Greening development finance in the Americas

This repository item contains a report from the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative. The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment

Supporting Defect Causal Analysis in Practice with Cross-Company Data on Causes of Requirements Engineering Problems

[Context] Defect Causal Analysis (DCA) represents an efficient practice to improve software processes. While knowledge on cause-effect relations is helpful to support DCA, collecting cause-effect data may require significant effort and time. [Goal] We propose and evaluate a new DCA approach that uses cross-company data to support the practical application of DCA. [Method] We collected cross-company data on causes of requirements engineering problems from 74 Brazilian organizations and built a Bayesian network. Our DCA approach uses the diagnostic inference of the Bayesian network to support DCA sessions. We evaluated our approach by applying a model for technology transfer to industry and conducted three consecutive evaluations: (i) in academia, (ii) with industry representatives of the Fraunhofer Project Center at UFBA, and (iii) in an industrial case study at the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES). [Results] We received positive feedback in all three evaluations and the cross-company data was considered helpful for determining main causes. [Conclusions] Our results strengthen our confidence in that supporting DCA with cross-company data is promising and should be further investigated.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, accepted for the 39th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'17

Essays on innovation and the development bank in Brazil

My PhD thesis studies the role of development banks in financing industrial development and particularly in providing the long-term committed finance needed for innovation. The focus is on the Brazilian development bank, BNDES, and its leading role in supporting the new Brazilian innovation system. I begin by discussing the role of finance in the National System of Innovation framework, the literature on development banks and the motivation of my research. The second chapter looks at the impact of BNDES disbursements on commercial banks’ disbursement using balance-sheet data for the period of 2002-2016. Using dynamic panel data techniques, I investigate whether BNDES disbursement for investment in innovation and fixed capital investments crowded-in or crowded-out Brazilian commercial banks’ disbursement. The third chapter is a micro-analysis of the impact of BNDES disbursements on the R&D intensity of Brazilian manufacturing companies’ sector for the period of 2003-2011. In this chapter, I investigate whether companies that have received funding from BNDES have increased or decreased their commitment in innovation activities. The findings of this analysis provide new evidence regarding the industrial sector activity of the Brazilian development bank, adding on the debate about additionality/substitutability of public financial resources. Finally, the fourth chapter provides qualitative evidence for the Brazilian pharmaceutical sector, presenting the findings of primary collected data on companies’ perceived obstacles for investment in innovation and on contribution of BNDES funding in reducing such obstacles. The data have been collected by means of a survey, undertaken for a sample of Brazilian companies in the pharmaceutical and biotech sector

Infrastructure for sustainable development: the role of national development banks

This repository item contains a policy brief from the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative. The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment.Development banks are increasingly becoming relied upon to help finance sustainable infrastructure in the 21st century. Much of the emphasis has been on the role of the existing multi-lateral development banks (MDBs), but lesser attention has been paid to the role of national development banks (NDBs). To help fill this gap, Boston University’s Global Economic Governance initiative (GEGI) and the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program convened a Task Force on Development Banks and Sustainable Development to examine the extent to which development banks are becoming catalysts for achieving a climate friendly and more socially inclusive world economy

Lessons from Sao Paulo's Metropolitan Busway Concessions Program

In an earlier paper (Policy Research Working Paper 1546), the authors described a pioneer initiative of Sao Paulo's municipal and state governments, to give the private sector a concession on building and operating a number of"trunk"busways. At the time, the Sao Paulo Municipal Government had already awarded a number of busway corridors to private consortia, although the consortia had yet to get the financing needed to implement the investment plan. On the other hand, the state had not yet awarded its first corridor and was still adjusting the bidding documents based on comments received from interested parties. In this paper, the authors describe what happened since then and draw lessons for the future. After a long, successful bidding process, this imaginative and pioneering program launched by the municipality failed to materialize because of problems in getting financing. Possibly the market felt that the risks involved in building and operating system outweighed the benefits and that the Sao Paulo and Brazilian market was not yet prepared to accept such a challenge without better partial risk guarantees. The state learned from the mistakes of the municipality and was successful in the concession of the Sao Mateus-Jabaquara corridor. Among the lessons learned from this project: 1) Private bus operators in Brazil are generally traditional entrepreneurs. They must be taught how to prepare financing plans or at least to get the best advice about putting together a project's financial engineering design. In this case, all consortia turned to BNDES (Brazilian National Social Development Bank) for financing, probably because their loan interests rates were lower than those of commercial banks but also because the concession was with the government. They did not consider other options such as the International Finance Corporation or other private-sector-related development institutions. 2) The Sao Paulo municipality should also have undertaken detailed economic evaluation of the projects, from the standpoint of the region as a whole, including the impact on other modes of transportation and on systems integration. Such analysis is required by all bilateral and multilateral development institutions, including BNDES. 3) When private operators are paid for vehicle-kilometer supplied and when the state collects all revenues and then pays the operators, concession contracts or operating revenues cannot be easily used as guarantees. Before defining tariff mechanism, governments should think through the impacts they might have on financing, since the revenues collected are often the best guarantee that can be offered.Banks&Banking Reform,Roads&Highways,Urban Transport,Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance

Bye, Bye Financial Repression, Hello Financial Deepening: The Anatomy of a Financial Boom

Since the conquest of hyperinflation, with the Real Plan, in 1994, the Brazilian financial system has grown from early infancy to late adolescence. We describe the process of maturing with emphasis on the defining features of the Brazilian financial system over the last 20 years: 1) stabilization and the subsequent financial crisis; 2) universality of banks; 3) market segmentation through public lending; 4) institutional improvement. Further paraphrasing Díaz Alejandro (1984), we raise some hypotheses on why, this time, the financial boom has not (at least yet) turned into a financial crash.Financial repression; financial deepening; stabilization; stability; financial crisis;stability. Jel Codes: G21; G28; G32

Electricity companies in Latin America 2007

This report surveys the multinational, local, and private equity companies involved in electricity supply in Latin America, and discusses some continuing issues, including compensation claims, and the role of public finance in restructuring and guaranteeing private sector activities, as well as renationalisations

Carving Out Policy Autonomy for Developing Countries in the World Trade Organization: The Experience of Brazil and Mexico

Although liberal trade and development scholars disagree about the merits of the World Trade Organization (WTO), they both assume that WTO legal obligations restrict states’ regulatory autonomy. This article argues for relaxing this shared assumption by showing that, despite the restrictions imposed by international economic law obligations, states retain considerable flexibility to carve out policy autonomy. The article makes three distinct contributions. First, it analyzes how active WTO members can, through litigation and lawyering, influence rule interpretation to advance their interests. Second, the article redefines the concept of “legal capacity” in the WTO context and introduces the term “developmental legal capacity,” which describes how states can use legal tools and institutions not only as a sword to open new markets but also as a shield for heterodox economic policies. Third, the article offers a comparative analysis of two case studies, Brazil and Mexico, and shows that they have pursued different trade and litigation strategies. While subject to the same WTO obligations, these countries have made different use of their policy space according to their own economic objectives. The article concludes that, despite the apparent rigidity of the WTO, countries following a deliberate strategy can expand their regulatory space to advance their own interests

Costs and Benefits of Privatization: Evidence from Brazil

Although the Brazilian privatization program has been a sweeping endeavor involving more than 100 firms and billions of dollars, most of the studies have been published only in Brazil, and in Portuguese. This paper is the most comprehensive study to date in terms of the companies covered, and includes the most recent data. It looks at the results of privatization in Brazil for a broad range of economic variables to answer the question: Has the widespread popular discontent with the program been justified? The paper also examines the effects of privatization on aspects that affect the development of financial markets, including minority shareholder rights. It concludes with recommendations for democratizing capital ownership through public offers in which workers would be entitled to participate using public sector liabilities such as FGTS deposits.

Lost in Translation: Interpreting the Brazilian Electric Power Privatisation Failure.

Did Latin American privatisation polices fail because of flawed implementation of fundamentally sound policies or because privatisation policies were themselves seriously flawed?Using the Brazilian electric power reforms as a narrative tool, this paper examines the causal chain assumed by large-scale privatisation policies implemented as part of structural reformand adjustment programmes. The paper concludes that many privatisation policies and the economic stabilisation programmes within which they were embedded were not mutually reinforcingas policymakers had expected and that in their application, much of what privatisation theories claimed was lost in translation.Brazil;privatisation;infrastructure;electric power