Creditor's protection and bank loans: lack of competition hamprers bankruptcy reform's effects

This dissertation investigates how credit institutions’ market power limits the effects of creditor protection rules on the interest rate and the spread of bank loans. We use the Brazilian Bankruptcy Reform of June/2005 (BBR) as a legal event affecting the institutional environment of the Brazilian credit market. The law augments creditor protection and aims to improve the access of firms to the credit market and to reduce the cost of borrowing. Either access to credit or the credit cost are also determined by bank industry competition and the market power of suppliers of credit. We derive a simple economic model to study the effect of market power interacting with cost of lending. Using an accounting and operations dataset from July/2004 to December/2007 provided by the Brazilian Central Bank, we estimate that the lack of competition in the bank lending industry hinders the potential reducing effect of the BBR on the interest rate of corporate loans by approximately 30% and on the spread by approximately 23%. We also find no statistical evidence that the BBR affected the concentration level of the Brazilian credit market. We present a brief report on bankruptcy reforms around the world, the changes in the Brazilian legislation and on some recent related articles in our introductory chapter. The second chapter presents the economic model and the testable hypothesis on how the lack of competition in the lending market limits the effects of improved creditor protection. In this chapter, we introduce our empirical strategy using a differences-in-differences model and we estimate the limiting effect of market power on the BBR’s potential to reduce interest rates and on the spread of bank loans. We use the BBR as an exogenous event that affects collateralized corporate loans (treatment group) but that does not affect clean consumer loans (control group) to identify these effects, using different concentration measures. In Chapter 3, we propose a two-stage empirical strategy to handle the H–Statistics proposed by Panzar and Rosse as a measure of market competition. We estimate the limiting effects of the lack of competition in replacing the concentration statistics by the H–Statistics. Chapter 4 presents a structural break test of the concentration index and checks if the BBR affects the dynamic evolution of the concentration index.

Knowledge disclosure as a weapon in technological change battles: straight shot or backfire?

This work aims at evaluating how effective is knowledge disclosure in attenuating institutional negative reactions caused by uncertainties brought by firms’ new strategies that respond to novel technologies. The empirical setting is from an era of technological ferment, the period of the introduction of the voice over internet protocol (VoIP) in the USA in the early 2000’s. This technology led to the convergence of the wireline telecommu- nications and cable television industries. The Institutional Brokers’ Estimate System (also known as the I/B/E/S system) was used to capture reactions of securities analysts, a revealed important source of institutional pressure on firms’ strategies. For assessing knowledge disclosure, a coding technique and a established content analysis framework were used to quantitatively measure the non-numerical and unstructured data of transcripts of business events occurred at that time. Eventually, several binary response models were tested in order to assess the effect of knowledge disclosure on the probability of institutional positive reactions. The findings are that the odds of favorable institutional reactions increase when a specific kind of knowledge is disclosed. It can be concluded that knowledge disclosure can be considered as a weapon in technological changes situations, attenuating adverse institutional reactions to the companies’ strategies in environments of technological changes.

Citizens and the future of multilateralism in a polycentric world at 2030: the perspectives of emerging countries for the trading system: the impasse of WTO, the trends of mega agreements, the logic of value chains and the advent of consumers concerns on international trade

A new paradigm is modeling the World: evolutionary innovations in all fronts, new information technologies, huge mobility of capital, use of risky financial tools, globalization of production, new emerging powers and the impact of consumer concerns on governmental policies. These phenomena are shaping the World and forcing the advent of a new World Order in the Multilateral Monetary, Financial, and Trading System. The effects of this new paradigm are also transforming global governance. The political and economic orders established after the World War and centered on the multilateral model of UN, IMF, World Bank, and the GATT, leaded by the developed countries, are facing significant challenges. The rise of China and emerging countries shifted the old model to a polycentric World, where the governance of these organizations are threatened by emerging countries demanding a bigger participation in the role and decision boards of these international bodies. As a consequence, multilateralism is being confronted by polycentrism. Negotiations for a more representative voting process and the pressure for new rules to cope with the new demands are paralyzing important decisions. This scenario is affecting seriously not only the Monetary and Financial Systems but also the Multilateral Trading System. International trade is facing some significant challenges: a serious deadlock to conclude the last round of the multilateral negotiation at the WTO, the fragmentation of trade rules by the multiplication of preferential and mega agreements, the arrival of a new model of global production and trade leaded by global value chains that is threatening the old trade order, and the imposition of new sets of regulations by private bodies commanded by transnationals to support global value chains and non-governmental organizations to reflect the concerns of consumers in the North based on their precautionary attitude about sustainability of products made in the World. The lack of any multilateral order in this new regulation is creating a big cacophony of rules and developing a new regulatory war of the Global North against the Global South. The objective of this paper is to explore how these challenges are affecting the Tradinge System and how it can evolve to manage these new trends.

Analysis of the economic and financial relations between Latin American and the Caribbean and the BRICS group

This document has been prepared in compliance with Activity III.1.2 of the Work Programme of SELA for the year 2015, entitled “Analysis of the economic and financial relations between Latin America and the Caribbean and the BRICS countries”. The document comprises an introduction, four chapters and a final section with the conclusions and recommendations stemming from the study. Chapter I describes the economic performance of the BRICS countries, their economic relations with Latin America and the Caribbean and the functioning of the development banks of the member countries. Chapter II assesses the financial architecture of Latin America and the Caribbean and explores the needs for financing in the region. Chapter III deals with the regulatory frameworks governing public and private investments in Latin America and the Caribbean and the Bilateral Investment Treaties with the BRICS countries. Finally, Chapter IV describes the main features of the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Agreement of the BRICS

Europe’s financial crisis: the Euro’s flawed design and the consequences of lack of a government banker

This paper argues the euro zone requires a government banker that manages the bond market and helps finance country budget deficits. The euro solved Europe’s problem of exchange rate speculation by creating a unified currency managed by a single central bank, but in doing so it replaced the exchange rate speculation problem with bond market speculation. Remedying this requires a central bank that acts as government banker and maintains bond interest rates at sustainable levels. Because the euro is a monetary union, this must be done in a way that both avoids favoring individual countries and avoids creating incentives for irresponsible country fiscal policy that leads to “bail-outs”. The paper argues this can be accomplished via a European Public Finance Authority (EPFA) that issues public debt which the European Central Bank (ECB) is allowed to trade. The debate over the euro’s financial architecture has significant political implications. The current neoliberal inspired architecture, which imposes a complete separation between the central bank and public finances, puts governments under continuous financial pressures. That will make it difficult to maintain the European social democratic welfare state. This gives a political reason for reforming the euro and creating an EPFA that supplements the economic case for reform.

Alocação de riscos e equilíbrio econômico-financeiro em contratos de gestão: o caso da fundação OSESP

As parcerias entre o governo e instituições da sociedade civil têm se mostrado um instrumento fundamental para a consecução das políticas públicas. O “Programa Nacional de Publicização”, focalizando os serviços públicos não-exclusivos, trouxe maior possibilidade de flexibilização da gestão dessas atividades, chamando as organizações do terceiro setor a um papel de protagonismo na oferta de serviços públicos no Brasil. A nova interação entre esses agentes cria a necessidade de melhor entendimento de suas relações jurídicas e de realinhamento de expectativas e incentivos, bem como melhor definição da alocação de riscos entre os parceiros. Este trabalho analisa as parcerias com as Organizações Sociais na área da Cultura no Estado de São Paulo. Mais especificamente, o contrato de gestão da Fundação Osesp no período de 2005 a 2015. A partir desse caso, analisamos as oportunidades e dificuldades encontradas na contratualização dos resultados, os impactos na governança corporativa da instituição, as condições de alocação dos riscos, suas formas de mitigação e as necessidades de reequilíbrio econômico-financeiro.

Uma avaliação política da política de avaliação da educação superior brasileira

We had as the problem of analysis in this research: what are the assumptions, principles and general content that based the Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Superior (SINAES). We started from the hypothesis that the general content of SINAES is essentially based on the assumptions and principles of a control/regulatory perspective of evaluation and a summative epistemology, objectivist and quantitativist, constituted by members who prioritize testing and classification of courses and institutions based on market values. The overall goal was to make a political evaluation of SINAES and the specific objectives were: a) apply the concepts of politics evaluation and meta-evaluation, b) identify the role of international organizations in education reform in the 1990s and its impact on superior education in Brazil c) redeem the concept of evaluation, especially in the field of studies in education; and d) investigate the evaluation policies of Brazilian superior education leading to SINAES. As for the technical procedures for collecting and analyzing data, the research was made with bibliography and documents, considering that it was developed by bibliographic sources and official publications. It was developed by crossing sources: texts or documents remitted to others; it was also concentrated: on the role of international organizations in educational and State reforms (in the 1990s); on the policies of evaluation of the Brazilian superior education (1980s and 1990s); on the proposal of the Comissão Especial de Avaliação (CEA); on the Law No. 10.861/2004; on the documents of CONAES; on the Decree No. 5.773/2006, and the MEC Regulatory Ordinances No. 4/2008 and No. 12/2008. It did not stop in the so called purely technical aspects, but in the ideological field itself. The research found that international organizations, notably the World Bank, played a political, intellectual and financial role determinant to the field of education, a fact that reflects in the legal framework. It was also found that the politics of evaluation of the superior education is historically marked by conflict, represented by two distinct perspectives of different natures and emphases. On one hand, the focus is on control / regulation, favoring efficiency, productivity and competitiveness benchmarking and prioritizing the punctual performance and measurement. On the other, it seeks to transform academic perspective in primarily formative / emancipatory, in order to support more institutional improvement. It was concluded that the CEA presented a conception evaluation predominantly formative and emancipatory, which emphasized the idea of system, centered around the institution and repudiated the rankings practices. In the post-formulation period, however, some of its principles were fragmenting and, gradually, the institution was giving way to the courses and the Exame Nacional de Desempenho de Estudantes (ENADE) grew in prominence. With the creation of the Conceito Preliminar de Cursos superiores (CPC) and of the Índice Geral de Cursos da Instituição de Educação Superior (IGC), it was redemeed the practice of evaluation as measurement and control, under the principles of efficiency and productivity. So, SINAES that seemed like a progressive evaluation method has assumed a setting that close resembles the Exame Nacional de Cursos (ENC-Provão). Nevertheless, the survival of institutional formative evaluation, in the superior education evaluation policies, still an issue in dispute

Custo social de oportunidade na trajetória de acesso ao ensino superior: o caso dos ingressantes na UFRN nos vestibulares de 2006 a 2010

Access is a problem of higher education in Brazil that has existed since the formalization of this has occurred since the installation of the Portuguese court in Brazil in 1808. Only 10% of young people between 18 and 24 years of age attending this level of education in 2000, arriving in 2010 just 15%, far from that determined the National Education Plan in 2001, triple that percentage by the year 2010. In addition, a majority of seats of public HEIs is populated by students from the private network, especially in high-demand courses. In this context, this study aims to identify the costs related to the trajectories of students who were successful in the vestibular UFRN editions from 2006 to 2010. Presents an overview of higher education in Brazil, a brief history of vestibular, as well as new forms of access, and some of the policies to expand such access, highlighting the argument Inclusion UFRN. Focusing on the theme of the paper presents the concepts of opportunity costs and social. After collecting data through a questionnaire and consultation of databases COMPERVE was developed to search for a descriptive and analytical, with the participation of 3,995 students, of whom 1642 (41.1%) had completed secondary education in schools public, and 2,078 (52%) in private schools. The profile indicates that 90% are single, about 50% are 21 years of age, are white and female. In the course of preparation for college entrance exams, 80% chose the course during or after completion of the last year of high school, and almost 70% said they had started preparing at that time. Findings related to the costs involved with this preparation indicate that, in most cases there were school fees and disbursements and workshops, and the purchase of books and other materials, with parents primarily responsible for this cost, the amount disbursed each month was up $ 300 for 64% of respondents and only 7% of them exceeded $ 1,000, the major non-financial costs were characterized by the following resignations: job opportunities (24%) or temporary work (20%) courses of languages (26%), leisure activities (48%), leisure travel (43%), and parties and / or shows (54%). Of social investments by the government, stand out in the tax waiver scholarships for study in private institutions, grant exemption from the registration fee of vestibular, the preparatory courses UFRN, and seminars by COMPERVE / UFRN with networks of high school. From the junction of the opportunity costs (private costs) and social costs (public costs), a new concept: the social opportunity cost, which measures the combined efforts of families and government to finance the opportunity to access higher education of an individual. This concept can and should be incorporated as a strategic vector for the sake of democratic university, which reflects the social model that is sought

Avaliação dos indicadores de desempenho de instituições federais de educação tecnológica doBrasil na abordagem do balanced scorecard

This Master of Science Thesis deals with a study on applying the BSC Balanced Scorecard to assess the performance of Federal Institution for Technological Education Institution in Brazil, a government organizations non for profit. It s accomplished a literature review in order to understand the BSC and its application to non for profit organizations and as a main result it is proposed a BSC conceptual model with an inversion of the main BSC perspective from financial to customer/society. It is used the annual management report of thirteen Institutions and applied a Pearson correlation analysis in order to verify a cause-effect situation between indicators. The main findings suggest that the model teachers qualification in terms of degree earned, quantity of teachers in full time job, and rate of students by teacher in full time job having good pearson correlation with the results expected of quality, throughput, social and demand response. However, the student unit cost use as the sole financial indicator did not get any reasonable correlation with the results, as so the quality and quantity of books in the libraries. Although it suggests a need for improvement in the model, the general model adopted appears to be satisfactory as a starting point to a BSC-like performance measuring system to this kind of Institutions

Uma modelagem de indicadores de desempenho para instituições de ensino superior no Brasil na abordagem do balanced scorecard: um estudo com instituições privadas

This Master of Science Thesis deals with a BSC modeling for higher education institution focusing on private institution in the Brazilian context. It‟s accomplished a literature review in order to understand the BSC and its application to for profit and non for profit organizations and as a main result it is proposed a BSC conceptual model with a new perspective (Government) and a change in the hierarchy of the main BSC perspective equaling financial to customer/society. Taking the national higher education assessment system of Education Ministry indicators a model is deployed and the relations between the indicators are measured with the Pearson correlation coefficient. As a result a model emerges with sound relations of indicators but a improvement in the financial indicators is needed

Non invasive methods for genetic analysis applied to ecological and behavioral studies in Latino-America

Documenting the presence and abundance of the neotropical mammals is the first step for understanding their population ecology, behavior and genetic dynamics in designing conservation plans. The combination of field research with molecular genetics techniques are new tools that provide valuable biological information avoiding the disturbance in the ecosystems, trying to minimize the human impact in the process to gather biological information. The objective of this paper is to review the available non invasive sampling techniques that have been used in Neotropical mammal studies to apply to determine the presence and abundance, population structure, sex ratio, taxonomic diagnostic using mitochondrial markers, and assessing genetic variability using nuclear markers. There are a wide range of non invasive sampling techniques used to determine the species identification that inhabit an area such as searching for tracks, feces, and carcasses. Other useful equipment is the camera traps that can generate an image bank that can be valuable to assess species presence and abundance by morphology. With recent advances in molecular biology, it is now possible to use the trace amounts of DNA in feces and amplify it to analyze the species diversity in an area, and the genetic variability at intraspecific level. This is particularly helpful in cases of sympatric and cryptic species in which morphology failed to diagnose the taxonomic status of several species of brocket deer of the genus Mazama.

Violência nas escolas: Um novo olhar ante as relações sociais

The most varied ways of manifestation of the violence phenomenon in the contemporary society are each time more found in the media spaces and among society discussions. It makes think about procedures to be taken before the growth and new outbreaks of such phenomenon. The violences manifestations in schools reveal themselves as a reflection of what happens in the scope of social violence. Its dynamics originates in society and reflects itself in scholl, that is, the violences in schools combine internal and external elements to school enviroment of many fields and spheres of which the individuals participate. To reflect about the violences in the schools requires, over all, to make a bridge with the categories: youth and violence. Violences in schools: A new look to the social relations, is a Ms. Sc. Dissertation that has as main objective: to analyze the main existing forms of violence in the school space. For its achievement, it was made a bibliographical survey, questionnaires application (annexed) and observation. Thus, this research articulated the two approaches: qualitative and quantitative. The questionnaires application happened in a state school of the Natal city and amongst yhe criteria for this choice there was the fact of the school had more than 500 pupils, to be located on a strategical place of the city, providing a subjects heterogeneity to be researched, deyond the limitations of available resources financial and material and the available time for the research accomplishment. The scool congregates objective conditions, specifically in what concerns the criteria previously defined: age range, socioenomical level and number of pupils. Amongst the main results obtained, it can be detached that the violence is a phenomenon seen, for the great majority of the research subjects, as a phenomenon connected to the most visible violence forms: the agressions. And a question always present in the public education institutions: infrastructures precariousness, high scool evasion índex and vulnerability among the pupils that makes possible to the pupil to see school as an home extension. Such dissertation concludes that the phenomenon of the violence in scools demands and requires of the most varied subjects involved in the processes na understanding of its determinants so that thus, one can intervene in such phenomenon that does not restrains itself to the physical acts of aggression, but that it is, over all, on a non respecting the different

Comparison between the complete Bayesian method and empirical Bayesian method for ARCH models using Brazilian financial time series

In this work we compared the estimates of the parameters of ARCH models using a complete Bayesian method and an empirical Bayesian method in which we adopted a non-informative prior distribution and informative prior distribution, respectively. We also considered a reparameterization of those models in order to map the space of the parameters into real space. This procedure permits choosing prior normal distributions for the transformed parameters. The posterior summaries were obtained using Monte Carlo Markov chain methods (MCMC). The methodology was evaluated by considering the Telebras series from the Brazilian financial market. The results show that the two methods are able to adjust ARCH models with different numbers of parameters. The empirical Bayesian method provided a more parsimonious model to the data and better adjustment than the complete Bayesian method.

Referral letters in oral medicine: standard versus non-standard letters

Usually referral letters are the only means of communication between general practitioners and specialists in the health area. However, they are inadequate if important basic data are omitted. The aim of this study was to compare the content of standard and non-standard letters. A total of 1956 files from the Oral Medicine Service were consecutively evaluated (March 1996 to September 2000). Key items were considered for analysis and the results were stored in a database using the Epinfo 6.04 program. The X-2 test (a=0.05) was applied to the results. of the 1956 files examined, 34% (662) had a referral letter, 31% of them being standard letters and 69% non-standard letters. Most standard letters (87%) were from professionals of public health institutions. Most percent discrepancies between standard and non-standard letters were observed for patient address (14.90 vs 1.32%), patient age (54.81 vs 9.47%), chief complaint (32.21 vs 8.37%), fundamental lesion (29.33 vs 13.66%), and symptoms (27.81 vs 15.42%,,). Statistically significant differences were observed for patient age, professional referring the patient, chief complaint, and site of the lesion. The quality and quantity of the information differed significantly between the two types of letters. The standard letters were more complete and contained information commonly absent in the non-standard letters. We suggest the use of standard letters for improving the quality of communication among professionals.

Financing for sustainable development: visions and proposals for action from a Latin American and Caribbean perspective

Foreword Throughout the preparatory process for the World Summit on Sustainable Development and at the Summit itself, which was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September 2002, discussions were dominated by one central concern: the need to define and reach consensus on concrete, quantitative goals, with fixed deadlines for implementation, which were to supplement the Millennium Development Goals and facilitate progress towards an effective transition to sustainable development. Participants at the Summit explicitly affirmed the need, as a matter of urgency, to identify the financial and technical resources whereby sustainable development would become a reality and benefit directly and particularly rural and urban communities in the developing countries. The document we are now presenting is the outcome of extensive discussions held at a high-level forum during the Johannesburg Summit. Led by representatives of the Government of Mexico, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Andean Development Corporation, those discussions were based on the ECLAC/UNDP study entitled Financing for sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean: from Monterrey to Johannesburg, which considers the opportunities and challenges for improving prospects for investment and financing for sustainable development and underscores the need to establish a new balance between the market economy and public interest through joint public/private initiatives that combine market innovation, social responsibility and appropriate regulations. Other eminent persons attending the event included heads of State, such as Gustavo Noboa, then President of Ecuador; Enrique V. Iglesias, President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); José María Figueres, Managing Director of the Global Agenda of the World Economic Forum and former President of Costa Rica; and Gro Harlem Brundtland, the legendary figure who pioneered sustainable development. Valuable contributions to the discussions were made by Yolanda Kakabadse, President of the World Conservation Union; Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, head of the Unit for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of the Office of the President of Mexico; Cecilia López, former Minister for the Environment of Colombia; and Juan Carlos Maqueda, then Vice President of Argentina. The views emerging from the forum as set forth in this document are designed to facilitate and promote application of the Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals and the commitments assumed at the International Conference on Financing for Development, which was held in Monterrey, Mexico. We also aspire to continue moving forward with the adoption of measures and policies to increase investment and financing for sustainable development as well as to foster partnerships between the public and private sectors and nongovernmental organizations. We recognize, in this context, the importance of strengthening and improving public and private institutions in order to meet the operational needs associated with the effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and pursue the Plan of Implementation formulated in Johannesburg. We trust that this document will contribute to in-depth discussions on the application of the Plan of Implementation in the relevant forums, in particular the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. The Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development opens up new opportunities for Latin America and the Caribbean to renew and revive their own regional agenda -with emphasis on global and especially regional public goods- and to interweave it more cohesively with the global agenda in order to promote the common interests of Latin America and the Caribbean more forcefully in international development forums. The regional agenda and the global agenda cannot be separated in a contrived manner; indeed, to an increasing degree, what we are witnessing are global environmental processes which call for action at the local level. The achievement of sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the necessary economic, social, environmental and geopolitical conditions are combined, requires a subtle balance between the market economy, the State and the citizen. Such a balance will result in the consolidation of democratic governance in the service of human development. VICENTE FOX President of Mexico JOSÉ ANTONIO OCAMPO Executive Secretary, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) ELENA MARTÍNEZ Assistant Aministrator and Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) ENRIQUE GARCÍA Executive President, Andean Development Corporation (ADC)""