Understanding e-government technology transfer: evidence from the transfer of a patent management system from EPO to INPI

Drawing upon Brazilian experience, this research explores some of the key issues to be addressed in using e-government technical cooperation designed to enhance service provision of Patent Offices in developing countries. While the development of software applications is often seen merely as a technical engineering exercise, localization and adaptation are context bounded matters that are characterized by many entanglements of human and non-humans. In this work, technical, legal and policy implications of technical cooperation are also discussed in a complex and dynamic implementation environment characterized by the influence of powerful hidden agendas associated with the arena of intellectual property (IP), which are shaped by recent technological, economic and social developments in our current knowledge-based economy. This research employs two different theoretical lenses to examine the same case, which consists of transfer of a Patent Management System (PMS) from the European Patent Office (EPO) to the Brazilian Patent Office that is locally named ‘Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial’ (INPI). Fundamentally, we have opted for a multi-paper thesis comprising an introduction, three scientific articles and a concluding chapter that discusses and compares the insights obtained from each article. The first article is dedicated to present an extensive literature review on e-government and technology transfer. This review allowed the proposition on an integrative meta-model of e-government technology transfer, which is named E-government Transfer Model (ETM). Subsequently, in the second article, we present Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a framework for understanding the processes of transferring e-government technologies from Patent Offices in developed countries to Patent Offices in developing countries. Overall, ANT is seen as having a potentially wide area of application and being a promising theoretical vehicle in IS research to carry out a social analysis of messy and heterogeneous processes that drive technical change. Drawing particularly on the works of Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law, this work applies this theory to a longitudinal study of the management information systems supporting the Brazilian Patent Office restructuration plan that involved the implementation of a European Patent Management System in Brazil. Based upon the ANT elements, we follow the actors to identify and understand patterns of group formation associated with the technical cooperation between the Brazilian Patent Office (INPI) and the European Patent Office (EPO). Therefore, this research explores the intricate relationships and interactions between human and non-human actors in their attempts to construct various network alliances, thereby demonstrating that technologies embodies compromise. Finally, the third article applies ETM model as a heuristic frame to examine the same case previously studied from an ANT perspective. We have found evidence that ETM has strong heuristic qualities that can guide practitioners who are engaged in the transfer of e-government systems from developed to developing countries. The successful implementation of e-government projects in developing countries is important to stimulate economic growth and, as a result, we need to understand the processes through which such projects are being implemented and succeed. Here, we attempt to improve understanding on the development and stabilization of a complex social-technical system in the arena of intellectual property. Our preliminary findings suggest that e-government technology transfer is an inherently political process and that successful outcomes require continuous incremental actions and improvisations to address the ongoing issues as they emerge.

The effects of government deficit on equilibrium real exchange rates and stock prices

This paper studies the effect of government deficits on equilibrium real exchange rates and stock prices. The theoretical part modifies a two-country cash-in-advance model like used in Lucas(1982) and Sargent(1987) in order to accommodate an exchange rate market and a government that pursues fiscal and monetary policy targets. The implied result is that unanticipated shocks in government deficits raise expectations of both taxes and inflation and, therefore, are associated with real exchange rate devaluations and lower stock prices. This finding is strongly supported by empirical evidence for a group of 19 countries, representing 76% of world production

Inglorious revolution : sovereign debt, tropical credibility, and financial underdevelopment in imperial Brazil

In 1824 the creation of institutions that constrained the monarch’s ability to unilaterally tax, spend, and debase the currency put Brazil on a path toward a revolution in public finance, roughly analogous to the financial consequences of England’s Glorious Revolution. This credible commitment to honor sovereign debt resulted in successful long-term funded borrowing at home and abroad from the 1820s through the 1880s that was unrivalled in Latin America. Some domestic bonds, denominated in the home currency and bearing exchange clauses, eventually circulated in European financial markets. The share of total debt accounted for by long-term funded issues grew, and domestic debt came to dominate foreign debt. Sovereign debt yields fell over time in London and Rio de Janeiro, and the cost of new borrowing declined on average. The market’s assessment of the probability of default tended to decrease. Imperial Brazil enjoyed favorable conditions for borrowing, and escaped the strong form of “original sin” stressed by recent work on sovereign debt. The development of vibrant private financial markets did not, however, follow from the enhanced credibility of government debt. Private finance in Imperial Brazil suffered from politicized market interventions that undermined the development of domestic capital markets. Private interest rates remained high, entry into commercial banking was heavily restricted, and limited-liability joint-stock companies were tightly controlled. The Brazilian case provides a powerful counterexample to the general proposition of North and Weingast that institutional changes that credibly commit the government to honor its obligations necessarily promote the development of private finance. The very institutions that enhanced the credibility of sovereign debt permitted the systematic repression of private financial development. In terms of its consequences for domestic capital markets, the liberal Constitution of 1824 represented an “inglorious” revolution.

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.

Twitter snapshots show Venezuela’s government isolated from its people

How isolated is Venezuela’s government from the people it supposedly represents? Very isolated indeed, according to a study commissioned by beyondbrics from Marco Ruediger and colleages at FGV DAPP, the department of public policy analysis at the Fundação Getulio Vergas in Rio de Janeiro. The study, derived from activity on Twitter, demonstrates the extreme polarisation of opinion in the country and suggests that Venezuela’s media, often either controlled or suppressed by the government, is increasingly lining up with opposition voices.

Melhoria da comunicação e do relacionamento entre o governo e os cidadãos com aplicativos móveis : o caso do m-government do estado de São Paulo

Esta dissertação tem como objetivo explorar como o governo do Estado de São Paulo pode utilizar a tecnologia para aproximar o Estado dos cidadãos por meio de aplicativos móveis. A intensificação do uso dos dispositivos móveis pela população brasileira e a recente ampliação do uso de m-government como esforço na busca da melhoria da prestação de serviços ao cidadão pelo Estado de São Paulo nas duas últimas décadas configuram o cenário em que foi estabelecido o Termo de Referência da Subsecretaria de Tecnologia e Serviços ao Cidadão, da Secretaria de Governo do Estado de São Paulo. Neste trabalho, houve a integração de métodos de pesquisa de diferentes naturezas: revisão da literatura, entrevistas semi-estruturadas com atores influentes na formulação das políticas públicas, avaliação da política de aplicativos móveis do Governo do Estado de São Paulo e dos próprios aplicativos, benchmarking de experiências internacionais e diagnóstico analítico da situação atual. Foram identificados como pontos fortes a importância da existência de uma subsecretaria próxima ao Governador, a criação de um aplicativo central que facilita o conhecimento dos aplicativos do governo existentes e a existência de uma empresa pública de processamento de dados com competência para desenvolver serviços e aplicativos. Como desafios foram identificados a estratégia de comunicação e divulgação dos aplicativos, ausência de legislação sobre m-government e a falta de uma política pública e planejamento estratégico consistente para orientar melhorias e alcance de resultados com rapidez e eficiência. Recomenda-se, principalmente: 1) que a Subsecretaria de Tecnologia e Serviços ao Cidadão atue como órgão central para além de emitir as diretrizes de e-goverment, também emanar as de m-government, 2) que o foco governamental seja na orientação do serviço ao cidadão e não primordialmente ao desenvolvimento de aplicativos e 3) a formulação e implementação de uma política clara para a difusão de m-government que seja passível de ser entendida e replicada por todos os atores governamentais e permeie todos os órgãos da administração direta e indireta, não se restringindo às áreas de TI. A abordagem de m-government ainda é incipiente no Brasil, necessitando de novos estudos acadêmicos complementares para consolidação de massa crítica sobre o tema. Este assunto receberá atenção e investimentos governamentais nos próximos anos. Conclui-se que o Estado de São Paulo está em uma boa direção, mas para avançar com efetividade os gestores estaduais devem se apropriar das melhores práticas da experiência internacional em m-government, havendo um longo caminho para melhorar o relacionamento entre o Estado e os cidadãos com o uso de aplicativos móveis, com a abordagem de um governo único para um cidadão único.

A importância dos dados abertos e das parcerias com a sociedade civil para o avanço do M-government

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo demonstrar como os dados abertos governamentais e as parcerias com a sociedade civil podem contribuir para o avanço do mobile government (Mgov) no Brasil. A administração pública tem recebido novas demandas da sociedade e busca por meio da modernização aumentar sua capacidade para garantir o atendimento destas necessidades. O governo eletrônico apresenta-se como um instrumento eficaz, em especial o Mgov, considerando o advento da internet no celular e seu uso em massa pela sociedade. A literatura explorada e os casos do Governo Federal brasileiro, do Estado de São Paulo e do Município de São Paulo mostram que a abertura dos dados governamentais fomentam as parcerias com a sociedade e aceleram o crescimento do Mgovernment

Capitalismo de estado e inovação: facetas da relação entre estado e iniciativa privada no desenvolvimento nacional

While countries managed to rapidly rise and recover economically, Brazilian social indicators have advanced at short pace in the last decades. Although millions of Brazilians have recently left poverty, Brazil still has a long way to go regarding its socioeconomic development. Circa one fifth of the population is still considered functionally illiterate, basic education has one of the poorest performances in the world, the country has no top-level universities nor produces technology or patents at relevant levels. This paper, at first, analyses how the interaction between government and private agents influenced Brazil’s industrial and economic development, identifying the existence of bonds based on the exchange of private interests that at great extension kept public policies from reaching goals of national interest – the so called crony capitalism. Secondly, the paper verifies how development policies based on the promotion of innovative companies and segments of the industry may positively impact broad socioeconomic development. The paper delves specifically into the cooperation between universities and industry as a development tool. Enterprises and universities, guided by their endogenous interests, may be combined for the structuring of a national innovation system. While universities are fundamentally interested in promoting knowledge accumulation, enterprises are willing to invest financial capital in universities in exchange for the economic exploitation of products developed within the academic environment and direct access to its human capital. Lastly, the paper identifies the legal and cultural barriers and advances of this mechanism in Brazil. It verifies that, notwithstanding the institutional advance promoted by the Law of Innovation to the university-enterprise cooperation in Brazil, the law wasn’t entirely capable of eliminating the legal uncertainty of this relationship and capturing in an efficient way the interests of the agents involved. Recently, federal law n. 12.863/2013 officially offered universities the option of bypassing problems related to public law by regulating support foundations, which conceives greater certainty and simplicity to the cooperation. There are, however, remaining uncertainties regarding the norms to be edited by the executive power, as well as conflicts of interest linked to the property rights over patents resulting from this kind of cooperation. The paper verifies, moreover, the existence of ideological resistance to this tool within universities, in such a way that it is unlikely that those relationships develop in a systematic way throughout the country without further engagement from the government and its executive and legislative bodies.

Cyclicality of SME Lending and Government Involvement in Banks

Recent regulatory efforts aim at lowering the cyclicality of bank lending because of its potential detrimental effects on financial stability and the real economy. We investigate the cyclicality of SME lending by local banks with vs. without a public mandate, controlling for location, size, loan maturity, funding structure, liquidity, profitability, and credit demand-side factors. The public mandate is set by local governments and stipulates a deviation from strict profit maximization and a sustainable provision of financial services to local customers. We find that banks with a public mandate are 25 percent less cyclical than other local banks. The result is credit supply-side driven and especially strong for savings banks with high liquidity and stable deposit funding. Our findings have implications for the banking structure, financial stability and the finance-growth nexus in a local context.

Governança de TI: o caso do m-government do estado de São Paulo

Este trabalho tem como objetivo explorar como a governança de TI tem implicações no atendimento ao cidadão por meio de serviços de governo disponibilizados em dispositivos móveis, conhecido como m-government. Foi estudada a forma como os órgãos envolvidos no desenvolvimento de aplicativos para o cidadão se organizam, tanto em termos da legislação que define suas competências quanto em termos da dinâmica deste desenvolvimento, por meio de entrevistas com atores de papel relevante neste cenário. Também foi realizada a análise da governança de m-government no Estado usando uma matriz de arranjos de governança. A conclusão foi que a governança que a legislação indica que se pretende para o Estado, como políticas emanadas de um órgão central, ainda está em estágio embrionário e que por enquanto as Secretarias e órgãos praticam m-government para atender objetivos que são específicos de suas pastas, indicando que há um longo caminho para se alcançar o objetivo de um governo único para um cidadão único

Determinantes da liquidez de corporate bonds no mercado brasileiro

O objetivo desta dissertação é investigar o mercado secundário de debêntures do Brasil, para responder quais as características dos títulos afetam sua liquidez e quais as características de liquidez podem ser observadas nas debêntures brasileiras. Cinco medidas de liquidez foram utilizadas: número de dias que ocorreram transações, número de transações, volume relativo de transações em relação ao montante emitido, diferença entre os preços máximos e mínimos transacionados e a volatilidade do rendimento. Para cada medida de liquidez, verificou-se a influência de oito características das debêntures: rating, volume emitido, prazo de vencimento, segmento do emissor, listagem em bolsa, idade da emissão e tipo de emissão (incentivada e sob instrução de esforços restritos). Foram coletadas 998 emissões públicas de debêntures e suas respectivas transações até 18 meses após a emissão, no período de janeiro de 2007 a agosto de 2015. A base de dados, que somou 53.085 observações, fundamentou-se nas cotações de mercado fornecidas diariamente pelo Sistema Nacional de Debêntures. Como resultado, verificou-se que o volume da emissão, tipo de emissão (incentivada ou restrita) e determinados segmentos são variáveis de liquidez. Adicionalmente constatou-se que, controlando os segmentos dos emissores, debêntures com maior volume emitido são mais líquidas. E mais, a relação entre idade e liquidez não é clara e a diferença entre preços máximos e mínimos das transações não é uma medida de liquidez apropriada. Por fim, verificou-se que a grande concentração de títulos emitidos sob esforços restritos reduziu a liquidez do mercado em comparação com o estudo de Sheng e Saito (2008), apesar do aumento do volume emitido no período. Em contrapartida, a emissão de títulos incentivados elevou o nível de transações no mercado secundário.

Cyclicality of SME lending and government involvement in banks

Recent regulatory efforts aim at lowering the cyclicality of bank lending because of its potential detrimental effects on financial stability and the real economy. We investigate the cyclicality of SME lending by local banks with vs. without a public mandate, controlling for location, size, loan maturity, funding structure, liquidity, profitability, and credit demand-side factors. The public mandate is set by local governments and stipulates a deviation from strict profit maximization and a sustainable provision of financial services to local customers. We find that banks with a public mandate are 25 percent less cyclical than other local banks. The result is credit supply-side driven and especially strong for savings banks with high liquidity and stable deposit funding. Our findings have implications for the banking structure, financial stability and the finance-growth nexus in a local context.

Green bonds

O estudo visa contribuir para a discussão sobre as oportunidades e os limites para o desenvolvimento de um mercado de Green Bonds no Brasil, a exemplo da experiência internacional.

Europe’s financial crisis: the Euro’s flawed design and the consequences of lack of a government banker

This paper argues the euro zone requires a government banker that manages the bond market and helps finance country budget deficits. The euro solved Europe’s problem of exchange rate speculation by creating a unified currency managed by a single central bank, but in doing so it replaced the exchange rate speculation problem with bond market speculation. Remedying this requires a central bank that acts as government banker and maintains bond interest rates at sustainable levels. Because the euro is a monetary union, this must be done in a way that both avoids favoring individual countries and avoids creating incentives for irresponsible country fiscal policy that leads to “bail-outs”. The paper argues this can be accomplished via a European Public Finance Authority (EPFA) that issues public debt which the European Central Bank (ECB) is allowed to trade. The debate over the euro’s financial architecture has significant political implications. The current neoliberal inspired architecture, which imposes a complete separation between the central bank and public finances, puts governments under continuous financial pressures. That will make it difficult to maintain the European social democratic welfare state. This gives a political reason for reforming the euro and creating an EPFA that supplements the economic case for reform.

How the full opening of the capital account to highly liquid financial markets led Latin America to two and a half cycles of ‘mania, panic and crash’

Latin America has recently experienced three cycles of capital inflows, the first two ending in major financial crises. The first took place between 1973 and the 1982 ‘debt-crisis’. The second took place between the 1989 ‘Brady bonds’ agreement (and the beginning of the economic reforms and financial liberalisation that followed) and the Argentinian 2001/2002 crisis, and ended up with four major crises (as well as the 1997 one in East Asia) — Mexico (1994), Brazil (1999), and two in Argentina (1995 and 2001/2). Finally, the third inflow-cycle began in 2003 as soon as international financial markets felt reassured by the surprisingly neo-liberal orientation of President Lula’s government; this cycle intensified in 2004 with the beginning of a (purely speculative) commodity price-boom, and actually strengthened after a brief interlude following the 2008 global financial crash — and at the time of writing (mid-2011) this cycle is still unfolding, although already showing considerable signs of distress. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the financial crises resulting from this second cycle (both in LA and in East Asia) from the perspective of Keynesian/ Minskyian/ Kindlebergian financial economics. I will attempt to show that no matter how diversely these newly financially liberalised Developing Countries tried to deal with the absorption problem created by the subsequent surges of inflow (and they did follow different routes), they invariably ended up in a major crisis. As a result (and despite the insistence of mainstream analysis), these financial crises took place mostly due to factors that were intrinsic (or inherent) to the workings of over-liquid and under-regulated financial markets — and as such, they were both fully deserved and fairly predictable. Furthermore, these crises point not just to major market failures, but to a systemic market failure: evidence suggests that these crises were the spontaneous outcome of actions by utility-maximising agents, freely operating in friendly (‘light-touch’) regulated, over-liquid financial markets. That is, these crises are clear examples that financial markets can be driven by buyers who take little notice of underlying values — i.e., by investors who have incentives to interpret information in a biased fashion in a systematic way. Thus, ‘fat tails’ also occurred because under these circumstances there is a high likelihood of self-made disastrous events. In other words, markets are not always right — indeed, in the case of financial markets they can be seriously wrong as a whole. Also, as the recent collapse of ‘MF Global’ indicates, the capacity of ‘utility-maximising’ agents operating in (excessively) ‘friendly-regulated’ and over-liquid financial market to learn from previous mistakes seems rather limited.