A importância da saúde como um dos determinantes da distribuição de rendimentos da população adulta no Brasil

One of the main socioeconomic problems observed in most developing countries is the high income inequality. In Brazil, such issue is particularly relevant, since it possesses one of the worst income distributions in the world. This paper aims at studying the impact of health status on income distribution in Brazil. The methodology is a counterfactual analysis. The database used is that of PNAD 2003. The major contribution of the present study is to detect the impact of health status on income distribution in Brazil. This effect is more significant among the elderly than the others age groups.

On impatience, education, returns, and inequality

In this paper we investiga te the impact of initial wealth anel impatience heterogeneities, as wcll as differential access to financia! markets on povcrty anel inequality, anel cvaluate some mechanisms that could be used to alleviate situations in which these two issues are alarming. To address our qucstion we develop a dynamic stochastic general cquilibrium modo! of educational anel savings choicc with heterogeneous agents, where individuais differ in their initial wealth anel in their discount factor. We find that, in the long run, more patient households tend to be wealthier anel more educated. However, our baseline model is not able to give as much skewness to our income distribution as it is rcquircd. We then propose a novel returns structure based on empírica! observation of heterogeneous returns to different portfolios. This modification solves our previous problem, evidencing the importance of the changes made in explaining the existing levels of inequality. Finally, we introducc two kinds of cash transfers programs- one in which receiving thc benefit is conditional on educating the household's youngster (CCTS) anel one frec of conditionalities (CTS) - in order to evaluate the impact of these programs on the variables of concern1 Wc fine! that both policies have similar qualitativo rcsults. Quantitatively, howcvcr, the CCTS outperforms its unconclitional version in all fielcls analyzecl, revealing itself to be a preferable policy.

Homogeneous middles vs. heterogeneous tails, and the end of the ‘Inverted-U’: the share of the rich is what it’s all about

This paper examines the current global scene of distributional disparities within-nations. There are six main conclusions. First, about 80 per cent of the world’s population now live in regions whose median country has a Gini not far from 40. Second, as outliers are now only located among middle-income and rich countries, the ‘upwards’ side of the ‘Inverted-U’ between inequality and income per capita has evaporated (and with it the statistical support there was for the hypothesis that posits that, for whatever reason, ‘things have to get worse before they can get better’). Third, among middle-income countries Latin America and mineral-rich Southern Africa are uniquely unequal, while Eastern Europe follows a distributional path similar to the Nordic countries. Fourth, among rich countries there is a large (and growing) distributional diversity. Fifth, within a global trend of rising inequality, there are two opposite forces at work. One is ‘centrifugal’, and leads to an increased diversity in the shares appropriated by the top 10 and bottom 40 per cent. The other is ‘centripetal’, and leads to a growing uniformity in the income-share appropriated by deciles 5 to 9. Therefore, half of the world’s population (the middle and upper-middle classes) have acquired strong ‘property rights’ over half of their respective national incomes; the other half, however, is increasingly up for grabs between the very rich and the poor. And sixth, Globalisation is thus creating a distributional scenario in which what really matters is the income-share of the rich — because the rest ‘follows’ (middle classes able to defend their shares, and workers with ever more precarious jobs in ever more ‘flexible’ labour markets). Therefore, anybody attempting to understand the within-nations disparity of inequality should always be reminded of this basic distributional fact following the example of Clinton’s campaign strategist: by sticking a note on their notice-boards saying “It’s the share of the rich, stupid”.

The revenge of the market on the rentiers why neo-liberal reports of the end of history turned out to be premature

Starting from the perspective of heterodox Keynesian-Minskyian-Kindlebergian financial economics, this paper begins by highlighting a number of mechanisms that contributed to the current financial crisis. These include excess liquidity, income polarisation, conflicts between financial and productive capital, lack of intelligent regulation, asymmetric information, principal-agent dilemmas and bounded rationalities. However, the paper then proceeds to argue that perhaps more than ever the ‘macroeconomics’ that led to this crisis only makes analytical sense if examined within the framework of the political settlements and distributional outcomes in which it had operated. Taking the perspective of critical social theories the paper concludes that, ultimately, the current financial crisis is the outcome of something much more systemic, namely an attempt to use neo-liberalism (or, in US terms, neo-conservatism) as a new technology of power to help transform capitalism into a rentiers’ delight. And in particular, into a system without much ‘compulsion’ on big business; i.e., one that imposes only minimal pressures on big agents to engage in competitive struggles in the real economy (while inflicting exactly the opposite fate on workers and small firms). A key component in the effectiveness of this new technology of power was its ability to transform the state into a major facilitator of the ever-increasing rent-seeking practices of oligopolistic capital. The architects of this experiment include some capitalist groups (in particular rentiers from the financial sector as well as capitalists from the ‘mature’ and most polluting industries of the preceding techno-economic paradigm), some political groups, as well as intellectual networks with their allies – including most economists and the ‘new’ left. Although rentiers did succeed in their attempt to get rid of practically all fetters on their greed, in the end the crisis materialised when ‘markets’ took their inevitable revenge on the rentiers by calling their (blatant) bluff.

Why has productivity growth stagnated in most Latin American countries since the neo-liberal reforms?

Latin America’s economic performance since the beginning of neo-liberal reforms has been poor; this not only contrasts with its own performance pre-1980, but also with what has happened in Asia since 1980. I shall argue that the weakness of the region’s new paradigm is rooted as much in its intrinsic flaws as in the particular way it has been implemented. Latin America’s economic reforms were undertaken primarily as a result of the perceived economic weaknesses of the region — i.e., there was an attitude of ‘throwing in the towel’ vis-à-vis the previous state-led import substituting industrialisation strategy, because most politicians and economists interpreted the 1982 debt crisis as conclusive evidence that it had led the region into a cul-de-sac. As Hirschman has argued, policymaking has a strong component of ‘path-dependency’; as a result, people often stick with policies after they have achieved their aims, and those policies have become counterproductive. This leads to such frustration and disappointment with existing policies and institutions that is not uncommon to experience a ‘rebound effect’. An extreme example of this phenomenon is post-1982 Latin America, where the core of the discourse of the economic reforms that followed ended up simply emphasising the need to reverse as many aspects of the previous development (and political) strategies as possible. This helps to explain the peculiar set of priorities, the rigidity and the messianic attitude with which the reforms were implemented in Latin America, as well as their poor outcome. Something very different happened in Asia, where economic reforms were often intended (rightly or wrongly) as a more targeted and pragmatic mechanism to overcome specific economic and financial constraints. Instead of implementing reforms as a mechanism to reverse existing industrialisation strategies, in Asia they were put into practice in order to continue and strengthen ambitious processes of industrialisation.

Combinação social e construção de equipes: um estudo sobre os fatores relevantes para o processo de composição de equipes na educação executiva brasileira

A composição de equipes é um tema recorrente em diferentes áreas do conhecimento. O interesse pela definição das etapas e variáveis relevantes desse processo, considerado complexo, é manifestado por pesquisadores, profissionais e desenvolvedores de Sistemas de Informação (SI). Todavia, enquanto linhas teóricas, oriundas dos estudos organizacionais, buscam a consolidação de modelos matemáticos que reflitam a relação entre variáveis de composição de equipes e o seu desempenho, teorias emergentes, como a de Combinação Social, acrescentam novos elementos à discussão. Adicionalmente, variáveis específicas de cada contexto, que no caso dessa pesquisa é a educação executiva brasileira, também são mencionadas como tendo relevância para estruturação de grupos. Dado o interesse e a variedade de vertentes teóricas que abordam esse fenômeno, essa pesquisa foi proposta para descrever como ocorre a construção de equipes docentes e identificar as variáveis consideradas relevantes neste processo. Um modelo teórico inicial foi desenvolvido e aplicado. Dada a característica da questão de pesquisa, foi utilizada uma abordagem metodológica exploratório-descritiva, baseada em estudos de casos múltiplos, realizados em quatro instituições de ensino superior brasileiras, que oferecem cursos de educação executiva. A coleta e a análise de dados foi norteada pelos métodos propostos por Huberman e Miles (1983) e Yin (2010), compreendendo a utilização de um protocolo de estudo de caso, bem como o uso de tabelas e quadros, padronizados à luz do modelo teórico inicial. Os resultados desse trabalho indicam, majoritariamente, que: as teorias de Combinação Social e as teorias de Educação adicionam elementos que são relevantes ao entendimento do processo de composição de equipes; há variáveis não estruturadas que deixam de ser consideradas em documentos utilizados na avaliação e seleção de profissionais para equipes docentes; e há variáveis de composição que só são consideradas após o fim do primeiro ciclo de atividades das equipes. Com base nos achados empíricos, a aplicação do modelo teórico foi ajustada e apresentada. As contribuições adicionais, as reflexões, as limitações e as propostas de estudos futuros são apresentadas no capítulo de conclusões.