Discursive constructions of social and environmental accounting in Brazil: the case of Petrobras.

In the 29 years following \"Our Common Future\" by the United Nations, there is considerable debate among governments, civil society, interest groups and business organisations about what constitutes sustainable development, which constitutes evidence for a contested discourse concerning sustainability. The purpose of this study is to understand this debate in the developing economic context of Brazil, and in particular, to understand and critique the social and environmental accounting [SEA] discursive constructions relating to the State-owned, Petrobras as well as to understand the Brazilian literature on SEA. The discourse theory [DT]-based analysis employs rhetorical redescription to analyse twenty-two reports from Petrobras from 2004-2013. I investigate the political notions by employing the methodological framework of the Logics of Critical Explanation [LCE]. LCE engenders five methodological steps: problematisation, retroduction, logics (social, political and fantasmatic), articulation and critique. The empirical discussion suggests that the hegemony of economic development operates to obfuscate, rhetorically, the development of sustainability, so as to maintain the core business of Petrobras conceived as capital accumulation. Equally, these articulations also illustrate how the constructions of SEA operate to serve the company\'s purpose with few (none) profound changes in integration of sustainability. The Brazilian literature on SEA sustains the status quo of neo-liberal market policies that operate to protect the dominant business case approach to maintain an agenda of wealth-creation in relation to social and environmental needs. The articulations of the case manifested in policies regarding, for example, corruption, which involved over-payments for contracts and unsustainable practices relating to the use of fossil fuels and demonstrated that there was antagonism between action and disclosure. The corruption scandal that emerged after SEA disclosures highlighted the rhetorical nature of disclosure when financial resources were subtracted from the company for political parties and engineering contractors hid facts through incomplete disclosures. The articulations of SEA misrepresent a broader context of the meanings associated with sustainability, which restricted the constructions of SEA to principally serve and represent the intention of the most powerful groups. The significance of SEA, then is narrowed to represent particular interests. The study argues for more critical studies as limited Brazilian literature concerning SEA kept a \'safe distance\' from substantively critiquing the constructions of SEA and its articulations in the Brazilian context. The literature review and the Petrobras\' case illustrate a variety of naming, instituting and articulatory practices that endeavour to maintain the current hegemony of development in an emerging economy, which allows Petrobras to continue to exercise significant profit at the expense of the social and environmental. The constructed idea of development in Petrobras\' discourses emphasises a rhetoric of wider development, but, in reality, these discourses were the antithesis of political, social and ethical developmental issues. These constructions aim to hide struggles between social inequalities and exploitation of natural resources and constitute excuses about a fanciful notion of rhetorical and hegemonic neo-liberal development. In summary, this thesis contributes to the prior literature in five ways: (i) the addition of DT to the analysis of SEA enhances the discussion of political elements such as hegemony, antagonism, logic of equivalence/difference, ideology and articulation; (ii) the analysis of an emerging economy such as Brazil incorporates a new perspective of the discussion of the discourses of SEA and development; (iii) this thesis includes a focus on rhetoric to discuss the maintenance of the status quo; (iv) the holistic structure of the LCE approach enlarges the understanding of the social, political and fantasmatic logics of SEA studies and; (v) this thesis combines an analysis of the literature and the case of Petrobras to characterise and critique the state of the Brazilian academy and its impacts and reflections on the significance of SEA. This thesis, therefore, argues for more critical studies in the Brazilian academy due to the persistence of idea of SEA and development that takes-for-granted deep exclusions and contradictions and provide little space for critiques.

Integração espacial e eficiência do hedge no mercado sul-americano de soja: comparações entre Brasil e Argentina

Este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar o potencial de desenvolvimento do contrato futuro de soja no Brasil, por meio da atração de hedgers brasileiros e argentinos. Para tanto, faz-se necessário conhecer os padrões das conexões dos preços entre as regiões analisadas. Nesse sentido, o Capítulo 2 investigou a integração espacial do mercado físico de soja no Brasil (região de Sorriso, no Mato Grosso) e na Argentina (região de Rosário, na província de Santa Fé) e comparou ao grau de integração com os Estados Unidos. Foram empregados modelos autorregressivos com threshold (TAR e M-TAR) e modelos vetoriais de correção de erros, lineares e com threshold (VECM e TVECM), visando captar os efeitos dos custos de transação sobre a integração espacial entre essas regiões. Os resultados apontaram que o mercado de soja brasileiro, argentino e norte-americano são integrados, mesmo considerando-se os efeitos dos custos de transação sobre as decisões de arbitragem espacial. Consequentemente, os preços da soja no mercado internacional tendem a refletir o comportamento dos principais países produtores. Apesar disso, o tempo de transmissão de choques de preços mostrou-se, em geral, menor entre Brasil e Argentina, refletindo a proximidade geográfica. Apontou-se também o comportamento assimétrico da transmissão desses choques, uma vez que choques positivos sobre a relação de longo prazo tendem a ser mais persistentes que os negativos. Se o contrato futuro reflete o comportamento de preços de um único mercado físico integrado, deve-se então esperar que o risco de base seja menor para este mercado e, portanto, que a eficiência do hedge seja maior. No Capítulo 3, o objetivo se constituiu em verificar se há maior eficiência no hedge realizado com os contratos com vencimento em março na CME em relação à BM&FBOVESPA, considerando-se as relações de longo prazo entre os preços à vista e futuros, bem como a dinâmica na estrutura de covariâncias condicionais, por meio de modelos de correção de erros (VECM) e modelos de heterocedasticidade condicional generalizados com correlação condicional dinâmica (DCC-GARCH). Os resultados mostraram que, em geral, a introdução da dinâmica nos segundos momentos das distribuições dos erros tende a aumentar a eficiência da estratégia de hedge. Além disso, foi observado que os produtores de Sorriso tendem a obter melhores condições de hedge na CME, embora haja redução da variância ao se operar na BM&FBOVESPA. Por outro lado, a eficiência do hedge para os produtores de Rosário foi significativamente maior na BM&FBOVESPA do que na CME, o que indica o mercado potencial de hedgers argentinos para negociar o contrato futuro de soja local no Brasil.