SOCIAL EXCHANGE RATES, MERCOSUR AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The path towards a common market requires an alignment of macroeconomic policies. In the case of the MERCOSUL member countries, the observed disparities in the exchange, tax and monetary policies constitute major imbalances and impede future international economic integration. Apart from residual differences on trade policies among the member countries, macroeconomic policy disparities also reflect populism and the resulting lack of political will and mutual commitment with the regional goals. There is general professional agreement that, under a fixed exchange rate regimen with trade protection, the social exchange rate exceeds the official and/or market rate. Accordingly, the adoption of an exchange regimen with flexible exchange rates certeris paribus should significantly reduce the difference between the official exchange or market rate and the social exchange rate. The general purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the changes of exchange policies in Brazil against the backdrop of the MERCOSUR economic integration process. To do this, an appropriate measure for the social exchange rate is developed and estimated. This measure also has an immediate practical relevance, as it is suitable for use in the economic analysis of investment projects in Brazil. By using a model of opportunity cost for foreign exchange to estimate the social exchange rate, the study concludes that there was no relevant alteration in the order of economic activities according to the degree of effective protection. The exchange policy changes effects will only be felt in the medium and long run, but their reflections can already be clearly perceived through the declining tendency of the social exchange rate.International Development, International Relations/Trade,

Potentials and limits to generate employment and income by the National Programme for Production and Use of Biodiesel

This study analyses the National Programme for Production and Use of Biodiesel launched by the Brazil Federal Government in 2005 as a public policy to generate sustainable employment and income within the context of development of new alternative sources of energy. It also verifies the impact of PNPB on occupation and income rate of farmers participating in the projects of production of biodiesel through field research carried out on 93 family farms participating in projects already implemented in the State of Goiás. The choice of producers was made at random from a list of all producers who had already gone through a complete cycle of production and stretched across 33 municipalities in the second half of 2007. The survey data was obtained through a closed-ended questionnaire which was designed to ascertain: 1) the increase of occupation and income regarding producers participating in the projects, 2) ways of including these farmers into the programme, 3) technical assistance offered to them (according to the guidelines of the programme) and 4) the evaluation of the programme by participating farmers. The SPSS software was used for processing and data analysis. The results show that most of the objectives of the programme, such as generation of occupation and income by family farming, are being achieved.biofuels, biodiesel, family farm, public policy, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Industrial Organization,

The extended minimal geometric deformation of SU(NN) dark glueball condensates

The extended minimal geometric deformation (EMGD) procedure, in the holographic membrane paradigm, is employed to model stellar distributions that arise upon self-interacting scalar glueball dark matter condensation. Such scalar glueballs are SU($N$) Yang-Mills hidden sectors beyond the Standard Model. Then, corrections to the gravitational wave radiation, emitted by SU($N$) EMGD dark glueball stars mergers, are derived, and their respective spectra are studied in the EMGD framework, due to a phenomenological brane tension with finite value. The bulk Weyl fluid that drives the EMGD is then proposed to be experimentally detected by enhanced windows at the eLISA and LIGO.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Extended quantum portrait of MGD black holes and information entropy

The extended minimal geometric deformation (EMGD) is employed on the fluid membrane paradigm, to describe compact stellar objects as Bose--Einstein condensates (BEC) consisting of gravitons. The black hole quantum portrait, besides deriving a preciser phenomenological bound for the fluid brane tension, is then scrutinized from the point of view of the configurational entropy. It yields a range for the critical density of the EMGD BEC, whose configurational entropy has global minima suggesting the configurational stability of the EMGD BEC.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, matches the published versio

Connecting the dots: the spatial evolution of portuguese economic activity

Classificação: F15, R12Nos últimos anos Portugal tem-se mostrado vulnerável a um ambiente económico internacional extremamente volátil. Apesar do processo de abertura ao exterior ter-se iniciado há já algumas décadas, este tem vindo a ser reforçado com a integração na Europa comunitária. Assim, a progressiva queda das barreiras ao comércio internacional não deixou de influenciar o desempenho dos mais variados sectores da economia. Estas dinâmicas influenciam, naturalmente, a geografia económica interna do país, situação ampliada pela falta de um mercado interno significativo. O trabalho aqui apresentado vai de encontro a esta questão e visa tentar compreender melhor como é que a economia portuguesa tem evoluído em termos da sua organização espacial nos últimos anos. Assim, pretende-se analisar, dentro da lógica das teorias da nova geografia económica, se a liberalização do comércio tem permitido um maior equilíbrio territorial ou se, pelo contrário, têm surgido regiões “vencedoras” e “perdedoras”. Embora os artigos científicos respeitantes a esta temática sejam numerosos, raramente é dada atenção às realidades internas dos países, focando-se geralmente a vertente internacional. Para além do reduzido número de estudos publicados que focam as dinâmicas espaciais internas, no nosso caso iremos utilizar um nível de detalhe inédito para o caso português, já que trabalharemos dados de emprego agregados por município. Face às actuais desigualdades sentidas entre os diferentes estados-membros da União Europeia, pretende-se também questionar o papel das instituições europeias enquanto promotoras do crescimento económico e da harmonia territorial, designadamente ao nível das suas políticas de coesão.In recent years Portugal has proved vulnerable to the consequences of an extremely volatile international economic environment. Although the process of opening up began some decades ago, it has been enhanced with European integration. Consequently, the gradual decline of international trade barriers did not fail to influence the performance of various economic sectors. These dynamics influence, of course, the economic geography of the country, a situation magnified by the lack of a significant domestic market. The work presented here approaches this issue and aims to better understand how the Portuguese economy has evolved in terms of its spatial organisation in recent years. Thus, we intend to analyze, within the logic of the theories of the new economic geography, if trade liberalization has allowed a more balanced territorial distribution or whether, by contrast, "winner" and "loser" regions have emerged. Although there are numerous scientific articles relating to this subject, attention to the inner spatial reality of countries is rarely given, as the focus is usually in the international aspect. In addition to the small number of published studies that focus on internal spatial dynamics, in our case we will use an unprecedented level of detail for the Portuguese case, since we will work employment data aggregated by municipality. We will also address the current inequalities experienced between the different member states of the European Union, questioning the role of European institutions while promoters of regional economic growth and territorial harmony particularly at the level of cohesion policies