Trade liberalization and the evolution of skill earnings differentials in Brazil

Rio de Janeiro

Barriers faced by the Brazilian business community to access the United States market system

Trade history between Brazil and the United States is long and complicated but it is only in recent years that the trade balance has become more equal in terms of both imports and exports. As Brazil continues to establish its position in the world economy and expand its export market it is only natural that it seeks to increase exports to its single largest trading partner, the United States, and maintain the market share already established. In order to achieve success in these regards Brazil must have a deep understanding of the American political economy system. Part of this entails understanding barriers that must be overcome by Brazilian businesses to access United States markets, particularly the access of certain products at the industry level.

Decent work and the informal sector in Brazil

Brazil has a substantial share – about 60% by some measures - of its employees working without labor registry and 62% of its private sector workers not contributing to social security. Informality is important because its job precaurioness, social desprotection consequences, and it is also very correlated with poverty and other social welfare concepts measured at a family level. 58% of the country population that is found below the indigent line live in families headed by informal workers. The complexity of the informal sector is derived from the multiple relevant dimensions of jobs quality. The basis used for guiding policy interventions depends on which effect of informality one is interested such: as lowering job precaurioness, increasing occupational risks, increasing the degree of protection against adverse shocks, allowing that good oportunities to be taken by the credit provision, improving informal workers families living conditions, implementing afirmative actions, reducing tax evasion etc. This report gauges various aspects of the informal sector activities in Brazil over the last decades. Our artistic constraint are the available sources of information. The final purpose is to help the design of policies aimed to assist those that hold “indecent” jobs

Trade liberalization and the evolution of skill earnings differentials in Brazil

Rio de Janeiro

Essays on the general equilibrium effects of barriers to trade on economic growth, foreign trade and the location of economic activity in Brazil

This work presents a fully operational interstate CGE model implemented for the Brazilian economy that tries to quantify both the role of barriers to trade on economic growth and foreign trade performance and how the distribution of the economic activity may change as the country opens up to foreign trade. Among the distinctive features embedded in the model, modeling of external scale economies, port efficiency and land-maritime transport costs provides an innovative way of dealing explicitly with theoretical issues related to integrated regional systems. In order to illustrate the role played by the quality of infrastructure and geography on the country‟s foreign and interregional trade performance, a set of simulations is presented where barriers to trade are significantly reduced. The relative importance of trade policy, port efficiency and land-maritime transport costs for the country trade relations and regional growth is then detailed and quantified, considering both short run as well as long run scenarios. A final set of simulations shed some light on the effects of liberal trade policies on regional inequality, where the manufacturing sector in the state of São Paulo, taken as the core of industrial activity in the country, is subjected to different levels of external economies of scale. Short-run core-periphery effects are then traced out suggesting the prevalence of agglomeration forces over diversion forces could rather exacerbate regional inequality as import barriers are removed up to a certain level. Further removals can reverse this balance in favor of diversion forces, implying de-concentration of economic activity. In the long run, factor mobility allows a better characterization of the balance between agglomeration and diversion forces among regions. Regional dispersion effects are then clearly traced-out, suggesting horizontal liberal trade policies to benefit both the poorest regions in the country as well as the state of São Paulo. This long run dispersion pattern, on one hand seems to unravel the fragility of simple theoretical results from recent New Economic Geography models, once they get confronted with more complex spatially heterogeneous (real) systems. On the other hand, it seems to capture the literature‟s main insight: the possible role of horizontal liberal trade policies as diversion forces leading to a more homogeneous pattern of interregional economic growth.

The social context of entrepreneurship in Brazil and Spain in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries

Este trabalho teve o principal objetivo de contribuir para o entendimento do contexto social que circunda empreendedores inovadores brasileiros e espanhóis que emergem em seus próprios países de origem, procurando mapear e entender relações sociais relevantes estabelecidas durante o delicado período de emergência de seus empreendimentos no final do século XX e começo do XXI. Autores alinhados com o pensamento da sociologia econômica foram utilizados como referência para a determinação das perguntas de pesquisa, que provocaram a realização de um estudo comparativo entre empreendedores finalistas de um mesmo prêmio atribuído a empreendedores inovadores brasileiros e espanhóis. No total, 19 empreendedores oriundos de setores emparelhados em ambos os países foram entrevistados e documentos sobre eles e seus empreendimentos foram levantados, possibilitando verificar, entre outras coisas, a influência relativamente homogênea do contexto social de ambos os países no período de emergência de empreendimentos fundados por empreendedores advindos de classes sociais mais elevadas destas sociedades, com especial ênfase nas complicadas características do padrão de financiamento dos empreendimentos, no aumento consistente do apoio social e público ao empreendedorismo, no elevado envolvimento emocional que os empreendedores estabelecem com seus empreendimentos e no peculiar papel das relações de confiança construídos entre os empreendedores, seus sócios e funcionários

A comparative study of internationalization potential for Italian SMEs in the fashion industry in Brazil and Russia

Este estudo tem como objetivo desenvolver uma análise comparativa do potencial de internacionalização na Rússia e no Brasil para as PME italianas que operam na indústria da moda. Depois de apresentar ao leitor as principais áreas cobertas, tais como, o contexto, a metodologia e revisão da literatura, é fornecido um panorama macroeconômico das áreas geográficas composto, englobando um estudo específico sobre o estado atual da economia e da demanda para os bens italianos. O estudo, introduzindo o leitor na indústria de moda italiana, suas principais características e o desempenho atual, já evidencia a busca pela internacionalização. As conclusões decorrentes das análises macroeconômicas funcionam como introdução à visão geral da indústria de moda italiana, uma indústria que representa, fortemente, o "Made in Italy" no exterior. A breve análise da história desta indústria, principais características e situação atual irão, então, sugerir que a internacionalização é o caminho mais viável às PME, para se recuperarem dos anos turbulentos da crise. Entre o vasto conjunto de opções geográficas que as PME têm para abraçar internacionalização, este estudo tem como objetivo fornecer duas análises sobre a indústria da moda: o mercado russo e o brasileiro. A análise, com base no quadro de capacidade de ‘resposta internacional’ proposto por Bartlet e Ghoshal (1989), apresenta os resultados de um conjunto de pesquisas e entrevistas realizadas no Brasil, na Itália e na Rússia, sob a forma de uma análise comparativa dos dois mercados-alvo. A análise evidenciará os drivers de mercado, custo, competitividade e legislação que justificam o processo de internacionalização em ambos os mercados. Os resultados levam à conclusão e às recomendações que os dois mercados representam duas oportunidades muito diferentes para as PME da indústria da moda italiana.

The role of law and public-private collaboration in promoting innovative firms in Brazil: the case of the BNDES and the “criatec fund”

This paper presents the result of a qualitative empirical research about the “Criatec Fund”, a venture capital fund, privately managed and directed to innovative firms, that was created in 2007 by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). The paper discusses the role of law in the implementation of the Criatec Fund in three different legal dimensions: structural, regulatory and contractual. Based on interviews, this paper tries to test some hypothesis previously formulated by some scholars that studied new financial policies created by the BNDES. This study explains the institutional arrangements of this seed capital policy and the role of flexible legal instruments in the execution of this peculiar type of publicprivate partnership. It also poses some questions to the “law and development agenda” based on some insights from the economic sociology of law.