CONCORRÊNCIA E PERFORMANCE DO SETOR BANCÁRIO EM UM MERCADO HETEROGÊNEO

Financial markets have become increasingly integrated throughout the world. Does this mean that local financial institutions are becoming irrelevant? We argue that due to the information asymmetries involved in credit concession and banks' role as monitors the answer is no. Motivated by empirical evidences that show a great dispersion among Brazilian banks' interest spreads, we have developed an imperfect competition model where the need to monitor loans and the heterogeneity of demand for credit create market niches in which it is possible to systematically charge higher interest rates on credit. Bank deposits do not need monitoring; thus the tendency to more intense competition. The difference in the level of competition under which these two services operate can generate an inefficient allocation of resources in the economy, particularly harming less developed areas. Volumes of loans and deposits observed in different Brazilian cities and states support the conclusions of the model.

Concorrência e Performance do Setor Bancário em um Mercado Heterogêneo

Financial markets have become increasingly integrated throughout the world. Does this mean that local financial institutions are becoming irrelevant? We argue that due to the information symmetries involved in credit concession and banks’ role as monitors the answer is no. Motivated by empirical evidences that show a great dispersion among Brazilian banks’ interest spreads, we have developed an imperfect competition model where the need to monitor loans and the heterogeneity of demand for credit create market niches in which it is possible to systematically charge higher interest rates on credit. Bank deposits do not need monitoring; thus the tendency to more intense competition. The difference in the level of competition under which these two services operate can generate an inefficient allocation of resources in the economy, particularly harming less developed areas. Volumes of loans and deposits observed in different Brazilian cities and states support the conclusions of the model.Bancos, Operações Bancárias, Competição Econômica

Para além da agricultura: o efeito "treadmill" no sistema agroindustrial de alimentos no Brasil

The food real prices in Brazil have declined 20% on average since the monetary stabilization plan of 1994 despite two exchange devaluations in 1999 and 2001. The classical explanation based on productivity gains from agriculture does not apply to that period, when food retail prices grew less than agricultural prices. The objective of the paper is to explore the causes of these relative price variations among agriculture, industry, and distribution, analyzing the behavior of the price series in the last 6 years and the microeconomic adjustments based on a set of in-depth interviews conducted with leading retail firms, industry, traders, and cooperatives during 2001/2002

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead