Financial regulation and international criminal policy: the anti-money laundering system in Brazil and Argentina

The objective of this paper is to present and compare the process and the results of the implementation of the anti-money laundering system in Brazil and Argentina. Considering that the internal transformations cannot be discussed without a clear understanding of the international apparatus, attention will be given to the description of the “international policy” designed and conducted by FATF. Therefore, its incorporation into two different national realities, the Brazilian and the Argentinean ones, will shed light not only on the transnational transformations both States underwent but also on the anti-money laundering regime itself. The paper is divided into five parts. The first one presents a brief introduction on the emergence and development of the relationship between financial regulation and criminal policy. The two following sections are designed to present an overview of the anti money laundering system in Brazil and Argentina and of the role of FATF in their implementation process. The fourth section presents two Brazilian examples of situations in which full advantage of the FATF regime was taken: the National Strategy to Combat Corruption and Money Laundering and the BacenJud, a communication channel between the financial system and the judicial power. To conclude, final comments will be presented in connection with the central questions of the project this paper is part of .

Trade liberalization and industrial concentration: evidence from Brazil

This paper applies an endogenous lobby formation model to explain the extent of trade protection granted to Brazilian manufacturing industries during the 1988- 1994 trade liberalization episode. Using a panel data set covering this period, we find that even in an environment in which a major regime shift has been introduced, more concentrated sectors have been able to obtain policy advantages, that lead to a reduction in international competition. The importance of industry structure appears to be substantial: In our baseline specification, an increase in concentration by 20% leads to an increase in protection by 5%-7%.

Regional subsidies and industrial prospects of lagging regions

Large and sustained differences in economic performance across regions of developing countries have long provided motivation for fiscal incentives designed to encourage firm entry in lagging areas. Empirical evidence in support of these policies has, however, been weak at best. This paper undertakes a direct evaluation of the most prominent fiscal incentive policy in Brazil, the Fundos Constitucionais de Financiamento (Constitutional Funds). In doing so, we exploit valuable features of the Brazilian Ministry of Labor's RAIS data set to address two important elements of firm location decisions that have the potential to bias an assessment of the Funds: (i) firm “family structure” (in particular, proximity to headquarters for vertically integrated firms), and (ii) unobserved spatial heterogeneity (with the potential to confound the effects of the Funds). We find that the pull of firm headquarters is very strong relative to the Constitutional Funds for vertically integrated firms, but that, with non-parametric controls for time invariant spatial heterogeneity, the Funds provide statistically and economically significant incentives for firms in many of the targeted industries.

Welfare and fiscal policy with public goods and infrastructure

We construct and simulate a model to study the welfare and macroeconomic impact of government actions when its productive role is taken into account. The trade-off between public investment and public consumption is also investigated, since public consumption is introduced as a public good that directly affects individuals' well-being. Our results replicate econometric evidence showing that part of the observed slowdown of U.S. productivity growth can be explained by the reduction of investment in infrastructure which also implied a sizable welfare 1085 to the popu1ation. Depending on the methodology used we found a welfare cost ranging from 4.2% to 1.16% of GNP. The impact of fiscal policy can be qualitative and quantitative distinct depending on Whether we assume a higher or smaller output elasticity to infrastructure. If it is high enough, increases in tax rates may stimulate accumulation and production, which is the opposite prediction of standard ncocJassica1 models.

A note on growth, welfare and public policy

In this note the growth anti welfare effects of fiscal anti monetary policies are investigated in three economies where public investment is part of the productive process It is shown that growth is maximized at positive levels of income tax and inflation but that there is no direct relationship between government size, productivity and growth or between inflation and growth. However, unless there are no transfers or public goods in the economy, maximization of growth does not imply welfare maximization and the optimal tax rate and government size are greater than those that maximize growth. Money is not superneutral anti the optimal rate of money creation is below the maximizing rate of growth.

International cooperation and competition policy

The objective of this paper is to argue that the dissemination of competition laws is positive for the world economy. However, the benefits derived depend crucially on adequate enforcement and institutional building in the various jurisdictions for which international cooperation within WTO and in other fora is crucial. The paper addresses two issues. Section 1 underlines a few aspects of the increasing importance of competition policy in the developing world. The second section provides a few suggestions for the international cooperation agenda.

Stochastic growth and monetary policy: the impacts on the term structure of interest rates

This paper builds a simple, empirically-verifiable rational expectations model for term structure of nominal interest rates analysis. It solves an stochastic growth model with investment costs and sticky inflation, susceptible to the intervention of the monetary authority following a policy rule. The model predicts several patterns of the term structure which are in accordance to observed empirical facts: (i) pro-cyclical pattern of the level of nominal interest rates; (ii) countercyclical pattern of the term spread; (iii) pro-cyclical pattern of the curvature of the yield curve; (iv) lower predictability of the slope of the middle of the term structure; and (v) negative correlation of changes in real rates and expected inflation at short horizons.

Essays on regulation and risk

In this thesis, we investigate some aspects of the interplay between economic regulation and the risk of the regulated firm. In the first chapter, the main goal is to understand the implications a mainstream regulatory model (Laffont and Tirole, 1993) have on the systematic risk of the firm. We generalize the model in order to incorporate aggregate risk, and find that the optimal regulatory contract must be severely constrained in order to reproduce real-world systematic risk levels. We also consider the optimal profit-sharing mechanism, with an endogenous sharing rate, to explore the relationship between contract power and beta. We find results compatible with the available evidence that high-powered regimes impose more risk to the firm. In the second chapter, a joint work with Daniel Lima from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), we start from the observation that regulated firms are subject to some regulatory practices that potentially affect the symmetry of the distribution of their future profits. If these practices are anticipated by investors in the stock market, the pattern of asymmetry in the empirical distribution of stock returns may differ among regulated and non-regulated companies. We review some recently proposed asymmetry measures that are robust to the empirical regularities of return data and use them to investigate whether there are meaningful differences in the distribution of asymmetry between these two groups of companies. In the third and last chapter, three different approaches to the capital asset pricing model of Kraus and Litzenberger (1976) are tested with recent Brazilian data and estimated using the generalized method of moments (GMM) as a unifying procedure. We find that ex-post stock returns generally exhibit statistically significant coskewness with the market portfolio, and hence are sensitive to squared market returns. However, while the theoretical ground for the preference for skewness is well established and fairly intuitive, we did not find supporting evidence that investors require a premium for supporting this risk factor in Brazil.

Elections and fiscal policy at the municipal level in Brazil

Esta tese contribui para a literatura sobre ciclos políticos de negócios ao estudar as relações entre eleições, limites à reeleição, partidos e política fiscal em 3.393 municípios brasileiros entre 2001 e 2008. Os resultados mostram que prefeitos de primeiro mandato aumentam receitas totais e mantém níveis razoáveis de gastos durante as eleições, preservando ou até aumentando o balanço orçamentário. Eles também alteram sua alocação orçamentária reduzindo despesas correntes (e.g. pessoal) e aumentando despesas de capital (e.g. investimentos) à medida que as eleições se aproximam. Em realidade, apenas prefeitos de primeiro mandato parecem se beneficiar de aumentos oportunistas nas variáveis fiscais, especialmente em despesas correntes e de pessoal. No entanto, prefeitos de primeiro mandato não são necessariamente menos responsáveis fiscalmente do que prefeitos de segundo mandato ao longo da gestão (anos não eleitorais) ou durante as eleições. Nesse sentido, eleições com prefeitos de primeiro e segundo mandatos parecem promover condições competitivas que potencialmente aumentam a responsabilização eleitoral e fiscal. Essa tese também aponta para uma significativa associação entre ciclos fiscais oportunistas e partidários no nível local no Brasil. Durante as eleições, partidos de direita aumentam o balanço orçamentário, enquanto partidos de esquerda aumentam despesas de capital e reduzem despesas correntes, mas nesse último caso não tanto quanto os demais partidos. Ao fazerem isso, esses partidos atendem parcialmente às preferências dos eleitores. Durante o mandato (anos não eleitorais), entretanto, partidos de direita apresentam um balanço orçamentário levemente mais baixo, enquanto partidos de esquerda investem menos do que os demais partidos, e essas políticas não são favorecidas pelos eleitores. De forma geral, esse estudo mostra que os eleitores no Brasil reconhecem uma administração fiscalmente responsável, e têm uma preferência por mais receitas e gastos públicos, especialmente premiando maiores despesas de capital e investimentos ao longo do mandato político e aumentos em receitas e despesas correntes no ano eleitoral. De qualquer modo, as preferências fiscais dos eleitores são independentes das preferências ideológicas.

Credit shocks and monetary policy in Brazil: a structural FAVAR approach

This paper investigates the implications of the credit channel of the monetary policy transmission mechanism in the case of Brazil, using a structural FAVAR (SFAVAR) approach. The term structural comes from the estimation strategy, which generates factors that have a clear economic interpretation. The results show that unexpected shocks in the proxies for the external nance premium and the bank balance sheet channel produce large and persistent uctuations in in ation and economic activity accounting for more than 30% of the error forecast variance of the latter in a three-year horizon. The central bank seems to incorporate developments in credit markets especially variations in credit spreads into its reaction function, as impulse-response exercises show the Selic rate is declining in response to wider credit spreads and a contraction in the volume of new loans. Counterfactual simulations also demonstrate that the credit channel ampli ed the economic contraction in Brazil during the acute phase of the global nancial crisis in the last quarter of 2008, thus gave an important impulse to the recovery period that followed.

Growth,distribution and school policy

This paper investigates the relationship between growth, income inequality, and educational policies. An endogenous growth model is built in which there are two types of labor, skilled and unskilled, and the quality of the labor force (measured by the fraction of skilled workers) will ultimately determine the economic growth rate. We show that multi pIe inequality and growth paths may arise. Countries will not necessarily converge to the same economic growth and income distribution. When the proportion of skilled workers is low, the economy grows slow, and the Gini coeflicient is high. Low expected growth rate inhibits investments in human capital and the quality of the labor force tomorrow turns out to be low again, keeping the economy in the bad equilibrium. We then analyze the effects on growth and inequality of two types of government intervention: introduction of public schools and vouchers. Both types can induce the economic agents to invest more in education. The consequence will be an increase in the quality of the labor force, leading to higher growth rates and less inequality. Finally, we examine the welfare consequences of these interventions and conclude that they may be Pareto improving.