The political economy of exchange rate in Brazil

This paper reviews part of the political economy literature on exchange rate policy relevant to understanding the political motivations behind the Brazilian exchange rate policy. We shall first examine the distributive role of the exchange rate, and the way it unfolds in terms of the desired political goals. We will follow by analyzing exchange policy as indicative of government effciency prior to elections. Finally, we discuss fiscal policy from the point of view of political economy, in which the exchange rate results from the macroeconomic equilibrium. Over this review, the Brazilian exchange rate policy is discussed in light of the theories presented.

Publicidade: comércio, cultura e profissão (parte inicial)

O universo daquilo que é abertamente comercial na sociedade contemporânea costuma ser tratado nos meios acadêmicos de forma costumeiramente distante, simplista e ressentida. Ou, ao contrário, através do otimismo ingênuo característico da literatura de celebração. O estudo da história social da publicidade e do marketing é estratégico para avançar contra esse maniqueísmo paralisante. Ele ajuda a ampliar a visão das relações entre industrialização capitalista e mercado, urbanização e modernização, comunicação de massa e vida familiar, favorecendo uma visão mais adulta dos significados do consumo, tanto material quanto simbólico. O texto apoia-se em alguns títulos selecionados em uma bibliografia especializada recolhida recentemente nos EUA, e escolhidos por sua relevância em recolocar questões de sociologia da cultura.

Os impactos da interação dinâmica entre a percepção da realidade e a ação humana na implementação da estratégia organizacional de uma empresa pública: um estudo de caso de cultura organizacional

This study exploits the Organizational Culture theme by a not very conventional way of the Theories of the Organization. Seeking solid bases in the anthropology and in the sociology with Geertz, Bourdieu, Guerreiro Ramos, Hofstede, Peter Berger, among others admirable thinkers, escapes from the common place established in the decade of 70 and mimetically repeated since then, by those who are arranged to study the cultures of the organizations. Instead of understand the culture as a variable of the reality, it treats like a form of access it. Instead of the purpose, it treats like a way. With a powerful instrument of diagnosis based on methods originated from the semiology and from the analysis of discourses, we study the case of a big Brazilian company that faces problems in the implementation of his program of excellence in security, environment and health. From the identification of the Organizational Culture as the element that hindes the full implementation of this program, we develop considerations as to the cultural factors that limit its implementation and that are going to be worked by the individuals that share this culture, in case of wanting effectively its implementation. Dimensions of the national culture as distance of power, legalism, formalism, posture of spectator, among others, are well-defined from the analysis we did and suggestions of how the manager should deal with these characteristics in the everyday life of its activities are presented.

Um estudo empírico sobre a construção da identidade social do consumidor de toy art

O objetivo deste trabalho é compreender como os consumidores de Toy Art utilizam o seu bem para constituir a sua identidade social, além de explorar este relacionamento de consumo, investigando os fatores que desencadeiam o processo de extensão de si no Toy Art. A sustentação teórica deste trabalho se deu pelo aprofundamento dos temas já levantados anteriormente por Campbell & Barbosa (2006) e McCracken (2003), em seus estudos sobre cultura e consumo; Schouten & McAlexander (1995) em sua pesquisa sobre subculturas de consumo; Hall (2005), que expôs suas teorias sobre a formação da identidade no mundo moderno; Douglas & Isherwood (2004), que estudaram os rituais de consumo; Belk (1988), com suas pesquisas sobre a extensão do self. Este estudo é de caráter exploratório, e foi conduzido com entrevistas em profundidade com o intuito de deixar emergir os sentimentos e emoções dos respondentes, para uma melhor orientação na direção das análises dos dados obtidos. Os dados foram coletados junto a 14 consumidores de Toys, de ambos os sexos, com idades entre 19 e 38 anos, residentes nos estados de Belo Horizonte, Paraná, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, São Paulo e o Distrito Federal, durante os meses de julho e agosto de 2009. Para atingir os objetivos propostos, o método de pesquisa adotado foi qualitativo, com priorização do sujeito e da subjetividade, utilizando-se uma forma interpretativa para a análise dos dados. Os resultados demonstraram que os consumidores de Toy Art utilizam o seu bem para constituir sua identidade social e como uma forma de diferenciação e expressão. A extensão de si se dá exatamente durante essa busca pelo incomum, por um bem que o distinga dos demais. Conclui-se o trabalho, fazendo-se recomendações gerenciais com o intuito de beneficiar e desenvolver a indústria deste segmento.

Government actions to support coffee producers - an investigation of possible measures from the European Union

We outline possible actions to be adopted by the European Union to ensure a better share of total coffee revenues to producers in developing countries. The way to this translates, ultimately, in producers receiving a fair price for the commodity they supply, i.e., a market price that results from fair market conditions in the whole coffee producing chain. We plead for proposals to take place in the consuming countries, as market conditions in the consuming-countries side of the coffee producing chain are not fair; market failures and ingenious distortions are responsible for the enormous asymmetry of gains in the two sides. The first of three proposals for consumer government supported actions is to help in the creation of domestic trading companies for achieving higher export volumes. These tradings would be associated to roasters that, depending on the final product envisaged, could perform the roasting in the country and export the roasted – and sometimes ground – coffee, breaking the increasing importers-exporters verticalisation. Another measure would be the systematic provision of basic intelligence on the consuming markets. Statistics of the quantities sold according to mode of consumption, by broad “categories of coffee” and point of sale, could be produced for each country. They should be matched to the exports/imports data and complemented by (aggregate) country statistics on the roasting sector. This would extremely help producing countries design their own market and producing strategies. Finally, a fund, backed by a common EU tax on roasted coffee – created within the single market tax harmonisation programme, is suggested. This European Coffee Fund would have two main projects. Together with the ICO, it would launch an advertising campaign on coffee in general, aimed at counterbalancing the increasing “brandification” of coffee. Basic information on the characteristics of the plant and the drink would be passed, and the effort could be extended to the future Eastern European members of the Union, as a further assurance that EU processors would not have a too privileged access to these new markets. A quality label for every coffee sold in the Union could complement this initiative, helping to create a level playing field for products from outside the EU. A second project would consist in a careful diversification effort, to take place in selected producing countries.

On the welfare costs of business cycles in the 20th century

Lucas (1987) has shown a surprising result in business-cycle research, that the welfare cost of business cycles are relatively small. Using standard assumptions on preferences and a reasonable reduced form for consumption, we computed these welfare costs for the pre- and post-WWII era, using three alternative trend-cycle decomposition methods. The post-WWII period is very era this basic result is dramatically altered. For the Beveridge and Nelson decomposition, and reasonable preference parameter and discount values, we get a compensation of about 5% of consumption, which is by all means a sizable welfare cost (about US$ 1,000.00 a year).

Do bom e do melhor: o consumo de bens de luxo por uma nova classe

A classe média brasileira apresentou um grande crescimento nos últimos anos representando 52% da população do país. Justamente devido a este fenômeno, surgiu o interesse nesta pesquisa que está focada em mulheres residentes no Rio de Janeiro. Podem ser observadas pesquisas recentes na área de marketing acerca dos hábitos de consumo desta classe, principalmente devido ao aumento do seu poder aquisitivo, porém pouco foram exploradas as particularidades dos diversos grupos dentro desta grande massa e de como se comportam em universos antes originários e característico das elites sociais, como o dos bens de luxo. A presente pesquisa tem o objetivo de contribuir para uma exploração mais detalhada acerca desta população. A fim de se observar a produção de conhecimento e o processo de construção de identidade das mulheres pesquisadas, o tema abordado foi o consumo de objetos de luxo. Três categorias se apresentam relevantes: Luxo, Luxo no Dia a Dia e Sonho de Consumo, que trazem informações distintas e complementares para melhor compreensão do grupo analisado. Apesar das teorias tradicionais de luxo apresentarem o status social, a diferenciação e o hedonismo como principais motivos do consumo destes objetos, outros aspectos relevantes foram observados quanto a este tipo de consumo, sendo a família a grande arena onde a maior parte das relações sociais e econômicas acontecem. A pesquisa também mostra o desenvolvimento de um olhar peculiar para a moda por parte do grupo estudado sendo a chave para o entendimento do que é luxo. Os resultados deste estudo mostram a riqueza das práticas e significados de consumo dentro de um mesmo grupo e a importância de um olhar qualitativo para que acadêmicos e gestores da área de marketing possam realmente entender os fenômenos de consumo das sociedades modernas, especialmente sociedades em pleno desenvolvimento social e econômico como o Brasil.

On the welfare costs of business-cycle fluctuations and economic-growth variation in the 20th century

Lucas (1987) has shown a surprising result in business-cycle research: the welfare cost of business cycles are very small. Our paper has several original contributions. First, in computing welfare costs, we propose a novel setup that separates the effects of uncertainty stemming from business-cycle fluctuations and economic-growth variation. Second, we extend the sample from which to compute the moments of consumption: the whole of the literature chose primarily to work with post-WWII data. For this period, actual consumption is already a result of counter-cyclical policies, and is potentially smoother than what it otherwise have been in their absence. So, we employ also pre-WWII data. Third, we take an econometric approach and compute explicitly the asymptotic standard deviation of welfare costs using the Delta Method. Estimates of welfare costs show major differences for the pre-WWII and the post-WWII era. They can reach up to 15 times for reasonable parameter values -β=0.985, and ∅=5. For example, in the pre-WWII period (1901-1941), welfare cost estimates are 0.31% of consumption if we consider only permanent shocks and 0.61% of consumption if we consider only transitory shocks. In comparison, the post-WWII era is much quieter: welfare costs of economic growth are 0.11% and welfare costs of business cycles are 0.037% - the latter being very close to the estimate in Lucas (0.040%). Estimates of marginal welfare costs are roughly twice the size of the total welfare costs. For the pre-WWII era, marginal welfare costs of economic-growth and business- cycle fluctuations are respectively 0.63% and 1.17% of per-capita consumption. The same figures for the post-WWII era are, respectively, 0.21% and 0.07% of per-capita consumption.

On the welfare costs of business-cycle fluctuations and economic-growth variation in the 20th century

Lucas(1987) has shown a surprising result in business-cycle research: the welfare cost of business cycles are very small. Our paper has several original contributions. First, in computing welfare costs, we propose a novel setup that separates the effects of uncertainty stemming from business-cycle uctuations and economic-growth variation. Second, we extend the sample from which to compute the moments of consumption: the whole of the literature chose primarily to work with post-WWII data. For this period, actual consumption is already a result of counter-cyclical policies, and is potentially smoother than what it otherwise have been in their absence. So, we employ also pre-WWII data. Third, we take an econometric approach and compute explicitly the asymptotic standard deviation of welfare costs using the Delta Method. Estimates of welfare costs show major diferences for the pre-WWII and the post-WWII era. They can reach up to 15 times for reasonable parameter values = 0:985, and = 5. For example, in the pre-WWII period (1901-1941), welfare cost estimates are 0.31% of consumption if we consider only permanent shocks and 0.61% of consumption if we consider only transitory shocks. In comparison, the post-WWII era is much quieter: welfare costs of economic growth are 0.11% and welfare costs of business cycles are 0.037% the latter being very close to the estimate in Lucas (0.040%). Estimates of marginal welfare costs are roughly twice the size of the total welfare costs. For the pre-WWII era, marginal welfare costs of economic-growth and business-cycle uctuations are respectively 0.63% and 1.17% of per-capita consumption. The same gures for the post-WWII era are, respectively, 0.21% and 0.07% of per-capita consumption.

On the welfare costs of business-cycle fluctuations and economic-growth variation in the 20th century and beyond

The main objective of this paper is to propose a novel setup that allows estimating separately the welfare costs of the uncertainty stemming from business-cycle uctuations and from economic-growth variation, when the two types of shocks associated with them (respectively,transitory and permanent shocks) hit consumption simultaneously. Separating these welfare costs requires dealing with degenerate bivariate distributions. Levis Continuity Theorem and the Disintegration Theorem allow us to adequately de ne the one-dimensional limiting marginal distributions. Under Normality, we show that the parameters of the original marginal distributions are not afected, providing the means for calculating separately the welfare costs of business-cycle uctuations and of economic-growth variation. Our empirical results show that, if we consider only transitory shocks, the welfare cost of business cycles is much smaller than previously thought. Indeed, we found it to be negative - -0:03% of per-capita consumption! On the other hand, we found that the welfare cost of economic-growth variation is relatively large. Our estimate for reasonable preference-parameter values shows that it is 0:71% of consumption US$ 208:98 per person, per year.

Comportamento empreendedor e o capital cultural: impacto do ambiente social nas características do comportamento empreendedor de empresários na cidade do Rio de Janeiro

Este trabalho tem o intuito de observar a relação entre as características do comportamento empreendedor (CCEs) e a origem sociocultural de empreendedores da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Mais especificamente, este trabalho traz à luz as teorias de David McClelland, adotada pelo Sebrae através da metodologia do programa Empretec e a teoria de Pierre Bourdieu sobre Capital Cultural. O estudo traz em sua metodologia uma análise da origem sociocultural de empreendedores, seu contexto educacional, seu histórico familiar, seu grau de escolaridade, seus hábitos de consumo de produtos culturais e seu nível de internacionalização, correlacionando-os com as 10 CCEs propostas por McClelland: Busca de Oportunidades e Iniciativa, Persistência, Correr Riscos Calculados, Exigência de Qualidade e Eficiência, Comprometimento, Busca de Informações, Estabelecimento de Metas, Planejamento e Monitoramento Sistemáticos, Persuasão e Rede de Contatos, Independência e Autoconfiança. A metodologia aplicada foi baseada em pesquisa bibliográfica, em pesquisa de campo, dividida entre aplicação de questionários presenciais e online e em métodos quantitativos de análise de dados. Como resultados de campo, pode-se observar uma significante diferença entre os perfis socioeconômicos, culturais e educacionais de empreendedores de dentro e de fora de comunidades carentes no Rio de Janeiro. Confirmou-se um grau superior de Capital Cultura nos empreendedores externos às comunidades, observados através da renda, do grau de escolaridade, da escolaridade familiar, do acesso a bens culturais, do consumo de informação e do nível de internacionalização. Além destas constatações, a pesquisa revelou haver indícios que sustentem a existência de influência do Capital Cultural nas seguintes CCEs: Busca de Oportunidade e Iniciativa, Exigência de Qualidade e Eficiência, Correr Riscos Calculados, Estabelecimento de Metas, Persuasão e Redes de Contato e Independência e Autoconfiança.

The role of law and public-private collaboration in promoting innovative firms in Brazil: the case of the BNDES and the “criatec fund”

This paper presents the result of a qualitative empirical research about the “Criatec Fund”, a venture capital fund, privately managed and directed to innovative firms, that was created in 2007 by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). The paper discusses the role of law in the implementation of the Criatec Fund in three different legal dimensions: structural, regulatory and contractual. Based on interviews, this paper tries to test some hypothesis previously formulated by some scholars that studied new financial policies created by the BNDES. This study explains the institutional arrangements of this seed capital policy and the role of flexible legal instruments in the execution of this peculiar type of publicprivate partnership. It also poses some questions to the “law and development agenda” based on some insights from the economic sociology of law.

Testing consumption optimality using aggregate data

The objective of this paper is to test for optimality of consumption decisions at the aggregate level (representative consumer) taking into account popular deviations from the canonical CRRA utility model rule of thumb and habit. First, we show that rule-of-thumb behavior in consumption is observational equivalent to behavior obtained by the optimizing model of King, Plosser and Rebelo (Journal of Monetary Economics, 1988), casting doubt on how reliable standard rule-of-thumb tests are. Second, although Carroll (2001) and Weber (2002) have criticized the linearization and testing of euler equations for consumption, we provide a deeper critique directly applicable to current rule-of-thumb tests. Third, we show that there is no reason why return aggregation cannot be performed in the nonlinear setting of the Asset-Pricing Equation, since the latter is a linear function of individual returns. Fourth, aggregation of the nonlinear euler equation forms the basis of a novel test of deviations from the canonical CRRA model of consumption in the presence of rule-of-thumb and habit behavior. We estimated 48 euler equations using GMM, with encouraging results vis-a-vis the optimality of consumption decisions. At the 5% level, we only rejected optimality twice out of 48 times. Empirical-test results show that we can still rely on the canonical CRRA model so prevalent in macroeconomics: out of 24 regressions, we found the rule-of-thumb parameter to be statistically signi cant at the 5% level only twice, and the habit ƴ parameter to be statistically signi cant on four occasions. The main message of this paper is that proper return aggregation is critical to study intertemporal substitution in a representative-agent framework. In this case, we fi nd little evidence of lack of optimality in consumption decisions, and deviations of the CRRA utility model along the lines of rule-of-thumb behavior and habit in preferences represent the exception, not the rule.

Profissão: repórter esportivo - das narrativas da nação ao ofício do jornalista contemporâneo

Essa dissertação tem por objetivo investigar de que maneira o repórter esportivo contemporâneo se relaciona com o futebol e como essa relação interfere no seu ofício e na construção do texto jornalístico. Mais especificamente, busca identificar as práticas adotadas e as estratégias narrativas utilizadas na construção de seus textos. O estudo dos elementos presentes na prática jornalística tem como perspectiva que a mídia participou ativamente da construção do imaginário futebolístico nacional e é na contemporaneidade a grande mediadora entre o público e os eventos esportivos. É sob este prisma que se pretende apurar como se dá a relação com o trabalho do profissional de imprensa que se identifica com seu objeto, analisar qual o lugar da emoção na composição da notícia esportiva e verificar que valores imbuem esse profissional na construção do texto jornalístico. A análise tem como corpus entrevistas de história oral temática com seis jornalistas que atuam ou atuaram como repórteres esportivos em jornais diários da cidade do Rio de Janeiro, todos com expressiva trajetória no meio esportivo, o que lhes confere credibilidade e autoridade públicas para protagonizar a constituição da memória da imprensa esportiva brasileira. O trabalho é constituído por três etapas: 1) a contextualização – quando se relaciona futebol e formação social brasileira, imprensa e jornalismo esportivo -; 2) o estudo do jornalismo como ofício a partir das teorias da Sociologia das Profissões e das estratégias narrativas utilizadas no texto noticioso esportivo nos jornais; e 3) a análise qualitativa das entrevistas temáticas.

Testing consumption optimality using aggregate data

This paper tests the optimality of consumption decisions at the aggregate level taking into account popular deviations from the canonical constant-relative-risk-aversion (CRRA) utility function model-rule of thumb and habit. First, based on the critique in Carroll (2001) and Weber (2002) of the linearization and testing strategies using euler equations for consumption, we provide extensive empirical evidence of their inappropriateness - a drawback for standard rule- of-thumb tests. Second, we propose a novel approach to test for consumption optimality in this context: nonlinear estimation coupled with return aggregation, where rule-of-thumb behavior and habit are special cases of an all encompassing model. We estimated 48 euler equations using GMM. At the 5% level, we only rejected optimality twice out of 48 times. Moreover, out of 24 regressions, we found the rule-of-thumb parameter to be statistically significant only twice. Hence, lack of optimality in consumption decisions represent the exception, not the rule. Finally, we found the habit parameter to be statistically significant on four occasions out of 24.