Banking Internationalisation and the Expansion Strategies of European Banks to Brazil during the 1990s

This paper aims at analysing the determinants of the recent wave of European banks to Brazil in the context of the recent phase of banking internationalisation. The first part analyses the process of banking internationalisation from both an analytical and an historical approach. Focusing on the determinants of the banking internationalisation process, the paper shows that (i) the recent wave of banking internationalisation is characterised not only for financial institutions pursuing their existing relationships, but also and increasingly by a greater integration into the local market; (ii) banks operating in countries where the banking sector is larger and more profitable should be able to export a superior skill and are more likely to expand their activities abroad. The second part of the paper examines the determinants of the expansion of European banks in Brazil, as well as the expansion strategy of the four major European banks in Latin America – BSCH, BBVA, HSBC and ABN-Amro. In this regard, it shows that the recent wave of European banks entering Latin America and Brazil is determined by several factors, that include the process of restructuring the banking sector under the EMU; the dynamics of the internationalisation of the Spanish banks, since they have been the main players in the recent influx of foreign banks into Latin America; the process of market deregulation in the region since the early 1990s, in the broader context of economic and political reforms; the better prospects of the region for increasing returns to financial institutions compared to developed countries, as well as the potential gains in efficiency. Besides, it also shows that one of the common features of the four major European banks in Latin America – BSCH, BBVA, HSBC and ABNAmro – is that all the top four are big universal banks that choose to expand abroad as a strategy to expand their activities. More precisely, expanding abroad is not only a source of diversification of earnings, but also a way to strengthen their position in the European banking market under the pressure of economic and monetary union.

Strategy for Economic Growth in Brazil: a Post Keynesian Approach

The paper proposes a Keynesian strategy for economic policy that aims to achieve higher, stable and sustained economic growth in Brazil. Its main hypothesis is that the current poor growth performance of the Brazilian economy is due to macroeconomic and structural constraints rather than to the lack of microeconomic reforms.economic policy, economic growth, Post-Keynesian theory

"Inflation Targeting in Brazil"

The purpose of this paper is to examine inflation targeting (IT) in emerging countries by concentrating essentially on the case of Brazil. The IT monetary policy regime has been adopted by a significant number of countries. While the focus of this paper is on Brazil, which began inflation targeting in 1999, we also examine the experience of other countries, both for comparative purposes and for evidence of the extent of this "new" economic policy's success. In addition, we compare the experience of Brazil with that of non-IT countries, and ask the question of whether adopting IT makes a difference in the fight against inflation.

Cross Sectional Study of Growth in Developed and Developing Countries An Analysis of the Endogeneity of Human Capital and Income Inequality

In the 1950s economic growth was hypothesized to be a function of the saving rate and the capital-output ratio. The higher the saving rate, the higher the rate of output growth till steady state reached. As a result, income inequality was thought to promote growth because of the high marginal propensity to save of the rich. In the 1960s and the 1970s economic growth models recognized that technical progress was necessary to provide permanent growth. In these models variables such as the saving rate, technology, population growth, and the depreciation rate were considered exogenous. More recently, economic growth models have endogenized some of the variables previously considered exogenous in an attempt better to explain economic growth. These studies known as endogenous growth models consider the effects of human capital as well as income inequality and other variables to provide a more complete view of economic growth. This study extends endogenous growth theory by combining agricultural development with the endogenous growth models. The formulation used in this study extends single-equation models of Persson and Tabellini (1994) and Alesina and Rodrik (1994). Instead of a tradeoff, the joint effects of growth and distribution are used to measure economic development. The role of agriculture is examined and land tenure patterns are used to better understand the forces that enable a country to grow over time and to determine why output per capita varies across countries. The data are from Summers and Heston (1988), Barro and Wolf (1989), Alesina and Rodrik (1994), and the World Bank Forty-one developed and developing countries are included in the sample. The model developed in this study was specified as a system of simultaneous equations, thus per capita growth rate, human capital, and income concentration were jointly determined. The results indicate that greater income concentration reduces economic growth. This supports the idea that growth and income distribution go together. In addition, land ownership concentration was found to reduce human capital and increase income inequality, which constrained growth rates. Therefore, these results support findings of Persson and Tabellini (1994) and Alesina and Rodrik (1994) and improve their models by endogenizing human capital and income concentration

O Estado gerente e a ética na política social

Tem como escopo analisar o modelo de Estado, especificadamente o brasileiro, que é um modelo gerencial a serviço da gestão dos recursos públicos. Verifica que o Estado gerente funda-se no pluralismo social, no pluralismo político e na tecnoburocracia. Examina o conceito de democracia e a concepção de que não seja apenas um procedimento de legitimação para aquisição e exercício do poder, mas também um instrumento de transformação social. Discute posturas durante a execução da lei , em especial, da necessidade de haver o controle jurisdicional da execução da lei orçamentária e os limites éticos desse controle

INTERRELATED BANK STRATEGIES, FINANCIAL FRAGILITY AND CREDIT EXPANSION: A POST KEYNESIAN APPROACH

This paper aims at clarifying the relationship between individual bank and banking industry behavior in credit expansion. We argue that the balance sheet structure of an individual bank is only partially determined by its management decision about how aggressively to expand credit; it is also determined by the balance sheet positions of other banks. This relationship is explicitly shown by a disaggregation of the variable that enters into the simple money multiplier. The approach developed here opens a way to integrating the micro and macro levels in a Keynesian banking-system analysis.