Gains from trade and measured total factor productivity

We develop and calibrate a model where diferences in factor en-dowments lead countries to trade di��erent goods, so that the existence of international trade changes the sectorial composition of output from one country to another. Gains from trade re ect in total factor productivity. We perform a development decomposition, to assess the impact of trade and barriers to trade on measured TFP. In our sample, the median size of that e��ect is about 6.5% of output, with a median of 17% and a maximum of 89%. Also, the model predicts that changes in the terms of trade cause a change of productivity, and that efect has an average elasticity of 0.71.

Debt maturity determinants in Brazil: evidence from private and public corporate borrowings

This study provides an empirical investigation of the determinants of long-term debt maturity in Brazil. We built a unique database that includes privately placed debt and public debt for 308 publicly traded, non-���nancial Brazilian companies, from 2009 to 2013. We perform GMM panel analyses using as dependent variables the amount of long-term debt payable in more than one, three, and ���ve years for total debt, BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank) debt and corporate bonds. The results show that the BNDES ���nances less risky ���rms, i.e., those that are larger, older, more tangible and more transparent. We also ���nd support for information asymmetry theories, as companies with higher transparency levels have similar leverage levels relative to others but higher proportions of long-term debt in their capital structures. Regarding debt levels, we ���nd that more levered companies are larger, less pro���table, more tangible and have fewer growth opportunities. To our knowledge, this is the ���rst paper to address the determinants of long-term debt maturity in Brazil that uses various speci���cations of long-term debt and that examines di���erent types of debt.

Social media crises in the organization: exploring management strategies through cases from France and Brazil

The aim of this Master���s thesis has been to shed light on the response strategies that organizations are implementing when facing a crisis created on or amplified by social media. Since the development of social media in the late 1990s, the interplay between the online and the offline spheres has become more complex, and characterized by dynamics of a new magnitude, as exemplified by the wave of ���Twitter��� Revolutions or the Wikileaks scandal in the mid 2000s, where online behaviors deeply affected an offline reality. The corporate world does not escape to this worldwide phenomenon, and there are more and more examples of organizational reputations destroyed by social media ���fireballs���. As such, this research aims to investigate, through the analysis of six recent cases of corporate crises (2013-2015) from France and Brazil, different strategies currently in use in order to identify examples of good and bad practices for companies to adopt or avoid when facing a social media crisis. The first part of this research is dedicated to a review of the literature on crisis management and social media. From that review, we were able to design a matrix model, the Social Media Crisis Management Matrix, with which we analyzed the response strategies of the six companies we selected. This model allows the conceptualization of social media crises in a multidimensional matrix built to allow the choice, according to four parameters, of the most efficient (that is: which will limit the reputational damage) response strategy. Attribution of responsibility for the crisis to the company by stakeholders, the origin of the crisis (internal or external), the degree of reputational threat, and the emotions conveyed online by stakeholders help companies determining whether to adopt a defensive response, or an accommodative response. The results of the analysis suggest that social media crises are rather manichean objects for they are, unlike their traditional offline counterparts, characterized by emotional involvement and irrationality, and cannot be dealt with traditionally. Thus analyzing the emotions of stakeholders proved to be, in these cases, an accurate thermometer of the seriousness of the crisis, and as such, a better rudder to follow when selecting a response strategy. Consequently, in the cases, companies minimized their reputational damage when responding to their stakeholders in an accommodative way, regardless of the ���objective��� situation, which might be a change of paradigm in crisis management.