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Two elements played key roles in differentiating the Brazilian case of inflation from the classical hyperinflations: indexation and the provision of a reliable domestic currency substitute, i.e. the provision of liquidity to interest-bearing assets. This paper claims that the existence of this domestic currency substitute was the main source of both the inability of the Brazilian Central Bank to fight inflation and of the unwillingness of Brazilians to face the costs of such a fight. (DSE/DÜI)

Unlike previous growth cycles in Brazil, the new one that will complete the Real stabilization plan can no longer count on the state as the main financier and undertaker of the infrastructure investments. This represents a world trend, that originated the "project finance", a way to finance heavy investments designed to make possible the private/public partnership. In Brazil, the law that regulates concessions to the private sector has been enacted and the privatization program has been accelerated. A new proposal for the BNDES system - an insurance against the macroeconomic risk in credit operations - is laid out. This proposal aims at building a long term credit market in Brazil. (Rev Econ Polit/DÜI)

Since the outset of the Real Plan, the government has resorted to much higher reserve requirements on bank's liabilities, as well as to the creation of loans on credit in the attempt to restrict the expansion of monetary aggregates and credit. The policy intention was right, although the design of the profile was flawed. The main recommendation in this paper is to use both the reserve requirements' profile and the tax structure so that the aggregate financial wealth is distributed among its several components in a way compatible with low inflation. This will avoid future reallocations of portfolio, thereby increasing the efficacy of monetary policy. (Rev Econ Polit/DÜI)

Der Autor gibt einen Literaturüberblick zur Fisher-Gleichung, wonach die nominelle Nettoverzinsung der Steuern der Inflationserwartung plus der realen Verzinsung entspricht, und testet das Modell anhand brasilianischer Daten aus den Jahren 1973-1990. Er kommt zu dem Ergebnis, daß in Zeiten progressiver Inflation die Regierung die öffentliche Schuldenlast nicht durch Ausgabe indexierter Schuldverschreibungen abbauen kann. (DSE/DÜI)

This paper examines the role of infrastructure in long run economic growth. The paper consists of two sections, the first concentrates on the theoretical role of government spending in models of growth and the second details examples of private participation in infrastructure development. Using a simple endogenous growth model we find that while the hypothesized benefits of infrastructure expenditures may be large they require care in matching appropriate financing. As the development and maintenance of infrastructure will continue to be pivotal to the long term success of growing economies, we emphasize the lessons on financing and the caveats of private participation to those who are exploring innovative mechanisms for infrastructure design.

Since the mid 1990s, theories of speculative attacks have argued that fixed exchange rate regimes induce excessive borrowing in foreign currency as an optimal response to implicit guarantees that the government will not devalue the domestic currency. Using data on Brazilian firms before and after the end of the fixed exchange rate regime in 1999, we estimate the relevance of the government guarantees by comparing the changes in foreign debt of two groups of firms: those that hedged their foreign currency debt prior to the exchange rate float and those that did not. Using the difference-in-differences approach, in which firm-specific characteristics are introduced as control variables, we exclude the macroeconomic effects of the change in the exchange rate regime and the possible differences in foreign debt trends of the two groups of firms, thus obtaining an estimate of the impact of the government guarantees on borrowing in foreign currency. The results suggest that the guarantees do not induce excessive borrowing in foreign currency

This paper examines the recent evolution of the Brazilian public domestic debt and interprets it in light of the confidence crisis literature. The analysis of the recent developments in the Brazilian public domestic debt market shows that the likelihood of a default must not be assessed only using simple summary aggregate measures of public domestic debt size and maturity, but must also consider other structural aspects. The analysis emphasizes the two main pillars of the Brazilian public domestic debt market: home-bias and the role of the banking sector in intermediating the debt. Evidence from yields of a "perfectly" indexed bonds shows that the rollover premium was very small when the devaluation ocurred, and is still fairly small by October, 1999, indicating that the rollover of the public domestic debt is not, so far, a serious problem. Positive prospects for the public domestic debt market will depend, however, on the Brazilian government maintaining the current fiscal austerity program. (Rev Econ Política/DÜI)

The authors aim at obtaining a simple econometric model that allows to build a confidence interval for the dispersion of the bids made by financial institutions at the Central Bank weekly auctions of short term securities in Brazil. Under competitive conditions it is assumed that the bids' dispersion is associated with the volatility of futures prices and the daily interest rates that had prevailed during the days prior to the auction. Based on that assumption the model succeeds in separating the two auctions with extremely high volatility. (Rev Econ Pol/DÜI)

This paper examines the recent evolution of the Brazilian public domestic debt and interprets it in light of the confidence crisis literature. The analysis of the recent developments in the Brazilian public domestic debt market shows that the likelihood of a default must not be assessed only using simple summary aggregate measures of public domestic debt size and maturity, but must also take into consideration other structural aspects. Our analysis emphasizes the two main pillars of the Brazilian public domestic debt market: home-bias and the role of the banking sector in intermediating the debt. Evidence from yields of a perfectly indexed bond shows that the rollover premium was very small when the devaluation occurred, and is still fairly small by October, 1999, indicating that the rollover of the public domestic debt has not, so far, constituted a serious problem. Positive prospects for the public domestic debt market will depend, however, on the Brazilian government maintaining the current fiscal austerity program.

How countercyclical macroprudential credit policies affect the loan spread? To answer this question, we propose a microeconomic model of bank competition that contemplates differences in the behavior of public and private banks and the peculiarities of the market for corporate loans vis-a-vis the market for consumer loans. We solve the model and calibrate it using parameters of the Brazilian economy, where government-owned banks not only account for almost half of the outstanding loans in the credit market but also have played a strong countercyclical role in the economy. Subsequently, we use the equilibrium conditions of the model to study the effects of macroprudential credit policies on loan spreads. The results indicate that credit expansion by public banks is more effective to reduce loans interest rates during recession periods than during periods of economic expansion.

O mercado futuro de depositos interfinanceiros tornou-se, ao longo dos ultimos anos, um dos mais importantes mercados financeiros da economia brasileira, movimentando hoje em dia um volume de aproximadamente R$ 40 bilhoes. Entretanto, dadas as idiossincrasias desse mercado, a abordagem tradicionalmente usada para analisar o comportamento estatistico dos precos futuros nao e valida. Mostra-se que, devido a acumulacao dos juros diarios sobre o preco unitario, a serie dos precos futuros apresenta uma "heterocedasticidade ciclica" que ira persistir a transformacoes estabilizadoras de variancia e a diferenciacoes de qualquer ordem. (Pesqui Planej Econ/DÜI)

Brazil has had a long period of high inflation. It peaked around 100 percent per year in 1964, decreased until the first oil shock (1973), but accelerated again afterward, reaching levels above 100 percent on average between 1980 and 1994. This last period coincided with severe balance of payments problems and economic stagnation that followed the external debt crisis in the early 1980s. We show that the high-inflation period (1960-1994) was characterized by a combination of fiscal deficits, passive monetary policy, and constraints on debt financing. The transition to the low-in inflation period (1995-2016) was characterized by improvements in all of these features, but it did not lead to significant improvements in economic growth. In addition, we document a strong positive correlation between inflation rates and seignior age revenues, although in inflation rates are relatively high for modest levels of seignior age revenues. Finally, we discuss the role of the weak institutional framework surrounding the scale and monetary authorities and the role of monetary passiveness and in inflation indexation in accounting for the unique features of inflation dynamics in Brazil.