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Blog
Evidence from Brazil shows how affirmative action students in the higher education system adjust their behaviour to catch up with initially higher-performing privileged students.Affirmative action (AA) policies, aiming to address historical inequalities and promote social justice, have sparked...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Mismatch effects and catch-up dynamics under a Brazilian college affirmative action program
Affirmative action in higher education can lead to mismatch, where students admitted through preferential treatment struggle academically due to inadequate preparation before college. Although some students may face initial challenges, by providing access to quality education for talented...
Journal Article
– Evidence from a top university in Brazil
Using two rich administrative data sets and a rule of admission at one top university in Brazil that splits students into two classes, we apply a regression discontinuity design to study the effect of class allocation on academic performance and labor market outcomes. The last student of the first...
Book Chapter
– Insights from Brazil
A concern with absolute poverty, defined as a money-metric measure of the ability to meet basic subsistence needs, has occupied a central place within the international development agenda for much of its existence. Efforts in recent years to promote a more multidimensional understanding of poverty...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from a government-sponsored scholarship program in Brazil
This paper investigates the impact of the Science without Borders (Ciência sem Fronteiras – CSF) programme on participants’ post-graduation enrolment, employment, and entrepreneurship. The programme was launched in 2011 to increase students’ human capital and interest in science and postgraduate...
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
From the book:
Tasks, Skills, and Institutions
Working Paper
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This paper studies the unintended long-run effects of a permanent agricultural shock led by agro-terrorism in Brazil on the education and labour market. We explore the witches' broom outbreak in cocoa farms in the world's second most important cocoa production region until 1989, the southeast of...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Empirical evidence suggests that the social effects of internal migration may be substantially different from those associated with the arrival of international migrants. In this study the author provides the first evidence of the effect of internal migration on crime with longitudinal data from...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from the regulation of junkyards in Brazil
I describe how monitoring and harsher law enforcement reduce the expected economic benefits of crime. I investigate the effect of shifts in legal authorities’ surveillance by focusing on junkyards, firms often associated with illegal markets and auto theft. Starting in 2014, many municipalities in...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– The role of trade and labour policies on informality
Part of Journal Special Issue
What sustains informality
Working Paper
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– Insights from Brazil’s social protection system
Policy frames in Brazil have long run up against conflicting visions and understandings about the causes and consequences of group-based inequality. This paper argues that a class-based lens has dominated the social protection framework. In recent years, political leaders have framed social policy...
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– The case of Brazil
From the book:
The Developer’s Dilemma
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Brazilian electronic biddings
Using big data from the Brazilian public procurement system, this research aims to investigate what factors are associated with the occurrence of anticompetitive practices in electronic bidding. Our analysis considers all services contracted between 2014 and 2017. The study uses the logit regression...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from a top university in Brazil
Affirmative action in higher education may lead to mismatch, a situation where students benefiting from preferential admission struggle with their college-level work because of poor pre-college academic preparation. In the United States, those students can switch majors if they underperform in the...
Working Paper
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– A descriptive analysis
In this paper we use different sources of data on job task content to investigate the importance of occupations and the intensity of routine tasks embodied in them in explaining changes in employment and earnings in Brazil, in particular their relation with earnings and polarization, and inequality...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from a top university in Brazil
Peers play an essential role in cognitive and non-cognitive skills formation. Ordinal rank may also change incentives and environment, impacting students’ efforts. Using two rich administrative data sets and a rule of admission at one top university in Brazil, we apply a regression discontinuity...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from a high-dosage programme in Brazil
Using admission lotteries and registry data linking labour market outcomes, we study the effect of a vocational training programme focused on disadvantaged individuals in Brazil. The intensive programme is an 18-month classroom training coupled with a 6-month on-the-job training provided by...
Working Paper
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– A decomposition approach
The purpose of this article is to provide new evidence about the sources of regional income inequalities in Brazil along the wage distribution, taking into account the regional differentials in purchasing power. We use a unique and recent regional purchasing power index to adjust nominal values of...
Blog
Globalization has generally coincided with a rise in work outside the formal economy, intensifying job precarization — when high-quality, formal jobs that entitle workers to benefits are replaced by jobs which may not comply with regulations and offer fewer benefits. In a recent study of the impacts...
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– What are the main drivers of income distribution changes in the new millennium?
From the book:
Inequality in the Developing World
Working Paper
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Several episodes of market-oriented reforms in developing countries have been accompanied by a significant rise in work outside of the formal economy. This paper investigates whether the impact of increased exposure to trade on formal employment is mediated by the strength of labour regulations. We...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Evidence from Brazil
Traditional economic models predict rural to urban migration during the structural transformation of an economy. In middle-income countries, it is less clear which direction of migration to expect. In this article, the author shows that in Brazil as many people move out as into metropolitan cities...
Working Paper
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– The case of BRICS
As the world battles with the triple problems of social, economic, and environmental challenges, it has become important to focus both policy and research efforts on these. Therefore, this study examines the effect of wealth inequality on CO2 emissions in five emerging economies: Brazil, Russia...
Working Paper
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– Trade liberalization and the rise of populism in Brazil
This paper investigates the long-term impact of economic shocks on populism, by exploiting a natural experiment created by the trade liberalization process implemented in Brazil between 1990 and 1995. This high impact and low duration event generated a profound shock to the economy with, we argue...
Working Paper
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– The case of Brazil
Through rapid urbanization, Brazil—previously a country where most workers were in the agricultural sector—went through a strong process of structural transformation that lasted almost four decades until economic liberalization at the beginning of the 1990s. During the same period, income inequality...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from a public federal university in Brazil
Can students’ rank in the ability distribution of their class impact their academic achievement? We aim to answer this question using a discontinuity generated by a rule for the distribution of students between classes at a prestigious Brazilian university. The rule means that in almost 30 per cent...
Working Paper
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– Where they move and why prices matter
Traditional economic models predict rural to urban migration during the structural transformation of an economy. In middle-income countries, it is less clear which direction of migration to expect. In this paper I show that in Brazil as many people move out of as into metropolitan cities, and they...
Working Paper
pdf
Empirical evidence suggests that the social effects of internal migration may be substantially different from those associated with the arrival of international migrants. In this paper, I provide the first evidence of the effect of internal migration on crime with longitudinal data from Brazilian...
Access to effective social insurance in Latin America is typically determined by workers’ status in the labor market – whether they have formal or informal jobs. This column explains why the separate systems constitute a bad economic and social policy. The author calls for a shift towards universal...
Income inequality is the result of complex processes with multiple interacting driving forces but understanding those drivers in emerging economies is particularly difficult because of data and analytical challenges. While most middle-income countries produce comprehensive household surveys these...
– Inclusive growth trend of this millennium is over
After three decades of persistently high inequality, Brazil has been experiencing a downward trend since 2001, accompanied by a rise in household incomes. These trends lasted until 2014 when a major reversal took place on both fronts. Since the 1970s Brazil has been one of the most unequal countries...
Working Paper
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After three decades of persistently high income inequality, from 2001 Brazil experienced a downward inequality trend followed by rising household income growth. Both movements lasted until 2015. This work synthesizes the results of six papers, describing Brazilian income distribution trends and...
Working Paper
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– The role of firms, education, and top incomes 1994–2015
This paper documents the evolution and the determinants of earnings inequality in the Brazilian formal sector from 1994 to 2015, using establishment level data. In 2015, schooling explained 33 per cent of overall inequality. Firm-specific effects explain 65 per cent of total inequality level and 76...
Working Paper
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We study the trajectory of the gender gap over time and over the life cycle, using a matched employer-employee data from the formal labour market in Brazil. We document the evolution of participation and earnings for both males and females during the period 1994–2015 and the gender earnings gap...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Female Autonomy and Women’s Welfare
Working Paper
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– Combining surveys and income tax data in Brazil
This paper evaluates the impacts of combining household surveys with income tax return files, in terms of growth, inequality, and social welfare in Brazil from 2007 to 2015. This exercise holds the promise of adding more realistic top income values to traditional surveys. While the previous...
Working Paper
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– Dynamic microsimulation, 2003–15
This paper assesses causes and consequences of fiscal redistribution in Brazil. The framework proposed allows evaluating in an integrated manner the impacts of government-sponsored actions in inequality and mean income changes on social welfare, addressing both static and dynamic implications. To...
Working Paper
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Education-related changes are often argued as the main reasons for changes in earnings distribution. However, omitted variable and measurement error biases possibly affect econometric estimates of these effects. Brazil experienced a sharp fall of individual labour income inequality between 1996 and...
Working Paper
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This paper develops a new imputation methodology applied to missing incomes values in PNAD. PNAD is the main Brazilian household survey, but it has no imputation. The imputation process starts by fitting regression models applied to different income sources considering the complex sampling design of...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Patterns, trends, and their impacts on institutions
Part of Journal Special Issue
Horizontal Inequality: Persistence and Change
Working Paper
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– Insights from Brazil
Concerns about the dramatic rise in income inequality across the world and, at the same time, assessments of national progress on the Millennium Development Goals made it clear that it is the intersection of income inequality, marginalized social identities and, very often, locational disadvantage...
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
From the book:
Growth, Employment, and Poverty in Latin America
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book examines the links between economic growth, changing employment...
Working Paper
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– Brazil and the Vale SA model of corporate interaction
Reflection about the role of corporate social investment in Brazil, associated with the presence of a large economic enterprise, is the major stimulus of this paper. It seeks to present how cross-sector governance can contribute to the social development of a city and how this process can be led by...
Working Paper
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Over the last half-century, the role of women in society has changed substantially. However, the gender income gap and the difference in labour force participation persist. Akerlof and Kranton introduce the concept of identity from sociology and social psychology at the economic analysis; based on...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Brazilian politicians
What explains the persistence of racial or ethnic inequalities in political representation, in the absence of strongly politicized racial or ethnic cleavages? This paper uses new data to demonstrate a substantial racial gap between voters and politicians in Brazil. We show that this disparity is not...
Working Paper
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In this paper, we analyse the patterns and trends of group-based inequalities in Brazil in the past 30 years. Using data from the last four demographic censuses (1980, 1991, 2000, and 2010), we estimate numerous measures to analyse inequalities between different ‘ethnic’ groups. Our results show...
Working Paper
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– Understanding the role of international climate regimes in energy policy in two Brazilian states
This paper examines the political economy aspects, particularly the influence of the Clean Development Mechanism, in clean energy and climate change policies in the states of Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The different mechanisms for responding to climate change are financing opportunities...
Working Paper
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– The drivers of political economy and climate
Understanding the political economic drivers of energy planning in the Brazilian Amazon is critical since the forest is increasingly vulnerable to destruction and related, increased poverty. This research investigates how political economy affects biomass and hydroelectricity development in that...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
The goal of this paper is to evaluate the results of regional economic growth model estimations at multiple spatial scales using spatial panel data models. The spatial scales examined are minimum comparable areas, microregions, mesoregions and states between 1970 and 2000. Alternative spatial panel...
Working Paper
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– A spatial panel approach
The regional development policy in Brazil materializes mainly in the regional development funds for the north-east (FNE), the north (FNO), and the centre-west (FCO), in which more than EUR36 billion was invested between 2004 and 2010. This paper examines the economic effect of these regional...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– The Case of the Ministry of Social Development in Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue
Aid, Social Policy and Development
Working Paper
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– Brazil country study
During the 2000s, Brazil experienced slow economic growth and a substantial improvement in labour market indicators. From 2001 to 2012, Brazil grew less than the Latin American average. However, the unemployment rate decreased, the employment composition improved, the educational level of workers...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Brazil and South Africa
Human capital models imply that both the distribution of education and returns to education affect earnings inequality. Decomposition of these ‘quantity’ and ‘price’ components have been important in understanding changes in earnings inequality in developed and developing countries. This paper...
Blog
What type of business destroys proportionately more jobs during times of economic recessions and hires more in booms? This simple question motivates an important ongoing debate in the economics literature that seeks to explain the factors behind the dynamics of employment creation in small and large...
Research Brief
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The impact of the 2007–08 food price crisis in Brazil was relatively subdued compared with what took place in many other developing countries. Because the crisis potentially undermined both social inclusion and price stability, both important priorities in Brazil, the absence of any great reaction...
Working Paper
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– A case study of South Africa and Brazil
This study explores the question of structural change and inclusive development in South Africa and Brazil. Using Census data from the two countries, the analysis combines a household level multidimensional indicator of well-being with the applications of growth incidence curves and a sectoral...
Blog
– Country Comparisons and Conceptual Approaches
18 December 2014 Roger Williamson In an earlier article I reviewed a number of the high-profile contributions to the September 2014 conference on inequality. It is now time to dig deeper into the material presented at the event. This article features a few of the country case studies and...
Working Paper
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– Are There Lessons for Countries in Africa?
Brazil’s recent growth has been intensely pro-poor, and both poverty and inequality have declined significantly in the last decade. It has been suggested that Brazil’s unexpected successes are the outcome of a new model of development. The paper argues that Brazil’s unique combination of economic...
Blog
26 September 2014 Roger Williamson Huge interest in the WIDER Inequality Conference (5-6 September) Inequality is big news. Whether you think Thomas Piketty’s book is primarily long-run economic history or a prediction of future trends for returns to capital and labour, it is still a surprise that a...
Working Paper
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– Contextual Differences in the Returns to Bolsa Familia in Brazil
Local institutional and structural (meso) factors can play a role in mediating the returns to a macro-social policy. I focus on the Brazilian cash-transfer-programme Bolsa Familia and check how contextual features influence the returns to transfers. Building on Amartya Sen’s work, I assess the...
Book Chapter
From the book:
Food Price Policy in an Era of Market Instability
Blog
– Lessons for Africa – An Interview with Armando Barrientos and Ed Amann
24 January 2014 In this interview Armando Barrientos and Ed Amann give an introduction to their research project at the Brooks World Poverty Institute on the relevance of the Brazilian development model for Africa. Brazil and other Latin American countries emerged from the period of structural...
Blog
– The Role of Conditional Cash Transfer – An Interview with Armando Barrientos
24 January 2014 In this interview Professor Armando Barrientos reviews the recent UNU-WIDER project on inequality in Latin America which looks at the regional trend of decreasing inequality since 2000 and the reasons behind it. The current trend stands out as it goes against the historical high and...
Blog
24 September 2013 Roger Williamson Another big weekend for UNU-WIDER. The stage was well set on Thursday 19 September for a consideration of inequality and poverty in Africa, at the 17th WIDER Annual Lecture by former Finnish President Ahtisaari on 'Egalitarian Principles–the foundation for stable...
Blog
30 April 2013 Tony Addison As April closes, our thoughts turn to UNU-WIDER’s spring/summer programme. And it’s a busy one. June sees us back in Stockholm, this time to talk about aid, climate change and the environment at the ReCom results meeting. There is also our big Learning to Compete...
– Lessons from Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic
From the book:
Achieving Development Success
Working Paper
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– Drivers, Lessons and Shifts in the Engagement of the Brazilian Ministry of Social Development
The Brazilian Ministry of Social Development’s co-operation with sub-Saharan Africa has shifted from an initial engagement in cash transfers to a recent engagement in food and nutritional security. This paper aims at understanding the main drivers for such shift considering lessons drawn from first...
Blog
Tony Addison This month saw the visit of Kaushik Basu, the World Bank’s new Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, to talk about the global crisis and the impact on emerging economies at a UNU-WIDER seminar. You can see a video interview with Kaushik here. Kaushik is an...
Working Paper
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– Food Prices, Inflation, And Inclusion In Brazil
This paper argues that the effects of the food price crisis of 2007–08 put pressure on two variables that are of central importance to the Brazilian government: inflation and social inclusion. We describe how political institutions in Brazil in the past 25 years have given rise to a policy-making...
Blog
– Emerging Challenges for Post-2015 MDGs
Rolph van der Hoeven and Peter van Bergeijk One of the most important trends that emerged since the launch of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is the rapid growth of some large developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil. Figure 1 illustrates the shift of the economic weight of...
Blog
Tony Addison With our temperatures now well above zero, we head for the official end of the Finnish winter on 1st May (the ‘Vappu’ holiday). As reported last month, the annual bird migration is well under way. Arriving too, are UNU-WIDER’s many visitors on our PhD internship and visiting scholar...
Book Chapter
From the book:
The Role of Elites in Economic Development
Book Chapter
– Getting Public Sector Elite Officials to Support Government Reform in Brazil
From the book:
The Role of Elites in Economic Development
Book Chapter
– The Case of the Housing Movements of São Paulo
From the book:
Latin American Urban Development into the 21st Century
Working Paper
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This chapter analyses the main features of industrial policies carried out in Latin America since 1990. It studies these policies during import substitution industrialization and how they changed after the market-oriented economic reforms. It presents the main national strategies, policy lines and...
Journal Article
– A Comparative Perspective to the Asian Giants
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Journal Article
– Brazil and the CIBS in a Comparative Perspective
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Journal Article
Part of Journal Special Issue
Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Brazil, 1995-2000
During the twentieth century, internal migration and urbanization shaped Brazil’s economic and social landscape. Cities grew tremendously, while immigration participated in the rapid urbanization process and the redistribution of poverty between rural and urban areas. In 1950, about a third of...
Working Paper
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– The Case of the Housing Movements of São Paulo
This study focuses on the city of São Paulo, Brazil and examines the ways in which irregular and illegal growth have influenced the collective action of social movements of the urban poor. The study describes how São Paulo grew as a socially segregated city during the twentieth century due to...
Working Paper
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– Getting Public Sector Elite Officials to Support Government Reform in Brazil
This paper shows how an elite cadre of public sector officials played a key role in the success of administrative reforms in Brazil’s state tax administration bureaus in the 1990s. The success of the reforms strengthened public sector bureaucracies and institutions at all government levels...
Blog
– Lessons for Developing Countries
Amelia U. Santos-Paulino and Guanghua Wan China and India have become global economic powers. Even at the market exchange rate, China overtook Japan in 2010 as the second largest economy. China’s trade and financial activities, India’s emergence as a technology and innovation hub, and both countries...
Policy Brief
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– China, India, Brazil and South Africa
This Policy Brief focuses on links between the developing countries of Brazil, India, China and South Africa and the global economy, with a special emphasis on the implications of China’s spectacular growth on developing economies and the rest of the world. The issues considered include changing...
Journal Article
– A Disaggregated Analysis
The paper analyses export productivity and trade specialisation in China, Brazil, India and South Africa. The investigation calculates a time-varying export productivity measure using highly disaggregated product categories. The modelling shows that export productivity is determined by real income...
Working Paper
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This paper discusses data from a survey and in-depth interviews on elite perceptions of poverty in Brazil. De Swaan tried to identify the circumstances under which elites are willing to mobilize resources in order to promote poverty reduction. This paper questions if de Swaan’s analysis applies to...
Working Paper
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– Lessons from Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic
This paper provides a synthesis of the four papers on the Latin American and Caribbean economies: Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. It focuses on the following themes: macroeconomic stabilization and fiscal challenges, poverty and inequality, and the use of natural resources to...
Journal Article
Part of Journal Special Issue
Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality in Latin America
Journal Article
– The Recent Brazilian Experience
Part of Journal Special Issue
Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality in Latin America
China, India, Brazil, and South Africa are reshaping the world economy. These Southern Engines countries have experienced a dramatic transformation in their productive and trade capabilities, consequently turning into global super powers. The current age of globalization, in which the Southern...
Working Paper
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– A Multi-generational Panel Study in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas, 1968–2008
This paper describes the methodology of a longitudinal multi-generational study in the favelas (shantytowns) of Rio de Janeiro from 1968 to 2008. Major political transformations took place in Brazil during this interval: from dictatorship to ‘opening’ to democracy; major economic transformations...
Book Chapter
– A Multi-generational Panel Study in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas, 1968–2008
From the book:
Urbanization and Development
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