Search results

With the advancement of democratization, the decentralization of policy decisions in developing countries, mainly in Latin America, became a feasible goal. With macroeconomic stabilization, particularly the drastic reduction of the inflationary processes that transpired in Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s, countries began to focus on the reduction of unemployment, as well as the generation of income and incentives for economic activity more generally. The combination of decentralization with the aboveoutlined policy goals points to the increased attention given to the possibility that these goals be accomplished by local governments. This type of public policy will be denominated in this report as Local Economic Development (LED). In the most recent literature, there are essentially two lines of inquiry with respect to local development studies. The first, called the "New Economic Geography" (NEG), seeks to reinvigorate the findings in classical studies by Marshal, Myrdal, Hirshman and others. The second research stream specifically directs itself at examining case studies on LED implementation in developing countries. Curiously, there is scant interchange between these two lines of inquiry in Brazil. NEG searches to define models based on microeconomic fundamentals in order to study the relationship between increasing returns to scale, transportation costs and agglomeration advantages. Based on these theoretical models, the empirical analysis inspired by the NEG seeks to evaluate the primary sources for these advantages or to estimate the size of the scale economies derived from these processes. However, limited attention has been directed at linking the theoretical implications of the new economic geography literature to most of the traditional arguments found in urban and regional economics. On the other hand, the literature on LED has sought to establish general parameters which define what a LED program is and have essentially concentrated on case studies with only limited reference to NEG. This ...

All history is comparative. The judgments historians make are derived from some explicit or implicit standard of comparison. Thus, when historians describe the antebellum South in the United States as technically backward, rural, nonindustrial, socially retrograde, and paternalistic, they mean to say that it was so in comparison with the North. When historians of nineteenthcentury Brazil describe it in the same terms, they compare it either to the hegemonic capitalist areas of that period, including the United States North, or to Brazil itself at later periods in its history.

En América Latina, la formación de un sistema bancario moderno fue una parte esencial del proceso de transformaciones que experimentó la región desde las últimas décadas del siglo XIX. El caso de Brasil, que en ese período cumplió el tránsito de una economía esclavista a otra basada plenamente en las relaciones mercantiles, presenta, si se le suma a esto sus dimensiones y proyección actuales, especial interés. Por otra parte, el sistema bancario del Brasil —como el de otros países latinoamericanos— no había sido objeto, más allá de algunas investigaciones notables, de un estudio sistemático. Con este trabajo, que representa el mayor esfuerzo realizado en esa dirección en los últimos años, Gail Triner logra cubrir holgadamente este vacío.

This book marks an important addition to the literature on banks and capital markets in the economic development of Latin America. In the field of Brazilian economic history, it will take its place on a short shelf of basic reference works that engage their subject in a systematic fashion. What makes the book especially ambitious is its attempt to link financial markets and banking institutions to the development of the Brazilian state and economy. Triner argues that the rise of modern banking in Brazil was accompanied by economic growth, market integration, and political arbitrage based on credit and monetary policies underwritten by banks. She argues, moreover, that Brazil's banking system developed simultaneously along public and private lines; that in many ways, banks provided an institutional linkage between public and private spheres; and that the state sought to use the banking system to consolidate and expand its influence.

Intro -- TABLE OF CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations and Acronyms -- Executive Summary -- PART I: Policy Report -- Introduction -- 1. Why Do Inequalities Matter for Brazil? -- 2. Why is Brazil Such an Unequal Society? -- Inequality in Brazil -- The Causes of Inequality -- Public Policy and Equity -- 3. What Can and Should Public Policy Do About Inequality in Brazil? -- Human Assets and Land: Endowments and Prices -- Public Social Expenditure and Taxation -- 4. Conclusions -- Appendix -- Bibliography -- PART II: Background Papers -- 5. Poverty and Inequality in Brazil: New Estimates from Combined PPV-PNAD Data -- Data -- Methodology -- Implementation -- Poverty and Inequality at the Regional Level -- Poverty and Inequality at Lower Levels of Disaggregation -- Inequality Decompositions -- Conclusions -- References -- 6. Beyond Oaxaca-Blinder: Accounting for Differences in Household Income Distributions across Countries -- Introduction -- Income Distribution in Brazil,Mexico,and the United States -- A General Statement of Statistical Decomposition Analysis -- The Decompositions in Practice: A Specific Model -- The Brazil-United States Comparison -- The Brazil-Mexico Comparison -- Conclusions -- Appendix -- References -- 7. Inequality of Outcomes, Inequality of Opportunities, and Intergenerational Education Mobility in Brazil -- Introduction -- Theoretical Background -- Opportunities and the Distribution of Individual Wages -- Simulating the Effects of the Inequality of Opportunities on Earnings -- The Effects of the Inequality of Opportunities on the Distribution of Household Income -- Summary and Conclusion -- References -- 8. Indirect Taxation Reform: Searching for Dalton-Improvements in Brazil -- Introduction -- Taxation in Brazil: Recent Evolution,Trends and Issues.

This research analyzes the stage of regional economic development of Brazil's regions. For this was used the concept of stages of economic development and as a methodological basis was constructed the Regional Economic Development Index (REDI), using social and economic variables. The results showed that in all Brazilian territory there was an improvement in the level of development 2000 to 2010, but persisting disparities between regions. The regions at an advanced stage, in 2000, were concentrated in the Distrito Federal, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro States, and in 2010 Espírito Santo and Paraná States also started having advanced rationality. While the Southeast and South Brazilian regions showed more developed regions, the North and Northeast Regions and some parts of the Midwest still have more laggards' locations. Finally, the more developed regions have a higher rate of urbanization, greater representation of the secondary and tertiary sectors, higher levels of income and thus lower spending on social programs. Less developed regions show an opposite profile.