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.

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.

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-touched) 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 — investors have incentives to interpret information in a biased fashion in a systematic way. ‘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 unregulated and over-liquid financial market to learn from previous mistakes seems rather limited.