Do capital controls boost EME´s resilience to financial crises?

Capital controls are again in vogue as a number of emerging markets have reintroduced these measures in recent years in response to a “flood” of international capital. Policymakers use these tools to buttress their economies against the “sudden stop” risk that accompanies international capital flows. Using a panel VAR model, we show that capital controls appear to make emerging market economies (EMEs) more resistant to financial crises by showing that lower post-crisis output loss is correlated with stronger capital controls. However, EMEs that employ capital controls seem to be more crisis-prone. Thus, policymakers should carefully evaluate whether the benefits of capital controls outweigh their costs.

Estudo mostra que distribuir ministérios ajuda a evitar crises

No quebra-cabeças em que se transformou a montagem de seu novo ministério, a presidente Dilma Rousseff colheria melhores resultados tanto na relação com o Congresso quanto na avaliação de seu governo se decidisse encaixar as peças da futura equipe a partir do orçamento federal de R$ 1,8 trilhão. Isto é o que indica um estudo inédito da Diretoria de Análise de Políticas Públicas da Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV/DAPP), ao qual O GLOBO teve acesso com exclusividade. Durante mais de um ano, 19 pesquisadores trabalharam no desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta interativa, batizada de Mosaico do Orçamento, que permite a visualização da distribuição dos gastos federais. Ao relacionar a distribuição dos gastos públicos com a indicação política dos ministros entre 2001 e 2014, período que vai do final do segundo mandato do ex-presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso ao primeiro de Dilma, o trabalho concluiu que há maior estabilidade política quando a legenda do presidente divide com os aliados os ministérios mais relevantes, aqueles que realmente têm dinheiro para gastar. O problema é que o PT demonstra grande dificuldade para dividir esse bolo.

Banks, liquidity crises and economic growth

How do the liquidity functions of banks affect investment and growth at different stages of economic development? How do financial fragility and the costs of banking crises evolve with the level of wealth of countries? We analyze these issues using an overlapping generations growth model where agents, who experience idiosyncratic liquidity shocks, can invest in a liquid storage technology or in a partially illiquid Cobb Douglas technology. By pooling liquidity risk, banks play a growth enhancing role in reducing inefficient liquidation of long term projects, but they may face liquidity crises associated with severe output losses. We show that middle income economies may find optimal to be exposed to liquidity crises, while poor and rich economies have more incentives to develop a fully covered banking system. Therefore, middle income economies could experience banking crises in the process of their development and, as they get richer, they eventually converge to a financially safe long run steady state. Finally, the model replicates the empirical fact of higher costs of banking crises for middle income economies.

Social media crises in the organization: exploring management strategies through cases from France and Brazil

The aim of this Master’s thesis has been to shed light on the response strategies that organizations are implementing when facing a crisis created on or amplified by social media. Since the development of social media in the late 1990s, the interplay between the online and the offline spheres has become more complex, and characterized by dynamics of a new magnitude, as exemplified by the wave of “Twitter” Revolutions or the Wikileaks scandal in the mid 2000s, where online behaviors deeply affected an offline reality. The corporate world does not escape to this worldwide phenomenon, and there are more and more examples of organizational reputations destroyed by social media “fireballs”. As such, this research aims to investigate, through the analysis of six recent cases of corporate crises (2013-2015) from France and Brazil, different strategies currently in use in order to identify examples of good and bad practices for companies to adopt or avoid when facing a social media crisis. The first part of this research is dedicated to a review of the literature on crisis management and social media. From that review, we were able to design a matrix model, the Social Media Crisis Management Matrix, with which we analyzed the response strategies of the six companies we selected. This model allows the conceptualization of social media crises in a multidimensional matrix built to allow the choice, according to four parameters, of the most efficient (that is: which will limit the reputational damage) response strategy. Attribution of responsibility for the crisis to the company by stakeholders, the origin of the crisis (internal or external), the degree of reputational threat, and the emotions conveyed online by stakeholders help companies determining whether to adopt a defensive response, or an accommodative response. The results of the analysis suggest that social media crises are rather manichean objects for they are, unlike their traditional offline counterparts, characterized by emotional involvement and irrationality, and cannot be dealt with traditionally. Thus analyzing the emotions of stakeholders proved to be, in these cases, an accurate thermometer of the seriousness of the crisis, and as such, a better rudder to follow when selecting a response strategy. Consequently, in the cases, companies minimized their reputational damage when responding to their stakeholders in an accommodative way, regardless of the “objective” situation, which might be a change of paradigm in crisis management.

How to manage macroeconomic policies to foster growth and employment and prevent financial and external crises

My presentation focuses on the implementation of a macroeconomic policy regime which, I believe, is capable of simultaneously attaining several targets, including the promotion of growth and employment and the prevention of external and financial crises.

As crises de mortalidade no concelho de Évora na segunda metade do século XIX

Orientadora: Teresa Ferreira Rodrigues

Prácticas culturales para el manejo de la Sigatoka negra en bananos y plátanos

Black sigatoka (Mycosphaerella fijiensis) control consists in the continuous use of fungicide sprays and cultural practices. Cultural control reduces inoculum sources of the pathogen and favorable environmental conditions for its development, as well as it increases the vigor of the plants. In order to manage the disease it is necessary to know its behavior through the time, its relationship with the weather and the crop management. The most important cultural practice to reduce the inoculum source is the removal of the whole affected leaves or only the diseased portions of the leaves. The removed tissue is placed over the ground and the use of urea is feasible to accelerate its decomposition. An alternative practice is the "mini-composting" that consists in forming small heaps with the dead leaves and harvested plants for its quick degradation, which allows to reduce the pathogen inoculum and to incorporate nutrients and organic matters into the soil. The early pruning of the tips of the Young leaves before they show symptoms of the disease and the quick elimination of harvested plants reduce the inoculum. Also, the agronomic management of the crop helps to reduce the favorable conditions and to increase the vigor of the plants: this management considers plantation density, drainage systems, irrigation methods, control of weeds, chemical-biological fertilization, and nematode control.

Atributos de qualidade de solos sob dois diferentes tipos de manejo no município de Ibiúna/SP, Brazil

Agricultural activity has direct consequences on the soil and water quality. Thus, assessing environmental impacts of this vital economic activity, through soil attribute analysis, is essential to the proposal of alternatives. The aim of this study was to analyze soil quality under different land management practices, conventional and organic. The study was carried out in a watershed of the Ibiuna municipality, SP, Brazil, an important supplier of agricultural products for the São Paulo metropolitan area. A hundred samples were collected, 20 in each type of land use: reforested areas, native vegetation, pasture, conventional cultivation and organic cultivation. The soil resistance to penetration, its pH (in water and KO), electrical conductivity, bulk density, particle density, porosity, soil color, soil texture and the percentages of carbon and nitrogen were analyzed. The data were statistically analyzed, searching for significant differences. The results of soil analysis showed great similarity between the organic and conventional culture, with no statistical differences. However, organic cultivation showed greater similarity to the soil of native vegetation in the percentage of carbon and nitrogen in soils compared to conventional culture. Thus, the discussion begins on a topic very little explored so far, and the results obtained should be further studied.