Federalismo e endividamento subnacional: uma discussão sobre a sustentabilidade da dívida estadual

The subnational debt in Brazil was marked by successive bailouts by the federal government. The path of subnational debt induced some locals and state authorities to claim for further renegotiations. More specifically, some governors and mayors demanded a revision of the refinancing contracts. This article intends to present arguments sustained by simulations of the evolution of the path of the subnational debt, denying the necessity of changes in legal framework, which rules the state debt. The first section consists of a brief overview. The following section treats the institutional framework designed to safeguard the fiscal intertemporal balance. In the third section, the implications of new institutional framework on the subnational debt are approached; in the fourth, the possible causes that distorted the expected path of the debt are discussed. The fifth section analyses the future perspectives for the debt in general terms and focuses some specific cases, while the sixth section discusses the problem under a federal optics. Finally, the conclusion is presented.

From the 'Miracle' to the 'Lost Decade': intersectoral transfers and external credit in the Brazilian economy

The present paper examines the Brazilian experience from the 'Economic Miracle' to the 'Lost Decade'. Its aim is to advance an alternative measurement of the flows of extraordinary wealth (i.e. ground-rent and net external credit) available for appropriation in the Brazilian economy and to asses their relevance in sustaining the process of accumulation of industrial capital. That is done in order to provide further and more accurate evidence to the claim that the evolution of the Brazilian process of capital accumulation has been extremely dependent on the evolution of those masses of extraordinary wealth.

Resuming growth in Latin America: short and long term policies

The authors of this paper assert that the paralysis of the state generated by the crises of the 1970s and 1980s deprived the economies of the region of an important lever to resume and sustain growth. They thus maintain that to overcome stagnation it will be necessary to reconstruct the state's capacity to implement pro-growth policies. Following Keynes and Kalecki's ideas, but also classical development economists, the authors argue, first, that short-term macroeconomic policies, to reduce unemployment and to increase the degree of capacity utilization, should be used to promote the generation of profits to firms and to wake up entrepreneurs' animal spirits. Short-term expansionary policies should be coupled with measures to improve competitiveness and avoid balance of payments problems. They also claim that alternatives to the liberal programme will fail unless a pro-growth strategy is adopted which includes both short- and long-term policies. They thus propose that long-term policies must complete the package, signaling: a) sustained increases of effective demand in the future; and b) investment priorities to ensure that capacities will be created in strategic sectors and branches of the economy.

Política industrial e compromissos críveis: uma proposta de análise e de ação governamental

This paper analyses the question of the counterparts that governments should claim from firms and/or economic sectors supported by vertical industrial policy. This is a discussion that still have to advance because everything indicate that the set of current counterparts (goals of costs, productivity, exportation, etc.) still may be increased and improved, what will facilitate the assessment of industrial policy execution by society and the verification of its efficacy in order to yielding more possibilities of economic growth for a country or region. To reinforce the commitment credibility of the agents supported by industrial policy, this paper proposes to maintain the counterparts meant before and that such agents will be stimulated to commit specific assets in their activities that are supported by govern. It is shown that, without use more public resources than the used currently, this new counterpart may reinforce substantially the incentives that the firms supported by vertical industrial policy have it to execute the traditional counterparts assumed by them, and with it guarantee the best possible use of public resources.

States and Economic Development

Today the Washington Consensus on development lies in tatters. The recent history of the developing world has been unkind to the core claim that a nation that opens its economy and keeps government's role to a minimum invariably experiences rapid economic growth. The evidence against this claim is strong: the developing world as a whole grew faster during the era of state intervention and import substitution (1950-1980) than in the more recent era of structural adjustment (1990-2005); and the recent economic performance of both Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africaregions that truly embraced neoliberalismhas lagged well behind that of many Asian economies, which have instead pursued judicial and unorthodox combinations of state intervention and economic openness. As scholars and policy makers reconstruct alternatives to the Washington Consensus on development, it is important to underline that prudent and effective state intervention and selective integration with the global economy have been responsible for development success in the past; they are also likely to remain the recipes for upward mobility in the global economy in the future."

Democracia e eficiência: a difícil relação entre política e economia no debate contemporâneo

Democracy and efficiency: hard relations between politics and economy. Many economists see politics as an irrational activity. They also think state action usually generates market inefficiencies and democratic institutions, such as elections, often work as obstacles to sound economic measures. Showing that vision has been embedded into the main currents of economic thought since the last century, we also argue those ideas are exported to great part of contemporary political science, including the area of public policies. Examining the literature, we show that rational choice political scientists, as the economists, claim governability and effective decisions will be guaranteed mainly through concentrated arenas or through insulated arrangements able to protect policy makers from political interference. In other words, governability depends on the reduction of the political arenas. On the contrary, we reject this technocratic solution of splitting politics from economy. With the support of classical pluralist thinkers, we stand another conception, arguing politics is the privileged social space for building interests and values in an institutionalized way. The difficulties to surpass current international crises since 2008 reveal this is a crucial problem: reducing politics would prevent societies from improving institutional solutions which are the only ones able to give space to emerging conflicts and, then, reach eventual consensus around them.

Finance, development and the Chinese entrepreneurial state: A Schumpeter-Keynes - Minsky approach

ABSTRACTThe paper's central claim is that China's speed and ability to leapfrog its peer-nations in the last three decades stems, largely, from the fact that it is a fully developed Entrepreneurial State (ES). The discussion seeks to dig deeper on ES as a bridging concept that fits well with the Schumpeter-Keynes-Minsky analytical framework and one that is particularly appropriated analyzing contemporary China's development trajectory. Although rooted in a historical perspective and using historical examples, the main purpose of the paper is analytical, not descriptive.

From transcendental to practical intersubjectivity: a social psychological approach to Kant's musical aesthetics

It is well known that Kant’s aesthetics is framed intersubjectively because he upholds the claim of taste to universality. However, the transcendental foundation of this shared universality is a supersensible ground which is taken for granted but which cannot be brought directly into communicative experience. Kant’s reliance on the synthetic a priori structure of aesthetic judgment also removes it from the sphere of observable personal interaction. This argumentative strategy exposes it to skeptical challenge and generates inaccessible references to inner representations (be they intuitions, categories of the understanding or rational ideas). It is not sufficient, as Kant did, to propose a description of aesthetic experience that is subjectively plausible and thereby claim its intersubjective validity. It is indispensable to embody intersubjectivity in behavior and language. In practical intersubjectivity, aesthetic attitudes are dealt with in a concrete and accessible manner without relying on mentalistic assumptions as a foundation. Conceptual terms such as 'agreeable’, 'beauty’, 'sublime’, 'ugly’, 'universality’ acquire new meaning in a conversational context and aesthetic claims are tested in a dialogical game semantics model.

Has social justice any legitimacy in Kant's theory of right? The empirical conditions of the legal state as a civil union

This paper aims at shedding light on an obscure point in Kant's theory of the state. It discusses whether Kant's rational theory of the state recognises the fact that certain exceptional social situations, such as the extreme poverty of some parts of the population, could request institutional state support in order to guarantee the attainment of a minimum threshold of civil independence. It has three aims: 1) to show that Kant's Doctrine of Right can offer solutions for the complex relation between economics and politics in our present time; 2) to demonstrate the claim that Kant embraces a pragmatic standpoint when he tackles the social concerns of the state, and so to refute the idea that he argues for an abstract conception of politics; and 3) to suggest that a non-paternalistic theory of rights is not necessarily incompatible with the basic tenets of a welfare state.