Natural resources, redistribution and Human capital formation

How do resource booms affect human capital accumulation? We exploit time and spatial variation generated by the commodity boom across local governments in Peru to measure the effect of natural resources on human capital formation. We explore the effect of both mining production and tax revenues on test scores, finding a substantial and statistically significant effect for the latter. Transfers to local governments from mining tax revenues are linked to an increase in math test scores of around 0.23 standard deviations. We find that the hiring of permanent teachers as well as the increases in parental employment and improvements in health outcomes of adults and children are plausible mechanisms for such large effect on learning. These findings suggest that redistributive policies could facilitate the accumulation of human capital in resource abundant developing countries as a way to avoid the natural resources curse.

Trabalho produtivo e acumulação de capital: uma perspectiva sociopolítica

Esta investigação visa analisar a relação entre trabalho produtivo e acumulação de capital desde a época do mercantilismo. Parte da hipótese de que não é a forma material ou imaterial do produto do trabalho que determina se este é ou não produtivo, mas a função que ele desempenha no processo global de acumulação de capital. Concebemos o capital como uma relação de produção em que trabalhadores assalariados produzem uma mais-valia para os proprietários dos meios de produção que não se limitam a consumi-la improdutivamente, mas a reinvesti-la periodicamente no processo produtivo. Pretendemos demonstrar que com o desenvolvimento do capitalismo a esfera do trabalho produtivo se alarga para além do processo de produção material porque a ciência se transforma numa força produtiva e, por conseguinte, num instrumento de valorização do capital. Além do mais, a revolução cibernética converte uma parte crescente do trabalho intelectual em trabalho produtivo. No entanto, como a desigualdade na repartição de rendimentos não parou de aumentar desde os anos oitenta do século passado, estas transformações tecnológicas não contribuíram para a melhoria das condições de existência de todos mas apenas para o incremento do sobretrabalho que sustenta a acumulação de capital.

Remaking place and securitising space: Urban regeneration and the strategies, tactics and practices of policing in the UK

Urban regeneration programmes in the UK over the past 20 years have increasingly focused on attracting investors, middle-class shoppers and visitors by transforming places and creating new consumption spaces. Ensuring that places are safe and are seen to be safe has taken on greater salience as these flows of income are easily disrupted by changing perceptions of fear and the threat of crime. At the same time, new technologies and policing strategies and tactics have been adopted in a number of regeneration areas which seek to establish control over these new urban spaces. Policing space is increasingly about controlling human actions through design, surveillance technologies and codes of conduct and enforcement. Regeneration agencies and the police now work in partnerships to develop their strategies. At its most extreme, this can lead to the creation of zero-tolerance, or what Smith terms 'revanchist', measures aimed at particular social groups in an effort to sanitise space in the interests of capital accumulation. This paper, drawing on an examination of regeneration practices and processes in one of the UK's fastest-growing urban areas, Reading in Berkshire, assesses policing strategies and tactics in the wake of a major regeneration programme. It documents and discusses the discourses of regeneration that have developed in the town and the ways in which new urban spaces have been secured. It argues that, whilst security concerns have become embedded in institutional discourses and practices, the implementation of security measures has been mediated, in part, by the local socio-political relations in and through which they have been developed.

Emotions and the habitus: Young people with socio-emotional differences (re)producing social, emotional and cultural capital in family and leisure space-times

In this paper we explore the importance of emotionally inter-dependent relationships to the functioning of embodied social capital and habitus. Drawing upon the experiences of young people with socio-emotional differences, we demonstrate how emotionally inter-dependent and relatively nurturing relationships are integral to the acquisition of social capital and to the co-construction and embodiment of habitus. The young people presented in this paper often had difficulties in forging social relationships and in acquiring symbolic and cultural capital in school spaces. However, we outline how these young people (re)produce and embody alternative kinds of habitus, based on emotionally reciprocal relationships forged through formal and informal leisure activities and familial and fraternal social relationships. These alternative forms of habitus provide sites of subjection, scope for acquiring social and cultural capital and a positive sense of identity in the face of problematic relations and experiences in school spaces.

The division of labor, capital, communication technology and economic growth : the case of China 1952–99

The implications of the division of labor, capital, and technology for economic growth have long been a fundamental issue in development economics. This paper employs the bounds testing approach to cointegration to examine the relationship between the division of labor, capital accumulation, communication technology, and economic growth for China over the period 1952–99. We find that in the long run, capital stock and the division of labor both have statistically significant positive effects on growth, while in the short run the effects are not significantly positive. Telecommunication technology, rather surprisingly, has a statistically insignificant impact on growth both in the long run and in the short run. Our findings indicate that there exists a long run equilibrium relationship between capital and the division of labor on the one hand, and economic growth on the other, thereby lending support to the division of labor theory of growth.

Career concerns: a human capital perspective

We introduce human capital accumulation, in the form of learning by doing, in a life cycle model of career concerns and analyze how human capital acquisition a ects implicit incentives for performance. We show that standard results from the career concerns literature can be reversed in the presence of human capital accumulation. Namely, implicit incentives need not decrease over time and may decrease with the degree of uncertainty about an individual's talent. Furthermore, increasing the pre-cision of output measurement can weaken rather than strengthen implicit incentives. Overall, our results contribute to shed new light on the ability of markets to discipline moral hazard in the absence of explicit contracts linking pay to performance.

The spenders-hoarders theory of capital accumulations, wealth distribution and fiscal policy

This paper proposes a simple OLG model which is consistent with the essential facts about consumer behavior, capital accumulation and wealth distribution, and yields some new and surprising conclusions about fiscal policy. By considering a society in which individuais are distinguished according to two characteristics, altruism and wealth preference, we show that those who in the long run hold the bulk of private capital are not so rnuch motivated by dynastic altruism as by preference for wealth. Two types of social segmentation can result with different wcalth distribution. To a large extcnt our results seem to fit reality better than those obtained with standard optimal growth models in which dynastic altruism ( or r ate o f impatience) is the only source of heterogeneity: overaccumulation can appear, public debt and unfunded pensions are not neutra!, estate taxation can improve the welfare of the top wealthy.

Habitus e territorialidade na composição da dinâmica imobiliária em Natal/RN

Many have sought to understand the spatial processes, which originate from land development and real estate dynamics, seeking also to build new categories of analysis to put some light on the less evident aspects of this process. The discussion about production of space has been adopted in this study, but has proved insufficient to explain this complex urban reality. Here, it is analysed the ways that, in Natal, the market fosters the material basis for capital accumulation. The research had as methodological basis, the analysis of discourse, having full interviews with institutional agents as background. It aimed at understanding the complex, material configuration in urban space. It thus investigates the theory of practices of existing (private and public) agents towards the real estate market, using several concepts, like production of space (Lefèbvre and Harvey); habitus (Bourdieu); spatial fix (Harvey); and territoriality (Haesbaert). Evidence shows that there has been a process of ‗naturalization of certain practices in the market that has had implications for the production of an urban space that is both segmented and segregated, giving rise also to complex material configurations, including different forms of heterotopies (Foucault). These spaces result from capital s own creative dynamics and of the reach for social realization for different groups of people making a living under different economic conditions of income.

Líderes e motivadores profissionais: novos trabalhadores a serviço do capital (dimensões ideológicas, disciplinares e cooptativas)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

A hidrovia Tietê-Paraná e a intermodalidade no Estado de São Paulo

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

A insustentável teoria da sustentabilidade: Ideologia e reificação no discurso empresarial da responsabilidade social no Brasil

Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais - FFC

Google e infoespoliação: internet, informação e acumulação de capital

Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais - FFC

Uma nova ofensiva do capital?: impactos do neoliberalismo e da reestruturação produtiva na ação sindical e no setor calçadista de Franca - SP

Pós-graduação em História - FCHS

Monetary Policy, Exchange Rate Overshooting, and Endogenous Physical Capital

We develop an open economy macroeconomic model with real capital accumulation and microeconomic foundations. We show that expansionary monetary policy causes exchange rate overshooting, not once, but potentially twice; the secondary repercussion comes through the reaction of firms to changed asset prices and the firms' decisions to invest in real capital. The model sheds further light on the volatility of real and nominal exchange rates, and it suggests that changes in corporate sector profitability may affect exchange rates through international portfolio diversification in corporate securities.

Total Factor Productivity, Human Capital and Outward Orientation: Differences by Stage of Ddevelopment and Geographic Regions

Do openness and human capital accumulation promote economic growth? While intuition argues yes, the existing empirical evidence provides mixed support for such assertions. We examine Cobb-Douglas production function specifications for a 30-year panel of 83 countries representing all regions of the world and all income groups. We estimate and compare labor and capital elasticities of output per worker across each of several income and geographic groups, finding significant differences in production technology. Then we estimate the total factor productivity series for each classification. Using determinants of total factor productivity that include, among many others, human capital, openness, and distortion of domestic prices relative to world prices, we find significant differences in results between the overall sample and sub-samples of countries. In particular, a policy of outward orientation may or may not promote growth in specific country groups. even if geared to reducing price distortion and increasing openness. Human capital plays a smaller role in enhancing growth through total factor productivity.