The user structure in Brazil's tropical rain forest

This paper presents quantitative evidence on the relationship between forest conversion and the productivity of agropastoral activities in the Legal Amazon. The extraction of timber products such as wood, fuelwood and charcoal is related to the process of agropastoral expansion in this region with the aim of providing physical coefficients to define intersectoral connections in Brazil's economy. The paper is organized as follows. Section I makes a geographical characterization of the original vegetation types of the region according to its principal geopolitical subdivisions. Section II presents evidence on deforestation rates and gross areas affected. Section III describes the principal sources of deforestation. Section IV describes sectoral activities and land occupation patterns distinguishing between forested and non-forested areas. Section V analyses major determinants of productivity in agropastoral activities following this broad vegetation distinction. Section VI provides gross estimates of wood removal associated with agropastoral expansion, and compares this with wood and fuel production figures. Conclusions are presented in Section VII.

Historical perspectives on regional income inequality in Brazil, 1872 - 2000

The paper provides historical perspectives on regional economic inequalities in Brazil making use of a database on Brazilian municipalities from 1872 to 2000. A suit of maps and graphs describe the geographic forces shaping the historical development of the Brazilian economy highlighting the role of transport costs, and its consequences for the spatial dynamics of income per capita and labor productivity. The next section estimates econometric models of growth convergence for municipal income per capita and labor. For the 20th century analyses are refined in two ways: first, by disaggregating the models for urban and rural activities; second, by enlarging the model to take account of the determinants of spatial growth convergence. Empirical results endorse the preeminence of geographic factors in contrast to institutional conditions. The final section summarizes the results and proposes research extensions. The Appendix describes the database

ESTOQUE DE CAPITAL FIXO NO BRASIL, 1950-2002

This paper estimates the stock of fixed capital for Brazil, 1950-2002 by the perpetual inventory method. Estimates are disaggregated according to the type of capital (construction and machines and equipments), institutional sector (government and private). Main source of data are the series on gross investment 1947-2002 produced by IBGE/Contas Nacionais and historical estimates for 1901-1946. Government investment for states and municipalities 1901-1946 are estimated. Results show that Brazilian capital-output ratio come close to 3 in recent years. Both in historical perspective and when compared to other countries in Latin America and elsewhere these value of estimates are reasonable. Brazilian depreciation rates are close to 12% of GDP in the last decade. The composition of the capital stock show Construction and in particular Residence as the main components of the capital stock.

Boom-bust patterns in the Brazilian Amazon

We revisit the long-standing hypothesis that the process of human development and land clearing in Amazonia follows a boom-and-bust (inverted U) pattern, where early clearing leads to a socioeconomic ‘boom’ which then turns to ‘bust’ after the deforestation process has matured. Although the hypothesis has found some empirical support in cross sectional data, a handful of longitudinal case studies have failed to identify incidences of ‘busts.’ We show that the cross sectional results are a spurious artifact of spatial correlation, driven primarily by the large, multifaceted (and unobserved) differences between municipalities in the states of Amazonas and Maranhão. Furthermore, using new panel data on the Human Development Index (HDI) and deforestation rates from 1991 to 2010 we find no evidence of such boom-bust patterns in the time series. Municipalities categorized as either ‘post-frontier’ or ‘pre-frontier’ in 2000 enjoyed equal increases in HDI over the subsequent decade as the rest of the Amazon. Panel data analysis with fixed effects (within estimation) robustly rejects the hypothesis that HDI and deforestation follow an inverted-U relationship