The political economy of corruption in Brazil

This article is the first part of a research on corruption in Brazil and it is theoretical. Despite this, it provides an economic interpretation of corruption using Brazil as a case study. The main objective of this research is to apply some microeconomic tools to understand the "big corruption". However, I am going to show that corruption is not simply a kind of crime. Rather, it is an ordinary economic activity that arises in some institutional environments. Firstly, some corruption cases in Brazil will be described. This article is aimed at showing that democracy itself does not ensure control over corruption. Secondly, I am going to do a very brief survey of institutional changes and controls over corruption in some Western Societies in which I am going to argue that corruption, its control and its illegality depend on institutional evolution by streamlining the constitutional and institutional framework. Thirdly, I am going to explain how some economic models could be adopted for a better understanding of corruption. Finally, I will present a multiple-self model applied to the public agent (politician and bureaucrat) constrained by institutions and pay-off systems.

Electronic government policies in Brazil: context, ICT management and outcomes

The State Reform processes combined with the emergence and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) originated electronic government policies and initiatives in Brazil. This paper dwells on Brazilian e-government by investigating the institutional design it assumed in the state's public sphere, and how it contributed to outcomes related to e-gov possibilities. The analyses were carried out under an interpretativist perspective by making use of Institutional Theory. From the analyses of interviews with relevant actors in the public sphere, such as state secretaries and presidents of public ICT companies, conclusions point towards low institutionalization of e-gov policies. The institutional design of Brazilian e-gov limits the use of ICT to provide integrated public services, to amplify participation and transparency, and to improve public policies management.

Hedonic analysis of cell phones sold with post-paid service plans in Brazil

The aim of this paper is to analyze the determining factors for the pricing of handsets sold with service plans, using the hedonic price method. This was undertaken by building a database comprising 48 handset models, under nine different service plans, over a period of 53 weeks in 2008, and resulted in 27 different attributes and a total number of nearly 300,000 data registers. The results suggest that the value of monthly subscriptions and calling minutes are important to explain the prices of handsets. Furthermore, both the physical volume and number of megapixels of a camera had an effect on the prices. The bigger the handset, the cheaper it becomes, and the more megapixels a camera phone has, the more expensive it becomes. Additionally, it was found that in 2008 Brazilian phone companies were subsidizing enabled data connection handsets.

Focusing illusion in satisfaction with life among college students living in Brazil

Literature shows that there are significant associations between health and happiness. Various countries are considering, contemplating or formally incorporating the happiness variable into their public health policies. Moreover, the private sector has shown interest in the topic. Based on that This article examines the biases in the perception of satisfaction with life among young adults in two Brazilian cities. The study explores the associations between aspects of life and perception of happiness because public policies associated with happiness require an improved understanding of the subjectivity of the sense of well-being. A survey conducted among 368 college students enabled analysis through Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) and linear regression. The results suggest that, although there were no significant differences in general satisfaction with life between the two cities, there were indications of focusing illusion in the perception of happiness caused by expectations arising from the feeling of personal insecurity in a metropolis.

SOCIAL BUSINESS DILEMMAS IN BRAZIL: REDE ASTACASE

ABSTRACTSocial businesses seek financial, social and even environmental results. Academic knowledge on how such organizations operate, however, has emerged more recently. This article sought to investigate qualitatively the main tensions and dilemmas occurring throughout the history of Rede Asta, a pioneer social business in direct catalog sales of artisanal products in Brazil. Results indicate the Rede Asta managers have experienced tensions and dilemmas in three of the four categories identified by Smith, Gonin, and Besharov (2013): social and financial performance, organizational aspects and learning. One of the dilemmas involves organizational aspects and learning, since Asta achieves feasibility with two organizations: a nonprofit association and a for-profit corporation. On perceptions of belonging, stakeholders declared they felt they were a part of the organization’s social and environmental goals; some even as activists.

MICROFINANCE AND CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS: THE CASE OF AGROAMIGO IN BRAZIL

ABSTRACTThis paper reports an empirical case study on the interface between microfinance and climate change actions. Climate change, which until recently seemed a luxury for the microfinance sector, now appears to be crucial for its future. For their low adaptive capacity, the millions of microfinance clients worldwide happen to be the most vulnerable to a changing climate. However, such an arena is still blurred from an academic viewpoint, and inexistent among Brazilian academia. Therefore, by investigating Brazil’s largest rural MFI, Agroamigo, we aim at providing an empirical contribution to green microfinance. The main conclusion is that, albeit Agroamigo offers important links to climate change initiatives, it will need to take better account of specific vulnerabilities and risks to protect its portfolio and clients better from climate change impacts.

How logrolling can explain the failure of the government coalition in Brazil

This article presents an analysis of the behavior of federal representatives in the Brazilian House of Representatives between 1995 and 1998, when a series of constitutional amendments were presented by the president to be voted on by Congress. The objective is to show that the lack of a stable government coalition resulted in costs to society that were not anticipated by the government. The study argues that a logroll - a trade of votes - was the strategy used by the government in order to guarantee the number of votes necessary to approve the amendments. This strategy created a vicious system in which representatives would only vote with the government if they had benefits in return.

Climate strategies of firms in the automotive and pulp & paper industries in Brazil: insights from an international perspective

This article focuses on the results of the final stage of research into the climate strategies of firms in the automotive and pulp-and-paper industries in Brazil, a country that is becoming increasingly important also in terms of climate change issues. In the first stage, the Climate Strategy Model (CSM) was developed to assess whether firms were adopting the necessary practices to assure the successful implementation of climate strategies. In the second, the CSM was applied to firms in the above mentioned industries that were chosen because of their important role in the domestic economy. In the final stage, interviews with executives of these firms were conducted to identify root causes of climate strategy implementation deficiencies and obtain new insights from an international perspective.

Sustainable Tourism and Eradication of Poverty (Step): impact assessment of a tourism development program in Brazil

This paper aims to evaluate the social impacts of the Tourism Development Program (Prodetur) in the northeastern town of Porto Seguro, Bahia, Brazil. The method used is based on the difference in difference technique applied to the 1991 and 2000 Census microdata. The results suggest social advances following from poverty relief based on income - where the benefits are distributed, generally, in a relatively equal manner between the native and migrant population. There is a relative deterioration in the sanitary situation, which consists of a very serious problem in the mid- and long-term, whose costs are mostly borne by the native population. Therefore, maintaining the natural capital is the main aspect that distances Porto Seguro’s tourism supply from the concept of sustainability. The article also relies on difference in difference estimators to assess the impacts of local public policies related to the sector.

Are public officials really less satisfied than private sector workers?A comparative study in Brazil

This research aims to compare the public and private sectors with regard to satisfaction at work. We conducted a survey with 670 professionals from both sectors in Brazil. The results of variance analysis confirm previous researches indicating that public officials are less satisfied with their work than private sector workers. However, this result does not repeat when we evaluate the satisfaction dimensions. For instance, public officials reported being more satisfied than private sector workers with regard to social environment and work stability. Unexpectedly, the results suggest that there is no difference between these sectors when we analyze the satisfaction with supervision. Therefore, this article is relevant for Brazilian managers, by offering an empirical research on the distinction between public and private. The article also discusses the theoretical implications, since Brazilian findings do not completely support the international literature.

Mortality problems in Brazil and in Germany: past-present-future. Learning from each other?

This article was written by a Swiss-German historical demographer after having visited different Brazilian Universities in 1984 as a guest-professor. It aims at promoting a real dialog between developed and developing countries, commencing the discussion with the question: Can we learn from each other? An affirmative answer is given, but not in the superficial manner in which the discussion partners simply want to give each other some "good advice" or in which the one declares his country's own development to be the solely valid standard. Three points are emphasized: 1. Using infant mortality in S. Paulo from 1908 to 1983 as an example, it is shown that Brazil has at its disposal excellent, highly varied research literature that is unjustifiably unknown to us (in Europe) for the most part. Brazil by no means needs our tutoring lessons as regards the causal relationships; rather, we could learn two things from Brazil about this. For one, it becomes clear that our almost exclusively medical-biological view is inappropriate for passing a judgment on the present-day problems in Brazil and that any conclusions so derived are thus only transferable to a limited extent. For another, we need to reinterpret the history of infant mortality in our own countries up to the past few decades in a much more encompassing "Brazilian" sense. 2. A fruitful dialog can only take place if both partners frankly present their problems. For this reason, the article refers with much emprasis to our present problems in dealing with death and dying - problems arising near the end of the demographic and epidemiologic transitions: the superanuation of the population, chronic-incurable illnesses as the main causes of death, the manifold dependencies of more and more elderly and really old people at the end of a long life. Brazil seems to be catching up to us in this and will be confronted with these problems sooner or later. A far-sighted discussion already at this time seems thus to be useful. 3. The article, however, does not want to conclude with the rather depressing state of affairs of problems alternatingly superseding each other. Despite the caution which definitely has a place when prognoses are being made on the basis of extrapolations from historical findings, the foreseeable development especially of the epidemiologic transition in the direction of a rectangular survival curve does nevertheless provide good reason for being rather optimistic towards the future: first in regards to the development in our own countries, but then - assuming that the present similar tendencies of development are stuck to - also in regard to Brazil.

Vector competence experiments with Rocio virus and three mosquito species from the epidemic zone in Brazil

First-generation progeny of field-collected Psorophora ferox, Aedes scapularis, and Aedes serratus from the Rocio encephalitis epidemic zone in S.Paulo State, Brazil, were tested for vector competency in the laboratory. Psorophora ferox and Ae. scapularis are susceptible to per os infection with Rocio virus and can transmit the virus by bite following a suitable incubation period. Oral ID50S for the two species (10(4.1) and 10(4.3) Vero cell plaque forming units, respectively) did not differ significantly. Infection rates in Ae. serratus never exceeded 36%, and, consequently, an ID50 could not be calculated for this species. It is unlikely that Ae. serratus is an epidemiologically important vector of Rocio virus. The utility of an in vitro feeding technique for demonstrating virus transmission by infected mosquitoes and difficulties encountered in working with uncolonized progeny of field-collected mosquitoes are discussed.

Possible consequences of increasing life expectancy in Brazil: the perspective of a European historical demographer

Those over sixty years of age accounted for 6.6% of the total population of Brazil in 1985, in the Federal Republic of Germany this proportion was 20.3% in 1984. As early as 1950 it had been 14.5%. This proportion will not even be reached in Brazil in the year 2000 when persons aged sixty years and older are only projected to make up 8.8% of the total population. Similarly, in 1982/84 life expectancy at birth in the Federal Republic was 70.8 years for men and 77.5 for women; in Brazil the figures for 1980/85 were, by contrast, "only" 61.0 and 66.0. Against this background it is easy to understand why the discussion concerning an ageing society with its many related medical, economic, individual and social problems has been so slow in coming into its own in Brazil. As important as a more intensive consideration of these aspects may be in Brazil at present, they are, nevertheless, only one side of the story. For a European historical demographer with a long-term perspective of three of four hundred years, the other side of the story is just as important. The life expectancy which is almost ten years lower in Brazil is not a result of the fact that no one in Brazil lives to old age. In 1981 people sixty-five years and older accounted for 34.4% of all deaths! At the same time infants accounted for only 22.1% of total mortality. They are responsible, along with the "premature" deaths among youths and adults, for the low, "average" life expectancy figure. In Europe, by contrast, these "premature" deaths no longer play much of a role. In 1982/84 more than half of the women (52.8%) in the Federal Republic of Germany lived to see their eightieth birthdays and almost half of the men (47.3%) lived to see their seventy-fifth. Our biological existence is guaranteed to an extent today that would have been unthinkable a few generations ago. Then, the classic troika of "plague, hunger and war" threatened our forefathers all the time and everywhere. The radical transition from the formerly uncertain to a present-day certain lifetime, which is the result of the repression of "plague, hunger and war", led to unexpected consequences for our living together. Our forefathers were forced to live in closely knit Gemeinschaften in the interest of physical survival and to subordinate their egoistic goals to a common value, but now these pressures have, for the most part, fallen away. Correspondingly, this much more certain EGO has taken center stage. An ever greater number of us chooses to live life as single beings: the number of marriages is lower every year; the number of divorces is on the increase; in Berlin (West) more than half (sic! 52.3%) of all households are already composed on only one person. For the last dozen years the annual number of births in the Federal Republic has been insufficient to ensure population replacement. Not a population explosion but rather the opposite, a population implosion, is our problem. Human beings do not appear to be "social animals", as was axiomatically assumed for so long. They were only forced to behave as such for as long as "plague, hunger and war" forced them to do so. When these life endangering conditions no longer exist and life becomes certain even without their being integrated into a Gemeinschaft then humans suddenly show themselves more and more to be independent single beings. It is not the percentage of the population that is over sixty or sixty-five that is decisive in this context but rather how certain adults perceive their biological lives to be, since they are the ones who organize their lives, who build communities or who are ever more often willing only to enter into means-to-an-end personal unions without lasting or close ties and mutual responsibilities. There are many signs which seem to point to a development in this direction in Brazil as well. More and more adults in Brazil are caught up in the deep-seated transition from an uncertain to a certain lifetime. A third of them die after having reached their sixty-fifth birthday. It therefore seems to me to be high time that one began to give more consideration to the other side of the story in Brazil as well. And who is more suited intensively to consider the long-term perspectives than those engaged in the public health sector in whose competence, after all, such aspects, as "life certainty", "life expectancy" and "age at death" belong?

Detection of psychiatric morbidity in the primary medical care setting in Brazil

The aims of this study were a) to assess the ability of primary care doctors to make accurate ratings of psychiatric disturbance and b) to evaluate the use of a case-finding questionnaire in the detection of psychiatric morbidity. The estudy took place in three primary care clinics in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, during a six-month survey. A time sample of consecutive adult attenders were asked to complete a case-finding questionnaire for psychiatric disorders (the Self Report Questionnaire - SRQ) and a subsample were selected for a semi-structured psychiatric interview (the Clinical Interview Schedule - CIS). At the end of the consultation the primary care doctors were asked to assess, in a standardized way, the presence or absence of psychiatric disorder; these assessments were then compared with that ratings obtained in the psychiatric interview. A considerable proportion of minor psychiatric morbidity remained undetected by the three primary care doctors: the hidden morbidity ranged from 22% to 79%. When these were compared to those of the case-finding questionnaire, they were consistently lower, indicating that the use of these instruments can enhance the recognition of psychiatric disorders in primary care settings. Four strategies for adopting the questionnaire are described, and some of the clinical consequences of its use are discussed.