Brazilian Congress structural balance analysis

In this work, we study the behavior of Brazilian politicians and political parties with the help of clustering algorithms for signed social networks. For this purpose, we extract and analyze a collection of signed networks representing voting sessions of the lower house of Brazilian National Congress. We process all available voting data for the period between 2011 and 2016, by considering voting similarities between members of the Congress to define weighted signed links. The solutions obtained by solving Correlation Clustering (CC) problems are the basis for investigating deputies voting networks as well as questions about loyalty, leadership, coalitions, political crisis, and social phenomena such as mediation and polarization.Comment: 27 pages, 15 tables, 6 figures; entire article was revised, new references added (including international press); correcting typing error

Do Structural Reforms always Succeed? Lessons from Brazil

structural reforms, policy coordination, fiscal policy, stabilization, trade liberalization, political economy, Brazil

Policy mix, public debt management, and fiscal rules - lessons from the 2002 Brazilian crisis

Despite significant progress in economic reformthroughout the 1990s, and an exemplary development of the policymaking framework in the second part of the decade, Brazil suffered a major public debt and currency crisis in 2002. Though the political origin of the uncertainty cannot be ignored, the author identifies other sources of uncertainty emanating from the policymaking framework: fiscal policy was not responsive to the shocks, public debt instruments were used with several objectives (to stabilize the currency and to lengthen maturity) and there was inadequate supervision of agents holding public debt. Most of the flaws have been fixed following the crisis: a) The primary fiscal balance has been increased, sending the signal that it is a flexible instrument that will be used to ensure commitment of the sovereign to honor its obligations. b) The central bank formally transferred to the Treasury the remaining debt-issuance functions, facilitating a more adequate balancing of different risks involved in debt management. c) Mutual funds'public debt holdings are better regulated, ensuring that end-investors have the proper information to assess the risk of the institutions in which they invest.Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Strategic Debt Management,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Stabilization,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Public Sector Economics&Finance

The Brazilian development in the nineties - myths, circles, and structures

The article argues that theories of economic development are metaphors which have a strong mythical content, albeit unacknowledged by social scientists. The policies derived from such theories have two agendas: a 'positive' agenda that states which problems should be tackled and how; and a 'negative' agenda that contains issues and policies to be avoided. This approach is used to interpret the hegemonic view of development, as stated by the Washington Consensus, showing that such view contains all ingredients of a millenary myth - the crossing of the Desert towards a Promised Land. The two agendas of this view of development, which have ruled the Brazilian development strategy of the second half of the nineties, are then analyzed as applied to the Brazilian case. Finally, the article discusses alternative approaches to the present view of development, arguing for open-ended metaphors, as expressed by the Ulysses myth.myths, economic policy, institutional change, productive structure, history

Analyzing Ideological Communities in Congressional Voting Networks

We here study the behavior of political party members aiming at identifying how ideological communities are created and evolve over time in diverse (fragmented and non-fragmented) party systems. Using public voting data of both Brazil and the US, we propose a methodology to identify and characterize ideological communities, their member polarization, and how such communities evolve over time, covering a 15-year period. Our results reveal very distinct patterns across the two case studies, in terms of both structural and dynamic properties

The Brazilian economy from Cardoso to Lula: An interim view

This chapter on the Brazilian economy after 1994 is of a somewhat different nature compared to those on the economy in earlier periods. It is more speculative than its predecessors and based on a more restricted range of bibliographical material, as there is less consolidated research work on the period. It is to stress the obvious that the essay is inevitably marred to a certain degree by the lack of a sufficiently long time perspective. But it was thought that the benefits of providing a provisional account of the more recent economic developments in Brazil far outstripped the costs. The Brazilian economic history from 1995 to 2004 was still dominated by efforts to stabilise the economy. The essay is structured around an analysis of the eventful macroeconomic policies followed during the period. Other aspects are also considered, but often only to allow a clearer picture of the evolution of macroeconomic policies and the constraints they had to face. At first, the main economic policy objective was to consolidate the results of the Real Plan and to make sure that the long high inflation experience was really over. But soon the need to put public accounts under control and to make a sizable external adjustment would become the main challenges to be faced. A major balance of payments crisis in early 1999 imposed much overdue drastic changes in economic policy. Further disturbances occurred in 2002, the last year of Cardoso’s second term, as financial markets reflected fears that economic policy could be reversed with the likely victory of the opposition presidential candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But, somewhat surprisingly, the new government opted for policies that by and large represented a continuation of the orthodox economic policies of its predecessor. In contrast with the previous fifteen years there was success, in spite of many difficulties. Advance in the stabilisation front required reforms and institutional building efforts that brought very important changes and a sound foundation for future economic expansion. But effective growth performance over the period continued to be mediocre: between 1994 and 2004 per capita GDP (gross domestic product) increased an average of only 0.9 percent yearly. Together with structural fiscal difficulties, low economic growth imposed strict constraints on policies seeking to alleviate the country’s severe social imbalanceseconomic history, stabilization, Brazil

STATE CAPACITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT - THE ADVANCES AND LIMITS OF IMPORT SUBSTITUTION INDUSTRIALISATION IN BRAZIL

The paper is a study about the process of import substitution industrialisation in Brazil (1930-1980). Given the central role played by the state, the concepts of state capacity and developmental state are employed to understand why the process was not able to produce more consistent results. The paper shows how the state increased its involvement in the economy after 1930, improving its capacity to promote economic development. It also emphasises the obstacles that constrained the action of the state and impeded that its intervention produced a more balanced and self-sustained process of development. In this sense, the paper is also a study about the difficulties to replicate the positive results obtained by the developmental states in Japan and Korea. The paper concentrates special attention in the period 1974-1978, in which the military government implemented an ambitious program of industrial restructuring.

Towards Effective Social Insurance in Latin America: The Importance of Countercyclical Fiscal Policy

Latin America is a volatile, crisis-prone region, with limited and inadequate social insurance. Therefore, the long-term as well as the recent poor suffer significantly during crises. Furthermore, social spending is procyclical in the region, but less so than total spending, indicating that the effectiveness of compensatory social policies designed to protect those vulnerable to crises is constrained by adjustments during recessions. The causes of procyclical fiscal policy lie in the political constraints on saving during expansions, combined with limited creditworthiness during recessions, and enhanced by economic volatility and a low share of automatic stabilizers in the budget.