This paper analyses empirically the relationship between economic growth and the openness of the financial account of the balance of payments. It takes into consideration the balance of payments’ constrained growth, as well as the difficulties in the empirical literature in measuring capital...

In this article we test the hypothesis in which the democratization policies for higher education adopted in Brazil had reduced the strength of the association between socioeconomic background and the entry chances in this educational level. For this, we used microdata from Monthly Employment...

Nonlinear regression models have been widely used in practice for a variety of time series and cross-section datasets. For purposes of analyzing univariate and multivariate time series data, in particular, Smooth Transition Regression (STR) models have been shown to be very useful for...

In this paper we propose a smooth transition tree model for both the conditional mean and variance of the short-term interest rate process. The estimation of such models is addressed and the asymptotic properties of the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator are derived. Model specification is also...

Using the different response timings of credit demand and supply, we isolate supply shifts after monetary policy shocks. We show that the bank lending channel exists in Brazil: after an increase (decrease) in the basic interest rate (Selic), banks reduce (increase) the quantity of new loans and...

This paper surveys the formation and development of insurance business in Brazil. It describes its very first steps, from the colonial times and imperial era to recent events. Particular attention is given to regulatory changes, showing how they evolved in response to macroeconomic shocks that...

In 2004, Brazil provided an interesting natural experiment concerning personal credit. A new law was enacted allowing banks to offer loans with repayment through automatic payroll or social security benefit deduction, thus removing a significant part of the moral hazard problem by eliminating...

This paper analyses the contribution of the biophysical characteristics, accessibility conditions and land use/cover classes on poverty dynamics among rural smallholders in Altamira, State of Pará. Poverty-environment literature points that the increasing institutional restrictions to...

In 2004, in the beginning of the first president Lula mandate, a complete regulatory reform of electricity was launched. In 2008, four years after, Brazilian Congress started an investigation of the causes of Brazilian relatively high electricity tariffs. The results of the investigation pointed...

Mimicking the “Great American Crime Decline” (Zimiring, 2007), violent crime in the state of São Paulo dropped sharply in the 2000s after rising steadily throughout the 1980s and 1990s. This paper evaluates the role of crack cocaine in explaining the aggregate dynamics in violence. Four...