian Innovation Survey (PINTEC) and by applying propensity score matching with difference-in-differences.FindingsThe results suggest a positive and statistically significant impact of the policy on research and development (R&D) expenditures (average of approximately US$ 264,000 in 2011), the number of research staff (average of five researchers) and total employment (approximately 5% of the beneficiary firms' mean size). However, no impact was found on the overall spending on innovative activities, the percentage of sales and exports from new products, net revenue or net revenue per employee.Practical implicationsThe findings provide empirical support in favor of tax incentives as a policy tool to boost business innovation in the country. However, the absence of significant effects on innovative activities expenditures and on most indicators of innovation output and firms' performance reveals shortcomings of the policy that need to be addressed.Originality/valueThe study complements and advances the findings of previous studies by assessing policy impact on total innovative activities expenditures and on innovation output and firm performance.

This article presents a first analysis of the potential link between the level of fiscal decentralization of a country and its public investment in innovation. We present a theoretical model where a “benevolent government” invests in research and development (R&D) aiming at maximizing net income, and R&D results are subject to interregional knowledge spillovers. The model predicts that decentralization leads to a lower level of public spending on innovation, and to a lower share of basic research in the government R&D budget. These hypotheses are empirically tested using country aggregate data. The results provide empirical support to the mentioned hypotheses, as we find evidence that higher levels of both expenditure and revenue decentralization are associated with a lower intensity of basic research in public R&D and with a lower level of R&D spending. The strength of the evidence, however, is weakened by the small sample size and shortcomings of the indicators used in the analysis.

A taxa de atrito e o tempo para conclusao nos cursos de mestrado e doutorado sao temas recentes que vem sendo investigados em diferentes paises, mas que ate o momento foram negligenciados pela literatura brasileira. Este artigo apresenta um primeiro esforco de investigar essas questoes no Pais, tracando um panorama geral da trajetoria dos alunos de pos-graduacao stricto sensu. Para isso, e apresentado um resumo da literatura internacional no tema, alem de um conjunto inicial de estatisticas descritivas, com base em microdados identificados dos estudantes. A taxa de atrito nos dois niveis encontra-se em torno de 12%, numero relativamente baixo se comparado com aqueles reportados em outros paises. A proporcao de alunos que abandonam ou sao desligados tende a aumentar com o tempo no curso, sendo ainda observada uma taxa de atrito inferior para mulheres, alunos mais jovens e estudantes de instituicoes publicas. A maior parte dos alunos titulados no mestrado conclui o curso ate o fim do terceiro ano apos o ingresso, enquanto no doutorado isso ocorre ate o fim do quinto ano. Nao foram encontrados indicios de que o tempo para conclusao possa estar relacionado ao sexo, a idade dos estudantes e a natureza juridica das instituicoes de ensino. O artigo aponta diferentes direcoes para futuras pesquisas, para que se possa avancar na compreensao da trajetoria dos estudantes brasileiros de pos-graduacao.

In the last decades, multinational enterprises (MNEs) have increasedtheir internationalization levels of innovation activities. Brazil has benefited fromsuch changes and received increasing investment from MNEs. In 2005, the federalgovernment approved new tax incentives (Law 11,196/05) to foster business innovationin the country by reducing the tax cost of research and development (R&D) activities.This paper investigates whether these tax breaks have attracted ‘footloose R&D’,diverting international investment from other economies. After a literature reviewon locational factors for R&D attraction and an analysis of the Brazilian case, aneconometric model is presented, using data on R&D investment by U.S. MNEs andpriority patent applications. No evidence that Brazilian tax incentives have attractedinternational R&D from alternative host countries is found. This result is in accordancewith previous research suggesting international R&D performed in Brazil is mainlyadaptive and support-oriented and, for this reason, tax incentives are not a primaryattraction factor. It also suggests that claims that international fiscal competition lead toa zero-sum game may be unfounded for the Brazilian case. In the last decades, multinational enterprises (MNEs) have increasedtheir internationalization levels of innovation activities. Brazil has benefited fromsuch changes and received increasing investment from MNEs. In 2005, the federalgovernment approved new tax incentives (Law 11,196/05) to foster business innovationin the country by reducing the tax cost of research and development (R&D) activities.This paper investigates whether these tax breaks have attracted ‘footloose R&D’,diverting international investment from other economies. After a literature reviewon locational factors for R&D attraction and an analysis of the Brazilian case, aneconometric model is presented, using data on R&D investment by U.S. MNEs andpriority patent applications. No evidence that Brazilian tax incentives have attractedinternational R&D from alternative host countries is found. This result is in accordancewith previous research suggesting international R&D performed in Brazil is mainlyadaptive and support-oriented and, for this reason, tax incentives are not a primaryattraction factor. It also suggests that claims that international fiscal competition lead toa zero-sum game may be unfounded for the Brazilian case.

The objective of this paper is to investigate whether the tax incentThe objective of this paper is to investigate whether the tax incentives for innovation in Brazil established by Law 11,196/05 (BRASIL, 2005) have altered the composition of firms’innovation investments and their results. Based on the concept of behavioral additionality and on the design of the policy, we derive three propositions on how these incentives affect the bundle of innovation expenditures, the educational level of researchers and the type of innovation pursued by firms. Using disaggregate data at firm level from the Brazilian Industrial Innovation Survey (PINTEC) of 2008 and 2011 and other sources, the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) is estimated through propensity score matching with differenceindifferences. The main findings of the study are: (a) incentives had a positive impact on the research and development (R&D) intensity of innovation investments, increasing R&D spending by around 1,1 million Brazilian reais on average, while decreasing mean spending on acquisition of external knowledge and introduction of innovations in the market; (b) although the policy fostered additional hiring of researchers with undergraduate degree, no significant impact on personnel with master’s or Ph.D. degrees was found; and (c) there is no evidence of impact on the balance between product and process innovation. O objetivo deste artigo é investigar se os incentivos fiscais para inovação da Lei 11.196/05 (BRASIL, 2005) alteraram a composição dos investimentos em inovação das empresas e seus resultados. Tomando por base o conceito de adicionalidade comportamental e o desenho da política fiscal, são apresentadas três proposições sobre como esses incentivos afetam a cesta de gastos com inovação, o nível educacional dos pesquisadores e o tipo de inovação desenvolvido pelas firmas. A partir de dados desagregados da Pesquisa de Inovação (PINTEC) de 2008 e 2011 e de outras fontes, o efeito médio do tratamento nas unidades tratadas (ATT) é estimado utilizando-se um pareamento por escore de propensão (PSM) com diferença-em-diferenças. As principais conclusões do estudo são: os incentivos impactaram positivamente a intensidade de pesquisa e desenvolvimento (P&D) dos investimentos em inovação das firmas, elevando os gastos com P&D em cerca de R$ 1,1 milhão na média, assim como reduzindo os gastos médios com aquisição de outros conhecimentos externos e com introdução de inovações no mercado; embora a política tenha fomentado a contratação adicional de pesquisadores com diploma de graduação, não foi encontrado impacto significativo para pessoal de pesquisa com titulação de mestrado ou doutorado; e não há evidência de impacto no balanço entre inovações de produto e processo.

This paper examines the impact of fiscal decentralization on both public investment in innovation (measured as the share of research and development - R&D - spending in total government budget) and on the intensity of basic research within the public R&D bundle. We present a theoretical model where a ‘benevolent government’ invests in R&D aiming at maximizing net income available in the country (central government) or in the respective region (subnational government), where states compete to attract capital investment, and where R&D results are subject to interregional knowledge spillovers. The model predicts that decentralization leads to a lower level of public spending on innovation, and to a lower share of basic research in government R&D budget. The implications of the model are empirically tested utilizing country aggregate data. We find evidence that expenditure decentralization leads to lower intensity of basic research within public R&D, and that both revenue and expenditure decentralization negatively affect the size of innovation spending. The findings suggest that fiscal decentralization policy, expected to be beneficial in many other dimensions, should be accompanied by measures to compensate for the otherwise decrease in innovation spending, and that the assignment of expenditure responsibilities should have central government play a greater role in financing and carrying out basic research.

A partir do exame qualitativo de dados e informações coletadas, lastreado nas teorias do ciclo de políticas públicas, esse texto analisa duas recentes iniciativas do governo federal brasileiro na área de segurança pública – os projetos ‘Bolsa Formação’ e ‘Mulheres da Paz’, ambos do Programa Nacional de Segurança Pública com Cidadania (Pronasci). A partir da descrição e reconstrução histórica desses projetos, tentamos realizar uma comparação entre alguns de seus principais elementos ou características, concatenando-os com conceitos e abordagens teóricas, a fim de trazer conclusões úteis à análise e formulação de políticas públicas.Palavras-chave: Políticas públicas, segurança pública, Mulheres da Paz, Bolsa Formação.

O objetivo central desta dissertação é realizar uma análise crítica da política de informática brasileira adotada na década de noventa sob uma perspectiva jurídica. O mote principal é utilizar a Lei de Informática (Lei 8.248/91 e modificações posteriores), seus dispositivos e incentivos, tanto como objeto de análise quanto como centro de referência para compreensão do setor e da política pública adotada. A questão que se propõe responder é que papel pode ser atribuído ao direito dentro de uma política pública setorial voltada ao desenvolvimento de uma indústria de grande importância na economia contemporânea e com alta dinâmica tecnológica como o setor de informática. Na primeira parte realiza-se uma revisão da literatura econômica sobre política industrial e intervenção do Estado na economia, a fim de se estabelecer os marcos teóricos do estudo empírico. Nos dois capítulos subseqüentes é feita a reconstrução histórica da antiga política de informática (a reserva de mercado) dos anos setenta e oitenta, e do novo conjunto de incentivos instituídos nos anos noventa com a Lei de Informática, tentando entender porque uma política inicialmente pensada para durar até 1997 já foi renovada por duas vezes, tendo por prazo atual de duração o ano de 2019. Também é realizado um estudo das três principais ferramentas jurídicas adotadas na nova política (o Plano Produtivo Básico, as exigências de pesquisa e desenvolvimento e o fundo setorial CT-Info), abordando a racionalidade adotada para atacar os problemas identificados, e como o direito e o arcabouço normativo se encaixam e são utilizados dentro dessa racionalidade. Ao final, tenta-se retomar sinteticamente as análises anteriores, respondendo à pergunta sobre a função do direito em três frentes: (i) como elemento que, uma vez positivado como norma jurídica, exerce influência para a evolução ou evolver posterior da política; (ii) como ferramenta jurídica de política industrial utilizada pela Lei de Informática; e (iii) como elemento explicativo fundamental para compreender a própria construção e desenvolvimento do mercado de informática no país. The main purpose of this essay is to critically analyze under a legal perspective the Brazilian informatics policy adopted during the nineties. The strategy may be described as using the Informatics Law (Law no 8.248/91 and latter amendments), its rules and incentives as the central object of analysis and as a guidance to understand the industry and the public policy. The question to be answered herein is what role may be ascribed to Law in an industry targeted public policy aimed at promoting the development of an industry of great importance in todays economy and with high technological dynamics such as the informatics industry. The first part reviews the economic literature on industrial policy and State intervention in the economy, in order to establish the theoretical grounds of the empirical study. In the two subsequent chapters there is a historical analysis of the former informatics policy (the market reserve) in the seventies and the eighties, and of the new policy established with the Informatics Law in the nineties, arguing why a policy initially thought to last up to 1997 was renewed twice already, with a current deadline in 2019. It is also presented a research on the three most important legal instruments of the new policy (the Basic Productive Plan, the investments required on research and development and the industry specific fund CT-Info), including a study of the rationale intended to correct the identified problems, and how the Law and legal arrangements fit and were used within such rationalities. Finally, the main theses defended along the essay are jointly reviewed, thus answering the question regarding the role of Law in three different ways: (i) as an element that, once approved as legal provision, exerts influence on the further evolution of the public policy in question; (ii) as an industrial policy legal instrument used within the Informatics Law; and (iii) as a fundamental explanatory element to comprehend the constitution and development of the Brazilian informatics market itself.

Este estudo investiga a desigualdade no acesso a pos-graduacao no Brasil mediante comparacao entre o perfil dos ingressantes dos cursos de mestrado e doutorado e o dos egressos da graduacao, considerando cinco criterios: desempenho academico previo, sexo, raca ou etnia, renda familiar e unidade federativa do curso de graduacao. Utiliza microdados identificados de bases distintas que permitem investigar as caracteristicas dos alunos no momento do termino da graduacao. Conclui que: (a) os novos pos-graduandos, em geral, apresentam um desempenho academico previo elevado; (b) a participacao feminina na pos-graduacao e menor do que na graduacao, sendo mais reduzida nas areas de engenharias, ciencias exatas e da terra; (c) a participacao de alunos de etnia negra (pardos e pretos) tambem e inferior aquela observada entre os concluintes da graduacao; (d) ingressantes no mestrado e doutorado, em geral, apresentam renda familiar mais elevada; e (e) nao ha um cenario claro acerca da concentracao de desigualdade regional da pos-graduacao. Os resultados apontam para a importância de futuras investigacoes que testem a hipotese de inequidade no acesso.