A América do Sul em movimento

South America in movement. This paper discusses the prospects for the integration of South America, stressing that there are two competing projects. One the one hand, we have the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), as proposed by Washington, or bilateral free trade agreements with the United States in the FTAA format. On the other hand, we have Mercosur, recently expanded by the accession of Venezuela. Washington's still very significant but declining influence in South America, relations between Argentina and Brazil, Venezuela's entry into Mercosur, and the role of smaller countries are successively examined.

'TINA', Aids, and the underdevelopment problem in Africa

The assumption that 'There Is No Alternative' (TINA) to capitalism as practiced in the United States of America and Western Europe has been the bane of aids effectiveness in assisting to solve the underdevelopment problem in Africa. This paper attempts to show that except there is a fundamental reorientation in the conceptualization of capitalism-free market and democracy-the underdevelopment problem would only be further complicated with aids.

Novos modelos previdenciários na América Latina: lições da experiência Argentina

New pension programs in Latin America: lessons from the Argentinean experience. This work analyzes the political constraints of pension reform in Argentina. The first part presents a brief description of the development of pension programs in Latin America. Additionally, it also discusses the pension system crisis and the main proposals in order to overcome this crisis. The second part examines the peculiarities of the Argentine pension reform, with specific attention on economic imperatives and political constraints which have shaped the pension reform project of Menem´s Government (1989-1999). The article demonstrates that there are a large gap between the new system promises and its outcomes.

Investimento direto estrangeiro e o desempenho das exportações brasileiras

Brazil, in the 1990s, assumed a remarkable position as a host of foreign direct investment. It is worth mentioning that the service sector received the highest proportion of foreign investment. This market seeking strategy was responsible for the growth of the Brazilian imports. The results are confirmed by the performance of foreign enterprises into different groups of activities. Those enterprises with majority of foreign capital have increased their imports the most from 1995 to 2000. Therefore, during the 1995-2000 period, this study does not support the view that foreign investment has directly improved the performance of the Brazilian exporting sector.

Metas de inflação em perspectiva: a influência do trinômio reputação-credibilidade-transparência sobre a economia

Although inflation target regime seeks to serve as a reference for the expectation formation process of the agents, its implementation does not necessarily imply the acquisition or the best result in terms of economic growth. The present article aims the development of a model that explains, by firms' investment decisions, the product path behavior, undertaking monetary authority may present distinct situations associated with the reputation-credibility-transparency trinomial. The article also detaches different kinds of reputation and its degrees.

Banking and regional inequality in Brazil: an empirical note

The paper investigates a neglected aspect of regional inequality in Brazil, namely regional inequalities related to financial flows. A synthetic regional financial inequality index is proposed and calculated in a semester basis over the 02-1994/02-2000 period. The inequality measure attempts to capture to what extent deposits in a given state translate into credit operations in that locality. Two main results emerge. First, non-negligible inequality patterns emerge when one considers the segment of private banks and those are consistent with an important proportion of states with a predominantly exporting pattern, for which deposits surpasses loans in that locality. Second, if one focus on the segment of public banks, an opposite pattern appears, that is consistent with decision patterns that might have, in part, a regional development motivation.

Persistência inflacionária e curva de Phillips novo-keynesiana para o Brasil

Inflation persistence and new Keynesian Phillips curves for Brazil. In this paper is shown that sustainable inflation persistence has theoretical support not only due price indexation, but also because of micro-foundations based on assumptions of Simon's bounded rationality and because of persistent mark-up shocks. the new keynesian phillips curve, estimated for brazil for the period 2000/2008, and the partial coefficients of determination for moving sub-periods of 36 months identifies inflation persistence as the main determinant of inflation, with the capacity gap presenting larger importance only in the end of the sample period. Inflation persistence requires harder monetary policy when neither accommodation is acceptable nor complementary policies in order to reduce it, such as the minimization of indexation mechanisms and control of the market power, are adopted.