Mudanças institucionais, receitas cumulativas do governo federal e exportações no Brasil entre 1982 e 2001

Desde o início dos anos oitenta, o governo federal brasileiro passou a substituir a receitas de impostos tradicionais por receita de contribuições sociais (cumulativas) na composição da sua receita total (mudança de gestão). Alega-se que este procedimento é uma conseqüência das regras de compartilhamento estabelecidas (receitas de impostos do governo federal são compartilhadas com estados e municípios enquanto que receitas de contribuição não o são).Existem argumentos na literatura mostrando que este processo de descentralização das receitas teve sua origem na mudança de regime político (militar para democrático), outros com a nova Constituição de 1988 e, por último, outros afirmando que ele só foi possível porque a ineficiência das contribuições foi encoberta pela ineficiência alocativa da inflação. Por outro lado, fatos ocorridos no mesmo período, embora não citados na literatura, poderiam explicar ou ajudar na explicação deste comportamento. Entre eles, a fragmentação do poder executivo a partir de 1989 com a primeira eleição presidencial e/ou o processo de abertura da economia a partir dos anos noventa. Usando a técnica de OLS, observou-se que a Nova Constituição e a abertura da economia explicariam esta mudança de gestão. De qualquer forma, independente do que esteja explicando esta mudança, ela é apontada como altamente prejudicial a competitividade das exportações brasileiras. Existem várias proxies tentando medir este efeito, nenhuma delas considerando uma medida de gestão. Resolvemos realizar esta tentativa. Como tínhamos desconfiança da exogeneidade da variável representativa da abertura da economia no teste anterior, tratamos a questão com o instrumental de séries de tempo. No longo prazo, descobrimos que a mudança de gestão afeta negativamente as exportações e positivamente a abertura da economia por ser menos punitiva com as importações em termos de competitividade (as contribuições incidem apenas na comercialização dos produtos importados). JEL classification: H27; H77, H87.

Trabalho infantil no Brasil: determinantes da redução entre 2003 e 2011 e efeitos sobre a escolaridade e o rendimento na vida adulta

The hypothesis that child labor impacts future income generation negatively, for it harms the formal acquisition of education, is widely accepted by the existing literature on this issue. However, some researchers agree that labor might be beneficial to teenagers once they can develop skills, acquire job experience, or even help them to afford their own education acquisition. Thus, the main goal of this study is to assess if there is an age which the negative impact of the early access to the labor market over income and the conclusion of high school, during the adulthood of Brazilian people, becomes positive. To do so, PNADs (Pesquisas Nacionais de Amostra de Domicílios), a National Census of Household Samples, issues 1992 to 2011, were utilized plus the employment of an econometric technique called pseudo-panel. For this analysis, generations of people born between 1982 and 1991 were observed from the ages 10 to 17 (child labor) and from the ages 20 to 29 (conclusion of high-school & income). The results show that starting at the age of 15, the negative effect of an early access to the labor market over income, between ages 20-29, becomes positive. As per high-school, it was observed that accessing the labor market before the age 15 diminishes the probability for an individual to conclude high school before the age 21. From this age on, labor does not have a negative impact anymore. The second goal of this study is to assess how much of the reduction of the child labor occurrence in Brazil for the past years is due to changes of economic and demographic characteristics of children and families. For these analyses PNADs - National Census of Household Samples, issues 2003 to 2011, were employed plus the methodology of decomposition that divides the variation of child labor into 2 components: (a) changing of the probability of children with the same characteristics (intragroup) to start working – access labor market & (b) changing of the distribution of characteristics (intergroups). The results show that the reduction of the child labor occurrence is due, mainly, to changes on the probabilities. In general terms, the occurrence of child labor took place, more significantly, among individuals of the ages 15 to 17 & household heads with less education. Besides the characteristics mentioned, the reduction between non-white individuals was also significant among individuals from 4-member families. The results show that the reduction of child labor took place, mainly, among children and teenagers from non-white and poor families.

Technology adoption and effects of transfers across locations

This paper develops a two-period model with heterogeneous agents to analyze the e¤ects of transfers across locations on convergence, growth and welfare. The model has two important features. First, locations are asymmetric as it is assumed that there are more specialized occupations in the more developed one. Second, the returns on the investment to acquire new technology depend positively on the level of each region’s knowledge and on the level of the world knowledge assumed to be available to all. In one hand, the poor region has a disadvantage as it has a lower stock of knowledge. On the other hand, it has the advantage of not having yet exploited a greater stock of useable knowledge available in the world. Hence, there are two possible cases. When the returns are greater in the poor region, we obtain the following results: (i) the rich location grows slower; (ii) the transfers to the poor location enhances the country’s growth rate; and (iii) there is a positive amount of transfers to the poor region that is welfare improving. When the returns are greater in the rich region, the …rst two results are reversed and transfers to the rich region are welfare improving. In both cases, the optimal amount of transfer increases with the level of income disparity across regions and is not dependent on the level of the country’s economic development (measured by its income per capita). Barriers to the adoption of new technology available in the world can constrain the convergence process as it harms in greater length the poor region. The results do not change whether migration is allowed or not.

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.