The Brazilian real state market in 2012: robust growth or speculative bubble?

A forte alta dos imóveis no Brasil nos últimos anos iniciou um debate sobre a possível existência de uma bolha especulativa. Dada a recente crise do crédito nos Estados Unidos, é factível questionar se a situação atual no Brasil pode ser comparada à crise americana. Considerando argumentos quantitativos e fundamentais, examina-se o contexto imobiliário brasileiro e questiona-se a sustentabilidade em um futuro próximo. Primeiramente, analisou-se a taxa de aluguel e o nível de acesso aos imóveis e também utilizou-se um modelo do custo real para ver se o mercado está em equilíbrio o não. Depois examinou-se alguns fatores fundamentais que afetam o preço dos imóveis – oferta e demanda, crédito e regulação, fatores culturais – para encontrar evidências que justificam o aumento dos preços dos imóveis. A partir dessas observações tentou-se chegar a uma conclusão sobre a evolução dos preços no mercado imobiliário brasileiro. Enquanto os dados sugerem que os preços dos imóveis estão supervalorizados em comparação ao preço dos aluguéis, há evidências de uma legítima demanda por novos imóveis na emergente classe média brasileira. Um risco maior pode estar no mercado de crédito, altamente alavancado em relação ao consumidor brasileiro. No entanto, não se encontrou evidências que sugerem mais do que uma temporária estabilização ou correção no preço dos imóveis.

Time-series properties and empirical evidence of growth and infraestructure: revised version

After more than forty years studying growth, there are two classes of growth models that have emerged: exogenous and endogenous growth models. Since both try to mimic the same set of long-run stylized facts, they are observationally equivalent in some respects. Our goals in this paper are twofold First, we discuss the time-series properties of growth models in a way that is useful for assessing their fit to the data. Second, we investigate whether these two models successfully conforms to U.S. post-war data. We use cointegration techniques to estimate and test long-run capital elasticities, exogeneity tests to investigate the exogeneity status of TFP, and Granger-causality tests to examine temporal precedence of TFP with respect to infrastructure expenditures. The empirical evidence is robust in confirming the existence of a unity long-run capital elasticity. The analysis of TFP reveals that it is not weakly exogenous in the exogenous growth model Granger-causality test results show unequivocally that there is no evidence that TFP for both models precede infrastructure expenditures not being preceded by it. On the contrary, we find some evidence that infras- tructure investment precedes TFP. Our estimated impact of infrastructure on TFP lay rougbly in the interval (0.19, 0.27).

The impact of public capital and public investment on economic growth: an empirical investigation

in this anicle we measure the impact of public sector capital and investment on economic growth. Initially, traditional growth accounting regressions are run for a cross-country data set. A simple endogenous growth model is then constructed in order to take into account the determinants of labor, private capital and public capital. In both cases, public capital is a separate argument of the production function. An additional data-set constructed with quarterly American data was used in the estimations of the growth mode!. The results indicate lhat public capital and public investment play a significant role in determining growth rates and have a significant impact on capital and labor returns. Furthermore, the impact of public investment on productivity growth was found to be positive and always significant for bolh samples. Hence. in a fully optimizing modelo we confmn previous results in the literature that lhe failure of public investment to keep pace with output growlh during the Seventies and Eighties may have played a major role in the slowdown of lhe productivity growth in the period. Anolher main outcome concems the output elasticity wilh respect to public capital. The coefficiem estimates are always positive and significant but magnitudes depend on each of lhe two data set used.

Housing development in Latin America and the Caribean, its measuring and its determinants

This text briejly describes the Housing Development lndex (HDI). Following a concise introduction on the reasons for this research, HDI's methodology, characteristics, properties and databases supporting its calculation are discussed. Next, the third part presents, analyzes and compares the HDI's figures for Brazil and some other Latin American countries. The part that follows shows HDI figures for all states in Brazil and points out the regional differences and the indicator 's recent growth. Then, this paper analyses the injluence of some social and economic variables on the HDI and, finally, it makes some considerations on HDI.

Monopoly power, trade protection and growth: cross industry evidence

This paper investigates the impact of monopoly power on trade policy. Annual panel-databases of Brazilian industries for the years 1988 through 1994 were used. The regressions reported here are robust to openness indicator, concentration index, control variables and sample size, and suggest that industries with higher monopoly power are more protected than competitive sectors. In the period of study the country experienced a major trade liberalization, but the results in the paper show that the reduction in protection was smaller in sectors with higher monopoly power. We thus have evidence favoring recent growth literature which stresses that interest groups with control over creasing productivity. The results here confirm the first part of this argument and show that organized groups in fact are able to obtain policy advantages that reduce competition.

Trade barriers and productivity growth: cross-industry evidence

This article investigates the impact of trade protection on the evolution of labor productivity and total factor productivity (TFP) of the Brazilian manufacturing sector. An annual panel-dataset of 16 industries for the years 1985 through 1997, a period that includes a major trade liberalization, was used. The regressions reported here are robust to openness indicator (nominal tari®s and e®ective protection rate were used), control variables and time period and suggest that barriers to trade negatively a®ects productivity growth at industry level: those sectors with lower barriers experienced higher growth. We were also able to link the observed increase of industry productivity growth after 1991 to the widespread reduction on exective protection experienced in the country in the nineties.

Growth and exchange rate volatility: a panel data analysis

The aim of this article is to assess the role of real effective exchange rate volatility on long-run economic growth for a set of 82 advanced and emerging economies using a panel data set ranging from 1970 to 2009. With an accurate measure for exchange rate volatility, the results for the two-step system GMM panel growth models show that a more (less) volatile RER has significant negative (positive) impact on economic growth and the results are robust for different model specifications. In addition to that, exchange rate stability seems to be more important to foster long-run economic growth than exchange rate misalignment

The impact of OFDI on economic growth countries. An econometric approach using panel data and time-series evidence

The thesis at hand adds to the existing literature by investigating the relationship between economic growth and outward foreign direct investments (OFDI) on a set of 16 emerging countries. Two different econometric techniques are employed: a panel data regression analysis and a time-series causality analysis. Results from the regression analysis indicate a positive and significant correlation between OFDI and economic growth. Additionally, the coefficient for the OFDI variable is robust in the sense specified by the Extreme Bound Analysis (EBA). On the other hand, the findings of the causality analysis are particularly heterogeneous. The vector autoregression (VAR) and the vector error correction model (VECM) approaches identify unidirectional Granger causality running either from OFDI to GDP or from GDP to OFDI in six countries. In four economies causality among the two variables is bidirectional, whereas in five countries no causality relationship between OFDI and GDP seems to be present.

Essays on structural transformation, growth and education

This thesis aims to study the impact of structural change on the trajectory of development of emerging economies. More speci cally, we seek to understand how the reallocation of labor from less productive sectors of the economy (e.g., agriculture) to more productive sectors (e.g., industry and services) contributed to the growth of labor productivity in these economies. The thesis is divided into three chapters, besides the introduction. The rst chapter studies the relationship between structural change and economic development in Latin American economies. While the process of reallocation of labor was important to the dynamics of productivity in the period of convergence of these economies, low productivity in some sectors of the economy explained most of the reduction in productivity in the most recent period. In the second chapter, I study the main determinants of growth of the Chinese economy between 1980 and 2005. I show that the increased ow of trade and strong productivity growth in the agricultural sector contributed signi -cantly to China s development in the period. In the third chapter, I study the apparent contradiction between increased levels of schooling and reduction of per capita income in African economies compared to the U.S. economy. The main conclusion is that reducing educational costs explain the retreat of the education di¤erential between African economies and the United States.

Uncertainty of aid inflows and the growth relationship

This paper contributes to the literature on aid and economic growth. We posit that it is not the levei of aid flows per se but the stability of such flows that determines the impact of aid on economic growth. Three measures of aid instability are employed. One is a simple deviation from trend, and measures overall instability. The other measures are based on auto-regressive estimates to capture deviations from an expected trend. These measures are intended to proxy for uncertainty in aid receipts. We posit that such uncertainty will influence the relationship between aid and investment and how recipient governments respond to aid, and will therefore affect how aid impacts on growth. We estimate a standard cross-country growth regression including the leveI of aid, and find aid to be insignificant (in line with other results in the literature). We then introduce measures of instability. Aid remains insignificant when we account for overall instability. However, when we account for uncertainty (which is negative and significant), we find that aid has a significant positive effect on growth. We conduct stability tests that show that the significance of aid is largely due to its effect on the volume of investment. The finding that uncertainty of aid receipts reduces the effectiveness of aid is robust. When we control for this, aid appears to have a significant positive influence on growth. When the regression is estimated for the sub-sample of African countries these findings hold, although the effectiveness of aid appears weaker than for the full sample.

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-financial 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 five years for total debt, BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank) debt and corporate bonds. The results show that the BNDES finances less risky firms, i.e., those that are larger, older, more tangible and more transparent. We also find 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 find that more levered companies are larger, less profitable, more tangible and have fewer growth opportunities. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to address the determinants of long-term debt maturity in Brazil that uses various specifications of long-term debt and that examines different types of debt.

Macroeconomic constraints to growth of Brazilian economy diagnosis and some policy proposals

The recent process of accelerated expansion of the Brazilian economy was driven by exports and fixed capital formation. Although the pace of growth was more robust than in the 1990´s, we can still witness the existence of certain macroeconomic constraints to its continuation in the long run such as, for instance, the exchange rate overvaluation in particular since 2005, and in general the modus operandi of monetary policy. Such constraints may jeopardize the sustainability of the current pace of growth. Therefore, we argue that Brazil still lies in a trap made up of high interest and low exchange rates. The elimination of the exchange rate misalignment would bring about a great increase in the rate of interest, which on its turn would impact negatively upon investment and hence upon the sustainability of long run economic growth. We outline a set of policy measures to eliminate such a trap, in particular, the adoption of an implicit target for the exchange rate, capital controls and the abandonment of the present regime of inflation targeting. Recent events seem to go in this direction.