Development, technological change and innovation, Schumpeter and neo-Schumpeterians

This review essay is devoted to a discussion of some central aspects of the Schumpeterian and neo-Schumpeterian approaches to the dynamic processes of development, technological change and innovation. This essay is organised in two parts. In the first, Schumpeter's insightful distinction between circular flow and development is discussed. In the second, some central elements of the neo-Schumpeterian interpretation and extension of Schumpeter's views are critically outlined, special emphasis being placed on some recent attempts to formalize several of his insights on the cyclical dynamics of the processes of technological change and innovation. I should stress that due to space constraints I will focus primarily upon macrotheoretic issues, thus paying only secondary attention to the neo-Schumpeterian literature on the microeconomics of technological change and to the burgeoning empirical developments along those lines.

Os keynesianos neo-ricardianos e os pós-keynesianos: comentários a Amadeu e Dutt

O objetivo deste "paper" é tecer alguns comentários à leitura que Amadeo e Dutt apresentam em artigo publicado na Pesquisa e Planejamento Econômico, sobre duas vertentes do keynesianismo: a ner-ricardiana e a pós-keynesiana.

A ética em Smith nos neo-clássicos e suas implicações na ética em negócios

Esta pesquisa procurará discutir as relações entre ética em economia e administração. O enfoque adotado demonstrará que a ética da economia clássica representada pelo pensamento de Adam Smith é completamente diferente daquela encontrada nos pensadores neoclássicos representados por Hayek, Von Mises e Friedman. Decorre daí que apesar do mundo dos negócios adotar algumas perspectivas econômicas de Smith, os critérios de avaliação de desempenho empresarial decorrem da economia neoclássica e de forma subjacente incorpora seus valores éticos. Ao se ignorar este relacionamento entre economia e negócios, a discussão sobre ética nos negócios é conduzida por um caminho que impede qualquer consenso ou aplicação prática.

Pensamento neo-schumpeteriano: fronteiras : natureza, incentivos e condições para a ocorrência de mudanças tecnológicas

A inovação, que não se pode determinar como resultado de uma mera intervenção racional, pode apresentar-se sob diversas formas; das mais óbvias e tradicionalmente consideradas e estudadas (novos processos e novos produtos), às novas soluções organizativas, ao uso de novos sistemas informativos e de apoio a decisões e às novas formas de distribuição comercial. O conceito de inovação estende-se também à adoção diferenciada de novos métodos na logística da relação técnico-comercial entre fornecedor e empresa, e à adoção de programas e processos como planejamento estratégico, reengenharia, qualidade total e novas técnicas de treinamento, avaliação de desempenho, e administração participativa. A inovação se realiza com diferentes tipos de tecnologia, tem caráter multidimensional, e não está ligada somente a tecnologia da produção industrial, no seu sentido tradicional, mas a qualquer tipo de atividade que se desenvolva em uma empresa produtora ou utilizadora de bens ou de serviços

Metodologia para ordenação de controles internos contábeis com base em critérios estabelecidos pelo SEC Management Guidance e escala baseada em operadores da lógica Fuzzy

Propõe-se com a presente dissertação conduzir estudo exploratório sobre a razoabilidade de um método de apoio à tomada de decisão para ordenar os controles internos contábeis, utilizando critérios estabelecidos pelo regulador do mercado de capitais dos Estados Unidos, quantificados por meio de uma escala baseada em operadores da lógica fuzzy. O método foi elaborado com base em pesquisa bibliográfica sobre o controle interno contábil e sua relação com os controles internos em geral; a exigência de constituição, avaliação e divulgação da avaliação dos controles internos contábeis pela legislação do mercado de capitais americano ao longo das últimas três décadas; o conceito de matriz de risco; os métodos de apoio à decisão; e os fundamentos da lógica fuzzy. A metodologia proposta foi adaptada à realidade da entidade objeto do estudo de caso e aplicada sobre 2,4 mil controles. Uma amostra de aproximadamente 14% desse universo foi analisada e permitiu concluir pela razoabilidade do método proposto, que será utilizado pela entidade estudada como parte de seu processo de avaliação dos controles internos contábeis.

Alocação de carteiras de ações através da utilização de modelos de lógica Fuzzy

Este trabalho tem por objetivo propor uma carteira composta por posições compradas e vendidas de ações que supere os principais Índices de mercado. O resultado é obtido através de um modelo de Lógica Fuzzy, que é um modelo de inteligência artificial que trata os dados de maneira lógica, ou seja, sem relacionar as variáveis através de modelos matemáticos convencionais. Para esse estudo utilizamos como variáveis de entrada os múltiplos Preço/Lucro Esperado e Preço/Valor Patrimonial da Empresa de cada ação considerada. Foram estudadas as ações do mercado americano pertencentes ao índice S&P 500, do ano de 2000 até 2007. Com o intuito de comparar a eficiência do Modelo de Lógica Fuzzy, utilizamos o modelo de Regressão Linear Multivariada e os índices de mercado S&P 500 e o S&P 500 com uma modificação para se adequar aos dados escolhidos para o estudo. O modelo proposto produziu resultados satisfatórios. Para quase todos os anos estudados o retorno da carteira obtida foi muito superior ao dos Índices de mercado e do modelo linear convencional. Através de testes adequados comprovamos estatisticamente a eficiência do modelo em comparação aos Índices de mercado e ao modelo linear convencional.

International civil society actors in Genetically Modificied Organisms as a field of struggle: a neo-gramscian study in Brazil and the United Kingdom

Since the international financial and food crisis that started in 2008, strong emphasis has been made on the importance of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) (or “transgenics”) under the claim that they could contribute to increase food productivity at a global level, as the world population is predicted to reach 9.1 billion in the year 2050 and food demand is predicted to increase by as much as 50% by 2030. GMOs are now at the forefront of the debates and struggles of different actors. Within civil society actors, it is possible to observe multiple, and sometime, conflicting roles. The role of international social movements and international NGOs in the GMO field of struggle is increasingly relevant. However, while many of these international civil society actors oppose this type of technological developments (alleging, for instance, environmental, health and even social harms), others have been reportedly cooperating with multinational corporations, retailers, and the biotechnology industry to promote GMOs. In this thesis research, I focus on analysing the role of “international civil society” in the GMO field of struggle by asking: “what are the organizing strategies of international civil society actors, such as NGOs and social movements, in GMO governance as a field of struggle?” To do so, I adopt a neo-Gramscian discourse approach based on the studies of Laclau and Mouffe. This theoretical approach affirms that in a particular hegemonic regime there are contingent alliances and forces that overpass the spheres of the state and the economy, while civil society actors can be seen as a “glue” to the way hegemony functions. Civil society is then the site where hegemony is consented, reproduced, sustained, channelled, but also where counter-hegemonic and emancipatory forces can emerge. Considering the importance of civil society actors in the construction of hegemony, I also discuss some important theories around them. The research combines, on the one hand, 36 in-depth interviews with a range of key civil society actors and scientists representing the GMO field of struggle in Brazil (19) and the UK (17), and, on the other hand, direct observations of two events: Rio+20 in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, and the first March Against Monsanto in London in 2013. A brief overview of the GMO field of struggle, from its beginning and especially focusing in the 1990s when the process of hegemonic formation became clearer, serves as the basis to map who are the main actors in this field, how resource mobilization works, how political opportunities (“historical contingencies”) are discovered and exploited, which are the main discourses (“science” and “sustainability” - articulated by “biodiversity preservation”, “food security” and “ecological agriculture”) articulated among the actors to construct a collective identity in order to attract new potential allies around “GMOs” (“nodal point”), and which are the institutions and international regulations within these processes that enable hegemony to emerge in meaningful and durable hegemonic links. This mapping indicates that that the main strategies applied by the international civil society actors are influenced by two central historical contingencies in the GMO field of struggle: 1) First Multi-stakeholder Historical Contingency; and 2) “Supposed” Hegemony Stability. These two types of historical contingency in the GMO field of struggle encompass deeper hegemonic articulations and, because of that, they induce international civil society actors to rethink the way they articulate and position themselves within the field. Therefore, depending on one of those moments, they will apply one specific strategy of discourse articulation, such as: introducing a new discourse in hegemony articulation to capture the attention of the public and of institutions; endorsing new plural demands; increasing collective visibility; facilitating material articulations; sharing a common enemy identity; or spreading new ideological elements among the actors in the field of struggle.

An evolving possibilistic fuzzy modeling approach for value-at-risk estimation

Market risk exposure plays a key role for nancial institutions risk management. A possible measure for this exposure is to evaluate losses likely to incurwhen the price of the portfolio's assets declines using Value-at-Risk (VaR) estimates, one of the most prominent measure of nancial downside market risk. This paper suggests an evolving possibilistic fuzzy modeling approach for VaR estimation. The approach is based on an extension of the possibilistic fuzzy c-means clustering and functional fuzzy rule-based modeling, which employs memberships and typicalities to update clusters and creates new clusters based on a statistical control distance-based criteria. ePFM also uses an utility measure to evaluate the quality of the current cluster structure. Computational experiments consider data of the main global equity market indexes of United States, London, Germany, Spain and Brazil from January 2000 to December 2012 for VaR estimation using ePFM, traditional VaR benchmarks such as Historical Simulation, GARCH, EWMA, and Extreme Value Theory and state of the art evolving approaches. The results show that ePFM is a potential candidate for VaR modeling, with better performance than alternative approaches.

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.