Pork for Policy: Executive and Legislative Exchange in Brazil

The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 gave relatively strong powers to the President. We model and test Executive-Legislative relations in Brazil and demonstrate that Presidents have used pork as a political currency to exchange for votes on policy reforms. In particular Presidents Cardoso and Lula have used pork to exchange for amendments to the Constitution. Without policy reforms Brazil would have had greater difficulty meeting their debt obligations. The logic for the exchange of pork for policy reform is that Presidents typically have greater electoral incentives than members of Congress to care about economic growth, economic opportunity, income equality and price stabilization. Members of Congress generally care more about redistributing gains to their constituents. Given the differences in preferences and the relative powers of each, the Legislative and Executive benefit by exploiting the gains from trade.

Brazilian Development: This Time for Real?

Wirtschaftswachstum; Strukturwandel; Wirtschaftliche Anpassung; Brasilien

The impact of the 2007-08 food price crisis in a major commodity exporter: Food prices, inflation, and inclusion in Brazil

This paper argues that the effects of the food price crisis of 2007-08 put pressure on two variables that are of central importance to the Brazilian government: inflation and social inclusion. We describe how political institutions in Brazil in the past 25 years have given rise to a policy-making process where fiscal stability and social inclusion are the overarching priorities, irrespective of the party in power. In this scenario one would have expected that the food price crisis would have led to significant reactions by the government to safeguard those two central policy objectives. However, the reaction of the government and social groups was relatively subdued, compared to that in most other countries. We explain this apparent puzzle by showing that the negative impacts of the food price increases on consumers was partly counterbalanced by the benefits from agricultural production, given that Brazil is a major exporter of commodities. Also, before the crisis the country already possessed a series of programmes and mechanisms that offered social protection to the poor that could be easily and quickly adjusted. Brazil was therefore well-placed to deal with the impacts of the crisis

The political economy of the Brazilian model of agricultural development: Institutions versus sectoral policy

AbstractThis paper analyzes the transition of Brazilian agriculture from low productivity and backwardness to its current status as a major player in international markets. Long-term investment in local agricultural technology was a crucial determinant of this transformation, but the impact of agricultural policy along this path was highly convoluted, often causing more distortions than progress. We highlight the importance of the underlying institutional setting on the impact of agricultural policy. The remarkable transformation in Brazilian agriculture only really emerged when inclusive and sustainable institutions created a fiscal, monetary and political environment in which those policies could succeed

The building blocks of creativity and new ideas

1. Introduction The purpose of the research is to create new knowledge. But we do not want just any new knowledge; it must also be useful and have an impact. In academia, we typically measure impact through how often the new knowledge is transmitted and especially by how many times it is cited by others or used productively. Most researchers are on the constant lookout for new ideas that will attract attention and have an impact. But it is not clear where good ideas come from. When we try to remember how we came about our most creative and impactful ideas in the past, it is often not obvious, even to ourselves, how we did it. And there is evidence that good ideas are getting harder to find. Bloom, Jones, Reenen, and Webb (2017) show that in a wide range of economic sectors (agricultural, medical and technological), ever more research effort has historically been necessary to generate less and less innovation, thus denoting a sharp decline in research productivity. Wuchty, Jones, and Uzzi (2007) use data from over 19 million publications over five decades to show that the process of knowledge creation has fundamentally changed, with most high-impact research now produced by teams instead of individuals. Even Nobel Prizes are increasingly awarded to more than one person at a time, with the average age of when they made their greatest discoveries having significantly increased in recent decades (Jones & Weinberg, 2011). Given the increasing difficulty of generating impact, it would be useful if there were reliable guidelines or strategies for how to produce new ideas and innovations. A plethora of books, videos, lectures, specialists, programs, courses and initiatives exist across all fields and sectors that try to answer that question, not all of them of the best quality. In this article, I look at research that has effectively contributed to our understanding of where good ideas come from by examining hard data from specific creativity-intensive sectors such as science, academia, music and patents. Although this research does not uncover the secret formula for creative success, it does point to a robust pattern that provides some insights as to how innovation and impact are created. Understanding this pattern can be useful for individual researchers, organizations and for public policy