Founded in 1952, the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) is a financial entity fully owned by the Brazilian government. It is in the process of redefining its priorities and its role going forward. New operational policies (OPs) published on January 5, 2017, mark an...

The Brazilian electronics industry operates within a policy regime which has promoted excessive diversification rather than concentrating on developing strong technological capabilities in appropriate areas. The international competitiveness of most segments of the electronics industry declined...

Globalisation has had a major impact on manufacturing competitiveness and industrial development in transitional and developing economies. This up-to-date book critically examines the experience of a wide range of countries, focusing on the policy challenges they face in the new global economy.

This paper discusses how MNCs reacted to NAFTA and MERCOSUR in terms of their investment and operations patterns in three sectors - automotive, electronics, and apparel - and assesses the likely impact of the upcoming Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). It shows that NAFTA functioned -...

Most developing economies rely on foreign capital to finance their infrastructure needs. These projects are usually structured as long-term (25-35 years) franchises that pay in local currency. If investors evaluate their returns in terms of foreign currency, exchange rate volatility introduces...

Since 1995, growth in productivity in the United States appears to have accelerated dramatically. In this paper, we argue that part of this apparent speed-up actually represents gains in the terms of trade and tariff reductions, especially for information-technology products. We demonstrate how...

The acceleration in US productivity growth since 1995 is often attributed to declining prices for information technology (IT ) goods, and therefore enhanced productivity growth in that sector. We investigate an alternative explanation for these IT price movements: gains in the US terms of trade...

This paper provides a simple and empirically plausible model of artworks as investment vehicles. It reconciles the observation that average financial returns for collectibles are low and volatile with the theory of consumption-based asset pricing. Art assets are appealing both for their ability...