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.

Avaliação dos salários dos professores da rede pública de ensino fundamental em tempos de FUNDEF

This article aims to evaluate the impact of FUNDEF on elementary public school teachers' wages. To evaluate the effects of FUNDEF implementation on wages we compare wage differentials of elementary public school teachers with wage differentials of three control groups: private school teachers, private sector employees and civil servants. Results indicate average positive impacts on elementary public school teachers' wages. Impacts vary among regions and depend if the school is under municipal or state govemment. For northeast municipal schools wages increases from 26% to 51,62%, on the other hand, for south state schools wages may show decrease of 10,78% up to an increase of 0,8%. In general, FUNDEF seems to benefit poorer regions, smaller cities and seems to work as a way to reduce wage inequality among elementary public school teachers

A influência da opção religiosa na acumulação de capital humano: um estudo exploratório

This article explores Brazilian official statistics on religion, in particular 1980 and 1991 Census and 1988 PNAD special survey. It searches for stylized facts of economics of religion summarized in Iannaccone (1998). The papers main question is to test an empirical relation between the parents religious affiliation and the children performance at school. This relation may indicate the existence a causal relation between religion and families human capital accumulation. Results indicate that Brazilian data reproduces most of stylized facts and the existence of differences in children schooling among selected religious groups persist after controlling for socio-economic factors.Esse artigo emprega estatísticas oficiais, em particular os censos demográficos de 1980 e 1991 e o questionário especial da PNAD 1988, para explorar alguns fatos estilizados da adesão religiosa no Brasil. A questão central deste trabalho é verificar se a adesão religiosa das mães afeta a acumulação de capital humano na família, independentemente de fatores socioeconômicos que poderiam explicar pelo menos parte dos efeitos observados da opção religiosa. Usou-se a escolaridade dos filhos como medida para a acumulação de capital humano. Como resultado, obteve-se que as estatísticas brasileiras reproduzem, em grande parte, os fatos estilizados de teoria econômica da religião e que podem ser observados dife-renciais significativos de escolaridade entre os grupos religiosos

Grau de cobertura e resultados econômicos do ensino supletivo no Brasil

Este artigo analisa o ensino supletivo no Brasil, levando em consideração dois aspectos básicos: grau de cobertura e os resultados econômicos. O programa apresenta um baixo grau de cobertura mesmo entre os que ainda freqüentam a escola e possuem idade adequada. Os retornos econômicos se apresentam bastante diferentes entre o supletivo de 1º grau e o supletivo de 2º grau. Para o supletivo de 2º grau os retornos são inferiores ao programa regular. Já o supletivo de 1º grau apresentou um retorno absoluto equivalente e uma taxa de crescimento da renda, por ano adicional de estudo, duas vezes maior que a do 1º grau regular. O artigo chama atenção para a necessidade de se entender melhor a baixa cobertura do supletivo de 1º grau, uma vez que os seus resultados econômicos se mostram bastante atraentes.This paper analyzes supplemental education in Brazil, taking into account two basic aspects: level of coverage and personal economic results. The program has a low degree of coverage, even among those who could benefit from the program. The estimates of economic results have shown that 2nd level supplemental program produced lower gains than the regular program, but the 1st level supplemental program, when compared to the 1st level regular system, demonstrated the same absolute gains and an income growth rate twice higher for each additional year of study. This paper highlights the need for better understanding of why the 1st level supplemental education program has a low degree of coverage in the presence of such a high economic return