Bernardo Mueller | Universidade de Brasília - UnB (original) (raw)
Drafts by Bernardo Mueller
NBER Working Paper Series #W28927, 2021
To understand leadership, it is necessary to understand the purpose of an organization. Organizat... more To understand leadership, it is necessary to understand the purpose of an organization. Organizations are hierarchies with leaders at the top. Why do we have leaders instead of an algorithm making decisions? The theory of the firm recognizes benefits to centralizing authority but these organizational benefits from hierarchy have not been clearly separated from the specific contributions of leaders. Leadership is the ability to successfully manage transaction costs of an organization. Prominent amongst organizational transaction costs are agency and coordination costs. The balance between these two types of costs depends on the purpose of the organization. We hypothesize that changing leaders is likely to have a larger effect within organizations with relatively lower scope or scale of purpose because of the way in which decision rights tend to be relatively concentrated in such organizations. We test our hypotheses with data on NFL coaches, and deans of business and law schools.
Papers by Bernardo Mueller
Brazil in Transition, 2016
This chapter lays out a brief conceptual dynamic to interpret the past fifty years in Brazil. Its... more This chapter lays out a brief conceptual dynamic to interpret the past fifty years in Brazil. Its framework rests on tying together the key concepts of windows of opportunity, beliefs, dominant network, leadership, institutions, and outcomes. The chapter argues that it is the dynamics of the concepts that led to institutional change in Brazil and in turn a new trajectory. It then discusses the important dominant networks in power, along with their beliefs, in four periods: 1964–1984 (the military years); 1985–1993 (the early years back to democracy); 1993–2002 (Fernando Henrique Cardoso's presidency); and 2002–2014 (the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff years).
Brazil in Transition, 2016
This paper analyses the specific mechanisms through which legal institutions and the Rule of Law ... more This paper analyses the specific mechanisms through which legal institutions and the Rule of Law affect firm performance using survey evidence from a sample of about 100 Brazilian firms in the textile and electronics industries. The data provide firms’ perceptions of whether judicial institutions are just, impartial, corruptible, swift, accessible, consistent and effective, which allowed to create an index of firms’ perception of legal institutions. It is analyzed how these perceptions vary across firms with different characteristics, such as large/small employer, foreign/domestic-owned, exporter/non-exporters and revenues level. The results suggest that firms that had a better perception of the Judiciary increased levels of employment and had better economic performance.
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, 2002
In this paper we model the process of regulatory agency design, focusing on the role of credibili... more In this paper we model the process of regulatory agency design, focusing on the role of credibility. The government is constrained in the sense that it must create regulatory institutions that allow it to commit to not administratively expropriate investors. The model explains both the preference of the agency head chosen by the government as well as the optimal level of statutory control. We argue that in Brazil this trade-off between credibility and control of the agencies is key to understanding the specific regulatory institutions that have been chosen. Comparative static results are derived to examine how changes in some key variables affect the design of the agencies, providing us with a set of hypotheses for comparing the design of five different agencies created to regulate industries with very different characteristics. Although these agencies were initially created under very similar designs, they are expected to evolve in ways that accord with our theory.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019
Innovation is more likely in a population composed of both imitators and learners, than it is in ... more Innovation is more likely in a population composed of both imitators and learners, than it is in a population of lone trailblazers. The human propensity for social learning gives rise to cumulative culture and innovation comes about primarily through the recombination of existing knowledge. I use data from Hip Hop chart ranking and YouTube video views to measure the impact of this collective brain on innovation and success. This genre of music is used because, more than others, it has the custom of explicitly featuring guest artists and samples of existing songs. This provides a measure of the extent of recombination of existing knowledge in the new songs’ creative process. I find that songs that more fully rely on the collective brain are more innovative and have greater impact. In addition, I find evidence that the pattern of recombination of more successful songs includes not just novelty, but novelty together with elements of conventionality. I also explore how artists have adapted their marketing strategies to recent disruptions in the how music is produced, distributed and consumed.
Brazil under Lula, 2009
More so than most other areas of economic activity, infrastructure sectors tend to exhibit large ... more More so than most other areas of economic activity, infrastructure sectors tend to exhibit large sunk investments, specific assets, economies of scale, and involve politically sensitive goods and service, often produced by foreign companies (Levy and Spiller 1996, Savedoff and Spiller 1999). These characteristics make the industries in these sectors particularly prone to governmental opportunism, so that investment will only materialize in an effective manner if investors can be convinced that there are reliable safeguards against governmental expropriation.
Este artigo analisa o gasto público estadual da Amazônia Ocidental (Acre, Amazonas, Rondônia e Ro... more Este artigo analisa o gasto público estadual da Amazônia Ocidental (Acre, Amazonas, Rondônia e Roraima) com o controle social da violência, de 2004 a 2014, segundo as funções de governo agrupadas em: controle criminal-Segurança Pública, Justiça e Direitos da Cidadania; prevenção social da violência-Educação, Assistência Social e Saúde; outras funções. A análise comparativa do montante gasto, distribuição, evolução e efeitos demográficos das despesas orçamentárias, a partir das informações dos balanços estaduais, permitiu discutir, entre outras questões, como os governos estaduais estão a gastar os recursos na prevenção social da violência e no controle do crime. Crescimento econômico e do gasto público marcam a trajetória recente da região (2004-2014), cujos gastos estaduais com as políticas sociais apresentaram movimentos distintos e irregulares, porém, com similaridades no recrudescimento ao controle criminal. Os resultados corroboram a desigualdade e heterogeneidade entre os estados na direção e relevância das funções de prevenção e controle da violência.
The Journal of Economic History, 2000
largely recreated from the diaries of Charles Hamlin—is between Strong and Adolph Miller, the onl... more largely recreated from the diaries of Charles Hamlin—is between Strong and Adolph Miller, the only economist member of the Federal Reserve Board and a sometimes obstructionist and perhaps devious opponent of Strong within the Federal Reserve System. (Like Miller, Hamlin was one of Woodrow Wilson's appointees to the original Federal Reserve Board in 1914. With respect to his diaries, Friedman and Schwartz say that he was "an inveterate and, so far as we can judge, an accurate gossip.") Much of the focus on Hoover actually is on Miller because Wueschner treats him as a surrogate for Hoover. A reader may be forgiven for wondering whether the relationship might have been in the other direction. Miller had been at odds with Strong as early as the Board's reform of open market operations in early 1923. Chandler refers to Hoover's "excessive reliance on his close friend Adolph Miller for information and interpretation." Certainly, Strong and Hoover were connected at times. After their initial encounter in 1921 they consulted each other directly for a while, but by 1924 they were at odds and even Wueschner says "Strong had distanced himself considerably from Hoover." A year later Hoover was mounting a behind-the-scenes campaign through Senator Lenroot and the State and Treasury Departments to steer the Federal Reserve toward raising the discount rate in the face of Strong's determined opposition. What is missing from Wueschner's account is enough supporting detail to indicate convincingly that Hoover and Miller were more than friends and that Miller was doing Hoover's bidding. The value of this book lies less in a Strong-Hoover focus than in its development of a chronology of monetary policy decision making in the context of political pressures within the nation's capital. An initial chapter does a good job of identifying various factions with competing interests in influencing the fledgling central bank's decisions. Remaining chapters show how some of those factions operated as the domestic and foreign political and economic environment evolved. The inability of the Federal Reserve Board to exert policy leadership is made clear. Personal antipathies and struggles for power within the Board, especially those involving Adolph Miller, are documented. The mediocrity of some of the Board members is traced to President Harding's apparent view that appointments to the new Federal Reserve System were ideally suited to discharging political obligations to faithful political drones. This book does not pretend to add anything to the analytical debate about causes of the subsequent financial and economic disasters. It covers much the same ground as Chandler's Benjamin Strong, Central Banker and, although Wueschner does not say so, corrects at least one error in that book. Chandler said that Hoover misspoke in his Memoir, in dating his bitterness about easy money policy to 1925 rather than where Chandler dates it, in 1924 (Lester V. Chandler, Benjamin Strong, Central Banker, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution 1958, p. 255). Wueschner's account makes clear that Hoover meant what he said—1925. This is an example of the value of Wueschner's book. It summarizes a careful reading of some of the major primary sources of information about the thoughts and behavior of those who influenced Federal Reserve monetary policy in its earliest years.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005
This is the estimate typically given by the Landless Peasants Movement. The Lula government's II ... more This is the estimate typically given by the Landless Peasants Movement. The Lula government's II National Plan for Agrarian Reform (Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário, 2004) puts the demand for land reform at 3.1 million, or 5 million if one counts those who have land but in an insufficient amount. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimated the demand for land reform in Brazil at 2.5 million families in the midnineties (Romeiro et. al. 1994). 3 Gini coefficients presented here are from Incra (2001) which tries to deal with several of the methodological difficulties in the calculation of this index. 4 Evidence to back this statement will be given in Section III.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010
Inter-American Development Bank © Inter-American Development Bank, www.iadb.org Documents publish... more Inter-American Development Bank © Inter-American Development Bank, www.iadb.org Documents published in the IDB working paper series are of the highest academic and editorial quality. All have been peer reviewed by recognized experts in their field and professionally edited. The information and opinions presented in these publications are entirely those of the author(s), and no endorsement by the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Executive Directors, or the countries they represent is expressed or implied.
Brasília, DF: Universidade de …, 2002
Série Textos para Discussão Economics of Air Pollution: Hedonic Price Model and Smell Consequence... more Série Textos para Discussão Economics of Air Pollution: Hedonic Price Model and Smell Consequences of Sewage Treatment Plants in Urban Areas ... Economics of Air Pollution: HedonicPrice Model and Smell Consequences of Sewage Treatment Plants in Urban Areas ...
Hispanic American Historical Review, 2001
... Consider the claim on page 235 that Quetzalcoatlnot, say, Cinteotl is the Mesoamerican cor... more ... Consider the claim on page 235 that Quetzalcoatlnot, say, Cinteotl is the Mesoamerican corn god, or the Classic Maya-Postclassic Aztec equiva-lence drawn on page 116: The Origin of the Cosmos and the First Tasks of (Hun ... catherine wilkinson zerner, Brown University ...
A Emenda Constitucional nº 36, de 2002, flexibiliza as regras de propriedade de empresas jornalís... more A Emenda Constitucional nº 36, de 2002, flexibiliza as regras de propriedade de empresas jornalísticas e de radiodifusão, criando novas formas de capitalização e novas regras de acesso ao mercado. O trabalho examina, a partir de um modelo de organização industrial da comunicação social, algumas das possíveis implicações dessa mudança, sugerindo algumas tendências na composição do mercado e no perfil da programação a serem esperadas nos próximos anos.
By José R. Molinas and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán; Abstract: Over the last decade, every Paraguayan admin... more By José R. Molinas and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán; Abstract: Over the last decade, every Paraguayan administration has faced greater political challenges and financial pressures.
Conduta Empresarial Responsável e Acordos de Investimento, 2021
As Diretrizes da Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico (OCDE) para conduta em... more As Diretrizes da Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico (OCDE) para conduta empresarial responsável oferecem um fórum ao qual grupos e indivíduos podem denunciar violações por parte de empresas multinacionais, assim como mediação entre as empresas denunciadas e os denunciantes na busca de acordos e solução dos conflitos. Com atuação em 49 países, é um dos maiores programas de responsabilidade social corporativa do mundo. Como o programa não tem poder legal de sanção e a participação das empresas é voluntária, ele depende da sua capacidade de dar visibilidade às denúncias e da percepção por parte das empresas dos custos envolvidos por meio de impactos à sua imagem e reputação. Neste trabalho, nós detalhamos os casos mediados pelo Ponto de Contato Nacional (NCP) do Brasil. Realizamos também testes quantitativos por estudos de eventos com dados do mercado acionário e mostramos que há evidência que uma denúncia ao programa efetivamente impõe custos às empresas.
A lesson from the scholarship on institutions and development is that economic and political tran... more A lesson from the scholarship on institutions and development is that economic and political transitions towards more openness seldom happen because it is not in the interest of those in power, whose goal is to protect their rents. We know more about persistence than we do about making the critical transition to sustained prosperity. We focus on the question: how have some countries managed to break away and transition to becoming open societies? We highlight the roles played by three concepts: windows of opportunity; beliefs, and leadership. We wed these concepts to institutions. After presenting our framework, we flesh out the dynamics with a case study of Brazil from 1964-2012. In the early 1990s Brazil seized a window of opportunity with the leadership of President Cardoso and his economic team. Over time, they changed beliefs within Brazil which has set them on a trajectory towards an open economic and political society.
NBER Working Paper Series #W28927, 2021
To understand leadership, it is necessary to understand the purpose of an organization. Organizat... more To understand leadership, it is necessary to understand the purpose of an organization. Organizations are hierarchies with leaders at the top. Why do we have leaders instead of an algorithm making decisions? The theory of the firm recognizes benefits to centralizing authority but these organizational benefits from hierarchy have not been clearly separated from the specific contributions of leaders. Leadership is the ability to successfully manage transaction costs of an organization. Prominent amongst organizational transaction costs are agency and coordination costs. The balance between these two types of costs depends on the purpose of the organization. We hypothesize that changing leaders is likely to have a larger effect within organizations with relatively lower scope or scale of purpose because of the way in which decision rights tend to be relatively concentrated in such organizations. We test our hypotheses with data on NFL coaches, and deans of business and law schools.
Brazil in Transition, 2016
This chapter lays out a brief conceptual dynamic to interpret the past fifty years in Brazil. Its... more This chapter lays out a brief conceptual dynamic to interpret the past fifty years in Brazil. Its framework rests on tying together the key concepts of windows of opportunity, beliefs, dominant network, leadership, institutions, and outcomes. The chapter argues that it is the dynamics of the concepts that led to institutional change in Brazil and in turn a new trajectory. It then discusses the important dominant networks in power, along with their beliefs, in four periods: 1964–1984 (the military years); 1985–1993 (the early years back to democracy); 1993–2002 (Fernando Henrique Cardoso's presidency); and 2002–2014 (the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff years).
Brazil in Transition, 2016
This paper analyses the specific mechanisms through which legal institutions and the Rule of Law ... more This paper analyses the specific mechanisms through which legal institutions and the Rule of Law affect firm performance using survey evidence from a sample of about 100 Brazilian firms in the textile and electronics industries. The data provide firms’ perceptions of whether judicial institutions are just, impartial, corruptible, swift, accessible, consistent and effective, which allowed to create an index of firms’ perception of legal institutions. It is analyzed how these perceptions vary across firms with different characteristics, such as large/small employer, foreign/domestic-owned, exporter/non-exporters and revenues level. The results suggest that firms that had a better perception of the Judiciary increased levels of employment and had better economic performance.
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, 2002
In this paper we model the process of regulatory agency design, focusing on the role of credibili... more In this paper we model the process of regulatory agency design, focusing on the role of credibility. The government is constrained in the sense that it must create regulatory institutions that allow it to commit to not administratively expropriate investors. The model explains both the preference of the agency head chosen by the government as well as the optimal level of statutory control. We argue that in Brazil this trade-off between credibility and control of the agencies is key to understanding the specific regulatory institutions that have been chosen. Comparative static results are derived to examine how changes in some key variables affect the design of the agencies, providing us with a set of hypotheses for comparing the design of five different agencies created to regulate industries with very different characteristics. Although these agencies were initially created under very similar designs, they are expected to evolve in ways that accord with our theory.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019
Innovation is more likely in a population composed of both imitators and learners, than it is in ... more Innovation is more likely in a population composed of both imitators and learners, than it is in a population of lone trailblazers. The human propensity for social learning gives rise to cumulative culture and innovation comes about primarily through the recombination of existing knowledge. I use data from Hip Hop chart ranking and YouTube video views to measure the impact of this collective brain on innovation and success. This genre of music is used because, more than others, it has the custom of explicitly featuring guest artists and samples of existing songs. This provides a measure of the extent of recombination of existing knowledge in the new songs’ creative process. I find that songs that more fully rely on the collective brain are more innovative and have greater impact. In addition, I find evidence that the pattern of recombination of more successful songs includes not just novelty, but novelty together with elements of conventionality. I also explore how artists have adapted their marketing strategies to recent disruptions in the how music is produced, distributed and consumed.
Brazil under Lula, 2009
More so than most other areas of economic activity, infrastructure sectors tend to exhibit large ... more More so than most other areas of economic activity, infrastructure sectors tend to exhibit large sunk investments, specific assets, economies of scale, and involve politically sensitive goods and service, often produced by foreign companies (Levy and Spiller 1996, Savedoff and Spiller 1999). These characteristics make the industries in these sectors particularly prone to governmental opportunism, so that investment will only materialize in an effective manner if investors can be convinced that there are reliable safeguards against governmental expropriation.
Este artigo analisa o gasto público estadual da Amazônia Ocidental (Acre, Amazonas, Rondônia e Ro... more Este artigo analisa o gasto público estadual da Amazônia Ocidental (Acre, Amazonas, Rondônia e Roraima) com o controle social da violência, de 2004 a 2014, segundo as funções de governo agrupadas em: controle criminal-Segurança Pública, Justiça e Direitos da Cidadania; prevenção social da violência-Educação, Assistência Social e Saúde; outras funções. A análise comparativa do montante gasto, distribuição, evolução e efeitos demográficos das despesas orçamentárias, a partir das informações dos balanços estaduais, permitiu discutir, entre outras questões, como os governos estaduais estão a gastar os recursos na prevenção social da violência e no controle do crime. Crescimento econômico e do gasto público marcam a trajetória recente da região (2004-2014), cujos gastos estaduais com as políticas sociais apresentaram movimentos distintos e irregulares, porém, com similaridades no recrudescimento ao controle criminal. Os resultados corroboram a desigualdade e heterogeneidade entre os estados na direção e relevância das funções de prevenção e controle da violência.
The Journal of Economic History, 2000
largely recreated from the diaries of Charles Hamlin—is between Strong and Adolph Miller, the onl... more largely recreated from the diaries of Charles Hamlin—is between Strong and Adolph Miller, the only economist member of the Federal Reserve Board and a sometimes obstructionist and perhaps devious opponent of Strong within the Federal Reserve System. (Like Miller, Hamlin was one of Woodrow Wilson's appointees to the original Federal Reserve Board in 1914. With respect to his diaries, Friedman and Schwartz say that he was "an inveterate and, so far as we can judge, an accurate gossip.") Much of the focus on Hoover actually is on Miller because Wueschner treats him as a surrogate for Hoover. A reader may be forgiven for wondering whether the relationship might have been in the other direction. Miller had been at odds with Strong as early as the Board's reform of open market operations in early 1923. Chandler refers to Hoover's "excessive reliance on his close friend Adolph Miller for information and interpretation." Certainly, Strong and Hoover were connected at times. After their initial encounter in 1921 they consulted each other directly for a while, but by 1924 they were at odds and even Wueschner says "Strong had distanced himself considerably from Hoover." A year later Hoover was mounting a behind-the-scenes campaign through Senator Lenroot and the State and Treasury Departments to steer the Federal Reserve toward raising the discount rate in the face of Strong's determined opposition. What is missing from Wueschner's account is enough supporting detail to indicate convincingly that Hoover and Miller were more than friends and that Miller was doing Hoover's bidding. The value of this book lies less in a Strong-Hoover focus than in its development of a chronology of monetary policy decision making in the context of political pressures within the nation's capital. An initial chapter does a good job of identifying various factions with competing interests in influencing the fledgling central bank's decisions. Remaining chapters show how some of those factions operated as the domestic and foreign political and economic environment evolved. The inability of the Federal Reserve Board to exert policy leadership is made clear. Personal antipathies and struggles for power within the Board, especially those involving Adolph Miller, are documented. The mediocrity of some of the Board members is traced to President Harding's apparent view that appointments to the new Federal Reserve System were ideally suited to discharging political obligations to faithful political drones. This book does not pretend to add anything to the analytical debate about causes of the subsequent financial and economic disasters. It covers much the same ground as Chandler's Benjamin Strong, Central Banker and, although Wueschner does not say so, corrects at least one error in that book. Chandler said that Hoover misspoke in his Memoir, in dating his bitterness about easy money policy to 1925 rather than where Chandler dates it, in 1924 (Lester V. Chandler, Benjamin Strong, Central Banker, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution 1958, p. 255). Wueschner's account makes clear that Hoover meant what he said—1925. This is an example of the value of Wueschner's book. It summarizes a careful reading of some of the major primary sources of information about the thoughts and behavior of those who influenced Federal Reserve monetary policy in its earliest years.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005
This is the estimate typically given by the Landless Peasants Movement. The Lula government's II ... more This is the estimate typically given by the Landless Peasants Movement. The Lula government's II National Plan for Agrarian Reform (Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário, 2004) puts the demand for land reform at 3.1 million, or 5 million if one counts those who have land but in an insufficient amount. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimated the demand for land reform in Brazil at 2.5 million families in the midnineties (Romeiro et. al. 1994). 3 Gini coefficients presented here are from Incra (2001) which tries to deal with several of the methodological difficulties in the calculation of this index. 4 Evidence to back this statement will be given in Section III.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010
Inter-American Development Bank © Inter-American Development Bank, www.iadb.org Documents publish... more Inter-American Development Bank © Inter-American Development Bank, www.iadb.org Documents published in the IDB working paper series are of the highest academic and editorial quality. All have been peer reviewed by recognized experts in their field and professionally edited. The information and opinions presented in these publications are entirely those of the author(s), and no endorsement by the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Executive Directors, or the countries they represent is expressed or implied.
Brasília, DF: Universidade de …, 2002
Série Textos para Discussão Economics of Air Pollution: Hedonic Price Model and Smell Consequence... more Série Textos para Discussão Economics of Air Pollution: Hedonic Price Model and Smell Consequences of Sewage Treatment Plants in Urban Areas ... Economics of Air Pollution: HedonicPrice Model and Smell Consequences of Sewage Treatment Plants in Urban Areas ...
Hispanic American Historical Review, 2001
... Consider the claim on page 235 that Quetzalcoatlnot, say, Cinteotl is the Mesoamerican cor... more ... Consider the claim on page 235 that Quetzalcoatlnot, say, Cinteotl is the Mesoamerican corn god, or the Classic Maya-Postclassic Aztec equiva-lence drawn on page 116: The Origin of the Cosmos and the First Tasks of (Hun ... catherine wilkinson zerner, Brown University ...
A Emenda Constitucional nº 36, de 2002, flexibiliza as regras de propriedade de empresas jornalís... more A Emenda Constitucional nº 36, de 2002, flexibiliza as regras de propriedade de empresas jornalísticas e de radiodifusão, criando novas formas de capitalização e novas regras de acesso ao mercado. O trabalho examina, a partir de um modelo de organização industrial da comunicação social, algumas das possíveis implicações dessa mudança, sugerindo algumas tendências na composição do mercado e no perfil da programação a serem esperadas nos próximos anos.
By José R. Molinas and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán; Abstract: Over the last decade, every Paraguayan admin... more By José R. Molinas and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán; Abstract: Over the last decade, every Paraguayan administration has faced greater political challenges and financial pressures.
Conduta Empresarial Responsável e Acordos de Investimento, 2021
As Diretrizes da Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico (OCDE) para conduta em... more As Diretrizes da Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico (OCDE) para conduta empresarial responsável oferecem um fórum ao qual grupos e indivíduos podem denunciar violações por parte de empresas multinacionais, assim como mediação entre as empresas denunciadas e os denunciantes na busca de acordos e solução dos conflitos. Com atuação em 49 países, é um dos maiores programas de responsabilidade social corporativa do mundo. Como o programa não tem poder legal de sanção e a participação das empresas é voluntária, ele depende da sua capacidade de dar visibilidade às denúncias e da percepção por parte das empresas dos custos envolvidos por meio de impactos à sua imagem e reputação. Neste trabalho, nós detalhamos os casos mediados pelo Ponto de Contato Nacional (NCP) do Brasil. Realizamos também testes quantitativos por estudos de eventos com dados do mercado acionário e mostramos que há evidência que uma denúncia ao programa efetivamente impõe custos às empresas.
A lesson from the scholarship on institutions and development is that economic and political tran... more A lesson from the scholarship on institutions and development is that economic and political transitions towards more openness seldom happen because it is not in the interest of those in power, whose goal is to protect their rents. We know more about persistence than we do about making the critical transition to sustained prosperity. We focus on the question: how have some countries managed to break away and transition to becoming open societies? We highlight the roles played by three concepts: windows of opportunity; beliefs, and leadership. We wed these concepts to institutions. After presenting our framework, we flesh out the dynamics with a case study of Brazil from 1964-2012. In the early 1990s Brazil seized a window of opportunity with the leadership of President Cardoso and his economic team. Over time, they changed beliefs within Brazil which has set them on a trajectory towards an open economic and political society.
States usually differ markedly in terms of public goods provision and corruption. Why are some st... more States usually differ markedly in terms of public goods provision and corruption. Why are some state governments able to provide adequate health and education services, but others tend to specialize in the provision of private goods such as public sector jobs and targeted transfers to specific clienteles? Exploring the idea that political institutions are important determinants of the policies implemented in states, we propose a model of the policymaking process and then test its implications with state-level data for the period 1999 to 2006 in Brazil. The focus of the empirical tests is on the impact of political competition and checks & balances on the characteristics of the policies that emerge in the states. Political competition has important virtuous effects on the choices made by governors and other political actors by determining how long they expect to be in power, what they can do while in power, and at what costs. We develop an index of checks & balances for Brazilian sta...