The importance of the manufacturing sector for Brazilian economic development

Includes bibliography

A poverty profile and functional aspects of Brazilian labour markets

Includes bibliography

Structural change in Brazilian agriculture, 1980-98

Includes bibliography

Distributive effects of Brazilian structural reforms

Includes bibliography

The Geography of Brazilian External Trade: Right Option for a BRIC?

Words can make a difference sometimes.Brazil is – together with the other ´BRIC´- a large economy, with an increasingly high profile in the international scenario. Large domestic market makes it more likely to obtain ‘growth-led exports’ rather than ‘export-led growth’, which implies a pro-active role in international relations. The option for intensifying regional trade links is a reasonable one and perhaps even inevitable, taking into account the experience elsewhere, but the actual regional conditions raise a number of questions that have to do both with further empirical assessment and to more specific identification of expectations with regard to probable achievements. This article has shown that the road to reach significant progress in this direction is not flat and requires more clear signalling to economic agents, strong political will and a good deal of specific measures. But it has also suggested that it might provide positive results.

Industrial location and sectoral linkages: the case of the Brazilian automotive industry

The aim of this article is to analyse the spatial distribution of the automotive industry in Brazil in terms of its various economic categories between 1995 and 2011, and to shed light on its sectoral linkages through inter-regional input-output matrices. By calculating the coefficient of localization (QLij) for that period, it was found that the third wave of investments, which began in the second half of the 1990s, actually caused a slight spatial deconcentration of this sector in the national economy. The coefficient of geographic association (CAik)calculated for different years revealed a slight reduction, while maintaining a high level of concentration, which suggests that vehicle production is closely integrated with other economic activities. This integration was corroborated particularly in terms of input purchases (backward linkages) in all of the analysed regions.

Seasonal effects of wastewater to the water quality of the Caeté river estuary, Brazilian Amazon

A situação socioeconômica de Bragança depende principalmente dos recursos biológicos estuarinos e marinhos, que são influenciados pelos ciclos de marés e climatologia. Coletas oceanográficas (com medidas de variáveis hidrológicas, hidro-dinâmicas e microbiológicas) foram realizadas na área mais urbanizada do estuário do Caeté, para caracterizar a qualidade das águas no setor estudado. Durante o período seco, o estuário foi mais eutrófico e apresentou os maiores valores de temperatura (30,5°C em Out./06), salinidade (17 psu em Fev./07), pH (8,24 em Fev./07) e coliformes fecais (>1000 MNP/ 100 ml em Dez./06 e Fev./07). As espécies fitoplanctô-nicas Cyclotella meneghiniana, Coscinodiscus centralis e outras espécies r-estrategistas também foram observadas. A falta de saneamento básico foi responsável pela contaminação local, especialmente durante o período seco, quando o esgoto foi lançado mais concentrado no estuário, mostrando a influência humana na redução da qualidade da água estuarina estudada. A pesca é considerada uma das principais atividades econômicas do município de Bragança e, portanto, esta contaminação poderá afetar negativamente a qualidade ambiental deste ecossistema amazônico.

Brazil and the EU in the global economy. CEPS Working Document No. 371, February 2013

The structure of the world economy has been changing quickly during the last decade. The emerging global economy is much more fragmented than in the past and characterised by different global actors, each one with specific features and roles. In this setting, both Brazil and the European Union play role. This paper, without pretending to provide a full analysis of the European and Brazilian economies, offers a description of their main international economic features to understand their current and future role in the global order.

Brazilian climate policy since 2005: continuity, change and prospective. CEPS Working Document No. 373, February 2013

In the five-year period 2005-09, Brazil has dramatically reduced carbon emissions by around 25% and at the same time has kept a stable economic growth rate of 3.5% annually. This combination of economic growth and emissions reduction is unique in the world. The driver was a dramatic reduction in deforestation in the Amazonian forest and the Cerrado Savannah. This shift empowered the sustainability social forces in Brazil to the point that the national Congress passed (December 2009) a very progressive law internalising carbon constraints and promoting the transition to a low-carbon economy. The transformation in Brazil’s carbon emissions profile and climate policy has increased the potentialities of convergence between the European Union and Brazil. The first part of this paper examines the assumption on which this paper is based, mainly that the trajectory of carbon emissions and climate/energy policies of the G20 powers is much more important than the United Nations multilateral negotiations for assessing the possibility of global transition to a low-carbon economy. The second part analyses Brazil’s position in the global carbon cycle and public policies since 2005, including the progressive shift in 2009 and the contradictory dynamic in 2010-12. The final part analyses the potential for a transition to a low-carbon economy in Brazil and the impact in global climate governance.

Development Begins at Home: Women and the Domestic Economy in Brazil, 1945-1975

A number of historians of twentieth-century Latin America have identified ways that national labor laws, civil codes, social welfare programs, and business practices contributed to a gendered division of society that subordinated women to men in national economic development, household management, and familial relations. Few scholars, however, have critically explored women's roles as consumers and housewives in these intertwined realms. This work examines the Brazilian case after the Second World War, arguing that economic policies and business practices associated with “developmentalism” [Portuguese: desenvolvimentismo] created openings for women to engage in debates about national progress and transnational standards of modernity. While acknowledging that an asymmetry of gender relations persisted, the study demonstrates that urban women expanded their agency in this period, especially over areas of economic and family life deemed "domestic." This dissertation examines periodicals, consumer research statistics, public opinion surveys, personal interviews, corporate archives, the archives of key women’s organizations, and government officials’ records to identify the role that women and household economies played in Brazilian developmentalism between 1945 and 1975. Its principal argument is that business and political elites attempted to define gender roles for adult urban women as housewives and mothers, linking their management of the household to familial well-being and national modernization. In turn, Brazilian women deployed these idealized roles in public to advance their own economic interests, especially in the management of household finances and consumption, as well as to expand legal rights for married women, and increase women’s participation in the workforce. As the market for women's labor expanded with continued industrialization, these efforts defined a more active role for women in the economy and in debates about the trajectory of national development policies.

Critical success factors for positioning Australian business talent in the global knowledge economy : a current research agenda

"Globalisation‟ and the "global knowledge economy‟ have become some of the most common "buzzwords‟ in Australian business, economic, and social sectors in the past decade. Further, knowledge service exports are a growing sector for Australia that utilise complex technical and creative capacities, increasingly rely on virtual work innovations, require new socio-technical systems to establish and maintain effective client relationships in global contexts; and – along with other innovations in the electronic age – may require novel coping abilities on the part of both managers and their employees to achieve desired outcomes (Bandura, 2002). Accordingly, this paper overviews such trends. The paper also includes a research agenda which is a "work-in-progress‟ with a major global company, Shell (Australia); it highlights both the objectives and proposed methodology of the study; it also outlines anticipated key benefits arising from the research.