Developing a monitoring and evaluation system for Instituto Palmas: a network of community development banks in Brazil

Bancos comunitários de desenvolvimento no Brasil são instituições únicas que operam de acordo com os princípios da economia solidária em função da inclusão financeira de comunidades carentes. O Instituto Palmas, a instituição que assessora e coordena a rede destes bancos, pediu à Universidade de São Paulo e à Universidade de Columbia em Nova York para desenvolver um conjunto de indicadores que pudesse demonstrar o impacto social e o desempenho institucional dos bancos. Esse relatório apresenta os indicadores, a metodologia utilizada na sua formação, e recomendações para sua utilização. Na medida em que resultados e impacto estão analisados através do uso desses indicadores, a rede dos bancos comunitários e outros interessados terão mais clareza sobre suas funções, seu desempenho, e suas áreas que precisam ser melhoradas para cumprir sua missão – superar a pobreza urbana através da economia solidária.

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.

5th BRICS Trade and Economic Research Network (TERN) meeting: the impact of mega agreements on BRICS

The BRICS TERN – BRICS Trade and Economics Research Network is a group of independent research institutes established four years ago by five think tanks from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The main objective of the network is to study different aspects of trade and economic relations amongst these five countries. The purpose of the V BRICS TERN Meeting was to analyze and debate the effects of the negotiations of the Mega Agreements, mainly those initiated by the US and the EU, already in negotiation, to each of the BRICS Trade Policies. Both Mega Agreements were examined – the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The studies included the main impacts on trade flows and on the international trade rules system, respecting the perspective of each of the countries concerned. This workshop was an initiative of the Center for Global Trade and Investments (CGTI), a think-tank on International Trade held by FGV Sao Paulo School of Economics. Its main objective is the research on trade regulation, preferential trade agreements, trade and currency, trade and global value chains, through legal analysis and economic modelling. One of its main researches, now, is on the potential economic and legal impacts of the Mega Agreements on Brazil and WTO rules. This meeting was organized in March14, 2014, in Rio de Janeiro, in a perfect timing for introducing such issues in the international agenda, in advance of the 6th BRICS Summit scheduled to be held in Brazil in July 2014.

Contagion in financial networks: a network theory and agent-based approaches to modeling the spread of risk in financial systems

Esta dissertação estuda a propagação de crises sobre o sistema financeiro. Mais especi- ficamente, busca-se desenvolver modelos que permitam simular como um determinado choque econômico atinge determinados agentes do sistema financeiro e apartir dele se propagam, transformando-se em um problema sistêmico. A dissertação é dividida em dois capítulos,além da introdução. O primeiro capítulo desenvolve um modelo de propa- gação de crises em fundos de investimento baseado em ciência das redes.Combinando dois modelos de propagação em redes financeiras, um simulando a propagação de perdas em redes bipartites de ativos e agentes financeiros e o outro simulando a propagação de perdas em uma rede de investimentos diretos em quotas de outros agentes, desenvolve-se um algoritmo para simular a propagação de perdas através de ambos os mecanismos e utiliza-se este algoritmo para simular uma crise no mercado brasileiro de fundos de investimento. No capítulo 2,desenvolve-se um modelo de simulação baseado em agentes, com agentes financeiros, para simular propagação de um choque que afeta o mercado de operações compromissadas.Criamos também um mercado artificial composto por bancos, hedge funds e fundos de curto prazo e simulamos a propagação de um choque de liquidez sobre um ativo de risco securitizando utilizado para colateralizar operações compromissadas dos bancos.