This article estimates the monetary policy rule followed by the Brazilian Central Bank for setting its main policy instrument, the SELIC rate, for the period after the Real Plan. In order to overcome the uncertainty over the dates at which changes in parameters occurred, this paper uses...

This paper estimates the Brazilian Nairu (Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment) and investigates several empirical questions: the behavior of Nairu along time, error bands for Nairu and the usefulness of Nairu to the conduct of monetary policy in Brazil. There are many recent studies...

This study will analyze the determinants of environmental performance in the Brazilian industrial sector. It uses a database conducted by the Brazilian National Confederation of Industries inquiring about questions on environmental management over 325 medium and large firms referred to the year...

Regulation in the sanitation sector in Brazil is facing a great deal of debate regarding the government level in which conceding authority should reside and how private operators can fulfill social objectives. The main objective of this study is to show that these issues are not the crucial...

This article investigates the stochastic and dynamic relationship of a group of Brazilian macroeconomic variables (price and industrial production indexes, nominal exchange rate, short and medium-run nominal interest rates) for the period after the Real Plan (1996-2004). We adopt, as has become...

In this article we use the theory of conditional forecasts to develop a new Monetary Conditions Index (MCI) for Brazil and compare it to the ones constructed using the methodologies suggested by Bernanke and Mihov (1998) and Batini and Turnbull (2002). We use Sims and Zha (1999) and Waggoner and...

This study presents a preliminary estimate of user costs of forestland conversion for agricultural purposes for the period 1970-80 in Brazil. In this initial version, only loss in potential sustainable wood output is considered. However, the analytical framework adopted here can be extended to...

This paper compares the forecasting performance of linear and nonlinear models under the presence of structural breaks for the Brazilian real GDP growth. The Markov switching models proposed by Hamilton (1989) and its generalized version by Lam (1990) are applied to quarterly GDP from 1975:1 to...

This paper attempts to discern the effectivess of abatement policy and the status of current water quality in Brazil. It presents the results of a study on indicators of water quality for 13 states where systematic monitoring is undertaken. A regional, sectorial and sustainability analysis of...