In 1985-86 Argentina, Brazil and Israel initiated programs of stabilization after episodes of high and sharply accelerating inflation. Among the key features of each stabilization program were the use of wage- price controls, a fixed exchange rate and fiscal correction as well as a significant...

This paper highlights the institutional features of the inflation process and contrasts two stabilization efforts in 1964-66 and in 1986.The inflation process in Brazil is highly institutional. It does not resemble hyperinflations where pricing and wage setting are geared to the exchange rate by...

This report brings together three separate, short papers on problems of Brazilian trade and payments. The following topics are addressed: the determinants of export behavior in the manufactures sector, measures of the real exchange rate and the monetary approach applied to the external balance....

We extend the literature on interest group behavior and policy outcomes by examining how groups with limited resources (votes and campaign contributions) effectively influence government by manipulating media information to voters. Voters in turn lobby politicians to implement the group's...

Tenancy has been a means for labor to advance their socio-economic condition in agriculture yet in Brazil and Latin America, tenancy rates are low compared to the U.S. and the OECD countries. We test for the importance of insecure property rights in Brazil on the reluctance of landowners to rent...

We present a conceptual framework to better understand the interaction between settlement and the emergence of de facto property rights on frontiers prior to governments establishing and enforcing de jure property rights. In this framework, potential rents associated with more exclusivity drives...

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...

Inflation persists at moderate rates of 15-30 percent in all the countries that successfully reduced triple digit inflations in the 1980s. Several other countries, for example Colombia, have experienced moderate inflation for prolonged periods. In this paper we first set out theories of...

Alexander Gerschenkron understood the development of backward countries as a contextual process that varied from country to country depending on which perquisites were present or absent. In the past twenty years, Brazilian agriculture evolved from "backward" to an agricultural powerhouse. Its...