Reinsurance in Brazil: what happened to prices?

Neste estudo investigamos a mudança no Brasil de um mercado fechado monopolista de resseguros para um mercado aberto. O foco tem sido sobre os prêmios, como a queda nos preços foi um dos benefícios mais antecipados da nova estrutura do mercado. Para comparar os preços de resseguro entre mercados o Índice Combinado foi usado. Ao comparar o Brasil ao Resto do Mundo, Índices Combinados significativamente menores foram observados para 2001 - 2007. No período 2008 - 2010, após a abertura, parece ter sido uma convergência dos Índices Combinados com os níveis no mundo. Confirma que os preços de resseguro eram altos no passado, e que ocorreu uma queda nos preços desde a abertura. No entanto estas conclusões devem ser tratados com alguma precaução uma vez que apenas 2,5 anos de experiência está disponível desde a abertura do mercado e outros fatores podem ter influenciado a evolução dos preços observados.

Antitruste: sanção de desinvestimentos em ativos: um estudo de caso no processo administrativo no 08012.11142/2006-79

O presente trabalho é um estudo de caso, tendo como objetivo principal avaliar a sanção de desinvestimentos de ativos, isto é, a pena de cisão de sociedade, transferência de controle societário e/ou venda de ativos, conforme disposto no art. 38, inciso V, da Lei no 12.529/2011 (Lei de Defesa da Concorrência). Para tanto, parte-se da exposição da decisão proferida pelo Tribunal do Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (Cade) no Processo Administrativo no 08012.011142/2006-79, denominado Cartel de Cimento e Concreto. Tal decisão condenou as empresas fabricantes de cimento e prestadoras de serviços de concretagem a desinvestirem ativos próprios, frutos de aquisição ou de crescimento orgânico. É importante destacar que essa decisão sofreu relevante modificação ao longo do julgamento, decorrente da alteração de entendimento pelos conselheiros do Cade. Em um segundo momento, o trabalho procura propiciar ao leitor uma visão ampla (prós e contras) dos tipos de remédios ou sanções existentes e aplicáveis aos casos em que se determina a medida de desinvestimento, por meio da seleção de alguns casos internacionais e nacionais, escolhidos a partir de casos amplamente tratados pela doutrina, e também citados no julgamento do Processo Administrativo no 08012.011142/2006-79. A seguir, aborda-se a questão do desinvestimento específico ocorrido no Processo Administrativo no 08012.011142/2006-79, buscando-se evidenciar, a partir da análise do aparente choque dos votos do conselheiro-relator e do conselheiro-revisor, que as bases utilizadas para determinação dos desinvestimentos carecem de parâmetros concretos para sua aplicação. Ao final do estudo acerca do desinvestimento, delineia-se uma proposição para solução jurídica. Ao final, conclui-se que a aplicação de medidas de desinvestimentos como penalização por participação em cartel não é escolha fácil, e sua utilização tampouco é pacífica, devendo-se levar em conta alguns aspectos relevantes para que possa ser utilizada de maneira legítima e garantir a sua melhor eficácia.

Do shocks permanently change output? : Local persistency in economic time series

While it is recognized that output fuctuations are highly persistent over certain range, less persistent results are also found around very long horizons (Conchrane, 1988), indicating the existence of local or temporary persistency. In this paper, we study time series with local persistency. A test for stationarity against locally persistent alternative is proposed. Asymptotic distributions of the test statistic are provided under both the null and the alternative hypothesis of local persistency. Monte Carlo experiment is conducted to study the power and size of the test. An empirical application reveals that many US real economic variables may exhibit local persistency.

Voice over IP 2.0: an analysis of limits and potential of IP2IP telecommunication

Internet Telephony (VoIP) is changing the telecommunication industry. Oftentimes free, VoIP is becoming more and more popular amongst users. Large software companies have entered the market and heavily invest into it. In 2011, for instance, Microsoft bought Skype for 8.5bn USD. This trend increasingly impacts the incumbent telecommunication operators. They see their main source of revenue – classic telephony – under siege and disappear. The thesis at hand develops a most-likely scenario in order to determine how VoIP is evolving further and it predicts, based on a ten-year forecast, the impact it will have on the players in the telecommunication industry.The paper presents a model combining Rogers’ diffusion and Christensen’s innovation research. The model has the goal of explaining the past evolution of VoIP and to isolate the factors that determine the further diffusion of the innovation. Interviews with industry experts serve to assess how the identified factors are evolving.Two propositions are offered. First, VoIP operators are becoming more important in international, corporate, and mobile telephony. End-to-end VoIP (IP2IP) will exhibit strong growth rates and increasingly cannibalize the telephony revenues of the classic operators. Second, fix-net telephony in SMEs and at home will continue to be dominated by the incumbents. Yet, as prices for telephony fall towards zero also they will implement IP2IP in order to save costs. By 2022, up to 90% of the calls will be IP2IP. The author recommends the incumbents and VoIP operators to proactively face the change, to rethink their business strategies, and to even be open for cooperation.

Knowledge disclosure as a weapon in technological change battles: straight shot or backfire?

This work aims at evaluating how effective is knowledge disclosure in attenuating institutional negative reactions caused by uncertainties brought by firms’ new strategies that respond to novel technologies. The empirical setting is from an era of technological ferment, the period of the introduction of the voice over internet protocol (VoIP) in the USA in the early 2000’s. This technology led to the convergence of the wireline telecommu- nications and cable television industries. The Institutional Brokers’ Estimate System (also known as the I/B/E/S system) was used to capture reactions of securities analysts, a revealed important source of institutional pressure on firms’ strategies. For assessing knowledge disclosure, a coding technique and a established content analysis framework were used to quantitatively measure the non-numerical and unstructured data of transcripts of business events occurred at that time. Eventually, several binary response models were tested in order to assess the effect of knowledge disclosure on the probability of institutional positive reactions. The findings are that the odds of favorable institutional reactions increase when a specific kind of knowledge is disclosed. It can be concluded that knowledge disclosure can be considered as a weapon in technological changes situations, attenuating adverse institutional reactions to the companies’ strategies in environments of technological changes.

Social entrepreneurship practices and social change In Brazil: a qualitative study in three non-governmental organizations

Social Entrepreneurship (SE) has attracted growing interest from a wide variety of actors over the last 30 years, especially due to a general agreement that it could be an important tool for tackling many of the world’s social ills. In the academic sphere, this growing interest did not translate into a matured field of study. Quite the opposite, a quick look at this literature makes it evident that: SE has been consistently subjected to numerous theoretical discussions and disagreements, especially over the definition of the concept of SE which is often based on a taken-for-granted notion of social change; it has been more systematically investigated in restricted contexts, often leaving aside so called developing/emerging countries like Brazil and especially lacking in-depth qualitative studies; SE literature lags behind SE practices and few studies focus on how SE actually occurs in a daily and bottom-up manner. In order to address such gaps, this thesis examines how social entrepreneurship practices accomplish social change in the context of Brazil. In this investigation I conducted an inductive practice-based, qualitative/ethnographic study in three Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) located in different cities in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. Data collection lasted from February 2014 until March 2015 and was mainly done through participant observations and through in-depth unstructured conversations with research participants. Secondary data and documents were also collected whenever available. The participants of this study included a variety of the studied organizations’ stakeholders: two founders, volunteers, employees, donors and beneficiaries. Observation data was kept in fieldnotes, conversations were recorded whenever possible and were later transcribed. Data was analyzed through an iterative thematic analysis. Through this I identified eight recurrent themes in the data: (1) structure; (2) relationship with other organizational actors (sub-themes: relationship with state, relationship with businesses and relationship with other NGOs); (3) beliefs, spirituality and moral authority; (4) social position of participants, (5) stakeholders’ mobilization and participation; (6) feelings; (7) social purpose; and (8) social change. These findings were later discussed under the lens of practice theory, and in this discussion I argue and show that, in the context studied: (a) even though SE embraces a wide variety of different social purposes, they are intertwined with a common notion of social change based on a general understanding and aspiration for social equality; (b) this social change is accomplished in a processual and ongoing manner as stakeholders from antagonistic social groups felt compelled to and participated in SE practices. In answering the proposed research question the contributions of this thesis are: (i) the elaboration a working definition for SE based on its relationship with social change; (ii) providing in-depth empirical evidence which accounts for and explains this relationship; (iii) characterizing SE in the Brazilian context and reflecting upon its transferability to other contexts. This thesis also makes a methodological contribution, for it demonstrates how thematic analysis can be used in practice-based studies.