Relations between regulation, competition policy and consumer protection in telecommunications, electricity and water supply

The purpose of this article is to discuss the relations between regulation, competition policy and consumer protection these relations in three key sectors of Brazil’s infrastructure: telecommunications, electricity and water supply. A study of the literature points to two general principles. First, the need for consumer protection depends on the “degree of sovereignty” enjoyed by consumers, defined in terms of the cost of consumer organization, consumers’ ability to evaluate services, and the level of competition in each sector. Second, the less sovereignty consumers enjoy the more consumer protection institutions are involved with regulation agencies. The evidence for the Brazilian case apparently corroborates these points. In addition, it is important to stress that consumer complaints in regulated sectors seem to have increased more intensely than in others. The article is divided into three sections. Section 1 presents theoretical elements and aspects of the relations between regulation, competition policy and consumer protection evidenced by international experience. Section 2 analyzes the Brazilian experience and in particular the available statistics on consumer complaints about telecommunications, electricity and water supply, submitted to Fundação Procon-SP during the nineties. The last section points to possible configurations of the institutional relations between competition policy, regulation and consumer protection, showing how the existing configuration of these areas in the three infrastructure sectors discussed confirms that the theoretical framework proposed has reasonable predictive power.

Microeconomic instability and children's human capital accumulation: the effects of idiosyncratic shocks to father's income on child labor, school drop-outs and repetition rates in Brazil

This paper evaluates the long-run effects of economic instability. In particular, we study the impact of idiosyncratic shocks to father’s income on children’s human capital accumulation variables such as school drop-outs, repetition rates and domestic and non-domestic labor. Although, the problem of child labor in Brazil has declined greatly during the last decade, the number of children working is still substantial. The low levels of educational attainment in Brazil are also a main cause for concern. The large rotating panel data set used allows for the estimation of the impacts of changes in occupational and income status of fathers on changes in his child’s time allocation circumstances. The empirical analysis is restricted to families with fathers, mothers and at least one child between 10 and 15 years of age in the main Brazilian metropolitan areas during the 1982-1999 period. We perform logistic regressions controlling for child characteristics (gender, age, if he/she is behind in school for age), parents characteristics (grade attainment and income) and time and location variables. The main variables analyzed are dynamic proxies of impulses and responses, namely: shocks to household head’s income and unemployment status, on the one hand and child’s probability of dropping out of school, of repeating a grade and of start working, on the other. The findings suggest that father’s income has a significant positive correlation with child’s dropping out of school and of repeating a grade. The findings do not suggest a significant relationship between a father’s becoming unemployed and a child entering the non-domestic labor market. However, the results demonstrate a significant positive relationship between a father becoming unemployed and a child beginning to work in domestic labor. There was also a positive correlation between father becoming unemployed and a child dropping out and repeating a grade. Both gender and age were highly significant with boys and older children being more likely to work, drop-out and repeat grades.

Government policy and private investment in Brazil (1955/82)

The questlon of the crowding-out of private !nvestment by public expenditure, public investment in particular , ln the Brazilian economy has been discussed more in ideological terrns than on empirical grounds. The present paper tries to avoid the limitation of previous studies by estlmatlng an equation for private investment whlch makes it possible to evaluate the effect of economic policies on prlvate investment. The private lnvestment equation was deduced modifylng the optimal flexible accelerator medel (OFAM) incorporating some channels through which public expendlture influences privateinvestment. The OFAM consists in adding adjustment costs to the neoclassical theory of investrnent. The investment fuction deduced is quite general and has the following explanatory variables: relative prices (user cost of capitaljimput prices ratios), real interest rates, real product, public expenditures and lagged private stock of capital. The model was estimated for private manufacturing industry data. The procedure adopted in estimating the model was to begin with a model as general as possible and apply restrictions to the model ' s parameters and test their statistical significance. A complete diagnostic testing was also made in order to test the stability of estirnated equations. This procedure avoids ' the shortcomings of estimating a model with a apriori restrictions on its parameters , which may lead to model misspecification. The main findings of the present study were: the increase in public expenditure, at least in the long run, has in general a positive expectation effect on private investment greater than its crowding-out effect on priva te investment owing to the simultaneous rise in interst rates; a change in economlc policy, such as that one of Geisel administration, may have an important effect on private lnvestment; and reI ative prices are relevant in determining the leveI of desired stock of capital and private investrnent.

Avaliação dos critérios de excelência em organizações públicas e privadas

This study has the purpose to realize a comparative analysis between private and public organizations, winners in Prêmio de Qualidade Rio (PQRio), 2004 cycle, in aspects related to Excellence Criteria's Client and Leadership, identifying differences and similarities between private and public sectors. This is a descriptive research that uses, in the data collect, depth interviews, following a given script, with the managers who are responsible for quality program in the researched organizations. The relevance of this study is justified in face of the anxiety with respect of utilization, by the public sector, of a management model and excellence criteria developed for the private sector. The reached results present the existence of as much differences, as similarities, with more highlight to similarities. In this way, the discussions about the validity of adoption, by public sector, of the model created by private sector are left to the second plan, in face of improvements achieved with the implementation of this practice.

Desafios na gestão de pessoas na área da perícia criminalística: uma abordagem fenomenológica a impactos no desempenho e nos sentimentos

Buscando contribuir teórica e praticamente com a questão da qualidade de vida e melhoria na qualidade de desempenho do perito criminal, esta dissertação procurou apresentar como se desenvolve a atividade pericial e como enfrenta seus inerentes percalços. Durante o estudo foi possível mostrar alguns aspectos significativos da relação da administração de pessoas no setor privado e público. Fez-se aparecer, ainda, o comprometimento do profissional perito criminal na Administração Pública e os sentimentos gerados pelas peculiaridades apresentadas nas atividades por eles desempenhadas. O desvelamento dos sentimentos, durante as entrevistas com abordagem fenomenológica, fez emergir a relevância do humano apaixonado pela carreira e, ao mesmo tempo, preocupado com as condições de trabalho, mas sempre focado nos resultados em favor da sociedade pelo trabalho desenvolvido. A relação interpessoal e intrapessoal favoreceu o autoconhecimento e o conhecimento do outro visando à um estudo acerca do desenvolvimento humano e profissional. A importância da formação humana do profissional atuante em perícia criminalística fez-se presente quando da abordagem acerca da administração de pessoas em um momento em que os avanços tecnológicos e a globalização emergem fortemente na realidade concreta.