GROWTH, EQUITY, AND THE LABOR MARKET: NORDIC LESSONS FOR BRAZIL

Brazil has been facing serious employment and income distribution problems and its economy has grown at an anemic pace for a considerable period of time. This article argues for a reinvigorated policy discussion in Brazil around issues of labor market reforms and those social benefit programs most closely linked to labor demand and supply. It does so by bringing to bear on the Brazilian case the successful experience of the Nordic economies in balancing policies to provide labor flexibility to firms while extending security to workers, a system often referred to as “flexicurity”. While cautioning against a simplistic “copy and paste” approach, the underlying principles of flexicurity are used to evaluate potential reforms in Brazil labor law and regulation

Brazil and the Transatlantic Community in the Wake of the Global Crisis

In all, incorporating Brazil on its terms into established institutions of global governance will be challenging, but also worth the effort. The U.S. and the global North are well advised in the short-run to encourage the participation of Brazil in the various ad hoc global gatherings (e.g., the G-20 group) dealing with the financial crisis. For the long-run, the goal should be to integrate Brazil as a partner into reformed multilateral institutions (in finance, trade, and regulation) as a means of assuring more stable global growth on the basis of more inclusive global management. To understand the reasoning behind this recommendation, it is well to consider three separate issues: 1) the areas of common interests in foreign economic policy between Brazil and the transatlantic community; 2) the roots of Brazil's traditional divergences with the North; and 3) the domestic dynamics in Brazil that are leading to a change in its world view. These issues are considered in turn in this paper, followed by recommendations on how to incorporate Brazil more effectively into a transatlantic partnership

Infrastructure and its role in Brazil's development process

AbstractThis article considers the relationship between growth and infrastructure spending in the Brazilian context and the nature and causes of infrastructural underinvestment. The paper begins by considering the relationship between infrastructural investment and economic growth on both a national and regional basis. Next, focusing on the critical urban transportation sector, the paper gauges the infrastructural shortfall facing Brazil and the policies designed to overcome it. Given the obvious importance of infrastructure, why has investment not been higher? In the final section we argue that a central reason for this lies in regulatory design and implementation

Threats to the Brazilian Environment and Environmental Policy

The Columbia Global Centers | Rio de Janeiro, in partnership with the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University and the Brazil-American Institute for Law and Environment at Pace University, organized a Workshop on November 13, 2019 in New York City. The Workshop was convened to discuss and raise awareness of the scope and severity of the environmental crisis in Brazil with a focus on the severe threats to the Amazon. The consequences of the Bolsonaro government´s environmental actions are serious for Brazil and for the world. That is one of the reasons why the Columbia Global Center in Rio de Janeiro has been promoting this discussion globally and connecting networks of activists and experts in order to promote a safe space for knowledge exchange. For the Workshop at Columbia, the organizers gathered specialists from Brazil and the U.S. to examine the legal and scientific aspects of a large number of actions taken by the new Brazilian government intended to weaken normative, administrative, and legislative practices that underpin environmental policy. Pressing global issues, such as setbacks to US environmental law, climate change denial, and human rights violations, were discussed from a comparative U.S.-Brazil perspective as well as ways of moving forward

Threats to the Brazilian Environment and Environmental Policy

The Columbia Global Centers | Rio de Janeiro, in partnership with the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University and the Brazil-American Institute for Law and Environment at Pace University, organized a Workshop on November 13, 2019 in New York City. The Workshop was convened to discuss and raise awareness of the scope and severity of the environmental crisis in Brazil with a focus on the severe threats to the Amazon. The consequences of the Bolsonaro government´s environmental actions are serious for Brazil and for the world. That is one of the reasons why the Columbia Global Center in Rio de Janeiro has been promoting this discussion globally and connecting networks of activists and experts in order to promote a safe space for knowledge exchange. For the Workshop at Columbia, the organizers gathered specialists from Brazil and the U.S. to examine the legal and scientific aspects of a large number of actions taken by the new Brazilian government intended to weaken normative, administrative, and legislative practices that underpin environmental policy. Pressing global issues, such as setbacks to US environmental law, climate change denial, and human rights violations, were discussed from a comparative U.S.-Brazil perspective as well as ways of moving forward