Temporary exchange rate-based stabilization programs under asset market segmentation

This paper analyses the welfare consequences of temporary exchange rate-based stabilization programs. Differently than previous papers, however, here we assume that only a fraction of households participates in asset market transactions. With this asset market segmentation assumption, the effects of temporary programs on welfare may change drastically. Households with access to the bonds market are able to protect themselves better from the changes in the inflation rate – although at the cost of a distortion in their consumption path. As a consequence, they may decrease their inflation tax burden – which would increase for the other group of households. By the other side, when these agents that lack the access to the asset markets are credit constrained, they may welcome the program, since the government Is temporally reducing the inflation tax they have to pay. The temporary program could end up benefiting both groups, what could help to understand their popularity.

Risky business: the market for unprotected commercial sex

Each day close to 20,000 people become infected with the HIV virus worldwide; a large portion of whom are infected through unprotected sex with sex workers. While condoms are an effective defense against the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, large numbers of sex workers are not using them with their clients. We argue that some sex workers are willing to take the risk because clients are willing to pay more to avoid using condoms. Using a panel data set from Mexico, we estimate that sex workers received a 23 percent premium for unprotected sex from clients who requested not to use a condom. However, this premium jumped to 46 percent if the sex worker was considered very attractive. These results suggest that the current policies aimed at educating sex workers about risk, empowering them and improving their access to condoms need to be complemented with interventions aimed at teaching clients about the “joy of safe sex” thereby increasing the demand for using condoms.

Endogenous borrowing constraints and default when markets are incomplete

Incomplete markets and non-default borrowing constraints increase the volatility of pricing kernels and are helpful when addressing assetpricing puzzles. However, ruling out default when markets are in complete is suboptimal. This paper endogenizes borrowing constraints as an intertemporal incentive structure to default. It modeIs an infinitehorizon economy, where agents are allowed not to pay their liabilities and face borrowing constraints that depend on the individual history of default. Those constraints trade off the economy's risk-sharing possibilities and incentives to prevent default. The equilibrium presents stationary properties, such as an invariant distribution for the assets' solvency rate.

Renegociação de dívidas e moral hazard: uma análise do efeito da política de descontos no pagamento de dívidas de cartões de crédito

O Brasil vem vivenciando um aumento na demanda por cartões de crédito, principalmente nas classes baixas. Entretanto, a população de menor renda e menor qualificação representa maior riscos para a operação. Este fato é evidenciado pelas altas taxas de inadimplência. Exposto isso, empresas se utilizam de estratégias de renegociação de dívida na tentativa de recuperar parte do investimento realizado. Entretanto, poucos foram os estudos acerca da consequência no longo prazo destas estratégias. Utilizando os experimentos realizados por uma empresa de cartão de crédito, cujas campanhas de renegociação variavam mês a mês, este estudo, procurou evidências de que as ofertas de renegociação de dívidas podem afetar a reputação da firma, fazendo com que clientes da rede mesma rede social deste que recebeu a oferta de renegociação também fiquem inadimplentes. Concluímos que o aumento do desconto nas negociações tem um efeito significativo sobre o incentivo do cliente em honrar suas obrigações junto a empresa, ou seja, o aumento de 0,01 p.p. no desconto dado aos clientes aumenta em 0,05 sua probabilidade em atrasar sua fatura no próximo período.

Is what you say what you do? Analyzing and comparing the effect of buyer-supplier relationship in the Brazilian and Chinese supplier selection criteria

Choosing properly and efficiently a supplier has been challenging practitioners and academics since 1960’s. Since then, countless studies had been performed and relevant changes in the business scenario were considered such as global sourcing, quality-orientation, just-in-time practices. It is almost consensus that quality should be the selection driver, however, some polemical findings questioned this general agreement. Therefore, one of the objectives of the study was to identify the supplier selection criteria and bring this discussion back again. Moreover, Dickson (1966) suggested existing business relationship as selection criterion, then it was reviewed the importance of business relationship for the company and noted a set of potential negative effects that could rise from it. By considering these side effects of relationship, this research aimed to investigate how the relationship could influence the supplier selection and how its harmful effects could affect the selection process. The impact of this phenomenon was investigated cross-nationally. The research strategy adopted was a controlled experiment via vignette combined with discrete choice analysis. The data collections were performed in China and Brazil. By examining the results, it could be drawn five major findings. First, when purchasers were asked to declare their supplier selection priorities, quality was stated as the most important independently of country and relationship. This result was consistent with diverse studies since 60’s. However, when purchasers were exposed to a multi-criteria trade-off situation, their actual selection priorities deviate from what they had declared. In the actual decision-making without influence of buyer-supplier relationship, Brazilian purchasers focused on price and Chinese buyers prioritized delivery then price. This observation reinforced some controversial prior studies of Verma & Pullman (1998) and Hirakubo & Kublin (1998). Second, through the introduction of the buyer-supplier relationship (operationalized via relational capital) in the supplier selection process, this research extended the existing studies and found that Brazilian buyers still focused on price. The relationship became just another criterion for supplier selection such as quality and delivery. However, from the Chinese sample, the results suggested that quality was totally discarded and the decision was majorly made through price and relationship. The third finding suggested that relational capital could legitimate the quality and sustainability of the supplier and replaces these selection criteria and made the decisional task less complex. Additionally, with the relational capital, the decision-makings were associated to few biases such as availability cognition, commitment, confirmatory and perceived biases. By analyzing the purchasers’ behavior, relational capital inducted buyers of both countries to relax in their purchasing requirements (quality, delivery and sustainability) leading to potential negative effects. In the Brazilian sample, the phenomenon of willing to pay a higher price for a lower quality offer demonstrated to be a potential counterproductive and suboptimal decision. Finally, the last finding was associated to the cultural effect on the buyers’ decisions. From the outcome, it is possible to observe that if a purchaser’s cultural background is more relation-oriented, the more he will tend to use relational capital as a decision heuristic, thus, the purchaser will be more susceptible to the potential relationship’s side effects

As implicações dos restos a pagar na gestão da saúde pública: o caso de Mato Grosso

O tema saúde é o centro do debate nacional e internacional acerca da necessidade de evolução das políticas públicas a serem adotadas pelos órgãos públicos. Portanto, o Estado tem obrigação de executar programas que forneçam, a todos, ações concretas voltadas ao resguardo do direito à saúde. Nessa perspectiva, o objetivo da pesquisa é avaliar as implicações dos restos a pagar na gestão da saúde pública de Mato Grosso, nos anos de 2008 a 2014. Nesse intento, a partir de pesquisa documental, bibliográfica e de campo, observou-se que o Estado está inserido em um ciclo vicioso de inscrição de restos a pagar. As despesas represadas no período mantiveram uma dinâmica de evolução, prejudicando a execução financeira dos programas prioritários da saúde mato-grossense. Segundo os dados, a realização financeira programática deixou de ser considerada ótima em 2008, com 92% de realização, para caracterizar-se como regular em 2014, com 66% de execução. Por meio do estudo de caso, identificou-se que não há como Mato Grosso obter resultados excelentes na implementação dos interesses de sua sociedade se o Estado encontra-se com a credibilidade abalada em relação aos credores, por postergar seus compromissos financeiros, sem respeitar, ou ter a capacidade de executar o orçamento aprovado, adquirindo bens e contratando serviços lançando mão de mecanismos emergenciais que elevam o custo da compra pública e potencializam o poder das empresas na execução do orçamento. Além de deteriorar a programação orçamentária e financeira, criando verdadeiros orçamentos paralelos, conclui-se que o excesso de despesas repassadas do exercício em que deveriam ocorrer para os subsequentes, prejudicou a qualidade dos serviços públicos executados na saúde do Estado, dificultando a realização deste direito fundamental, imprescindível à vida.

Avaliação do impacto da lei de aviso recebimento sobre o mercado de crédito

No Brasil, diversos bureaux de crédito têm o papel de proporcionar a troca de informações de inadimplência dos consumidores para o mercado financeiro. Tal troca beneficia o mercado no sentido de reduzir a assimetria de informação entre tomadores de empréstimo e instituições financeiras. Recentemente as leis 15.659/15 e 10.272/15 de dois estados brasileiros passaram a proteger o consumidor no sentido de impedir inclusão de informação negativa dos mesmos em bureaux caso desconhecessem suas dívidas. O consumidor poderia apropriar-se de seus benefícios para deixar de honrar suas dívidas e consequentemente o mercado poderia sofrer uma retração no crédito. Diante disso, este trabalho propõe desenvolver uma estratégia empírica para verificar se há aumento de seleção adversa e risco moral para os estados em que a lei foi aplicada. Concluímos que o efeito tem sinal consistente com o esperado no sentido de aumento de inadimplência, mas não apresentou significância estatística.

The price of threat: the role of identity-safe marketplaces in predicting intergroup price sensitivity

In field experiments with subjects living either inside or outside Brazilian slums (n=955), we show that consumers living in slums are less price sensitive, in opposition with recent price sensitivity research. Comparing slum and non-slum dwellers, we found that negatively stereotyped consumers (e.g. slum dwellers) were more likely to pay higher amounts for friendlier customer service when facing social identity threats (SITs) in marketplaces such as banks. The mechanism which makes them less price sensitive is related to the perception of how other people evaluate their social groups, and we argue that they pay more because they are seeking identity-safe commercial relationships. This work, besides extending the literature in SITs, presents a perspective for the exchange between economics and psychology on price sensitivity, showing that consumers living in slums are willing to pay more to avoid possibly social identity threating experiences.