Brazil's slow pace of poverty reduction over the last two decades reflects both low growth and a low growth elasticity of poverty reduction. Using GDP data disaggregated by state and sector for a twenty-year period, this paper finds considerable variation in the poverty-reducing effectiveness of...

The authors describe the main trends of Brazil's fiscal policy during the past decade and analyze (1) the ability to raise the primary surplus in response to external shocks, (2) the pro-cyclical nature of fiscal policy, and (3) the long-run impact of government expenditure composition and...

Analyses of municipal GDP growth in Rio Grande do Norte in the Northeast of Brazil during 1970-96 reveal that the cross-section dispersion of per capita income increased over time. Although the analysis indicates some spatial dependence in income, it is small and has a downward trend, indicating...

The paper proposes an approach to understand the relationship between inequality and economic growth obtained by shifting the analysis from the space of final achievements to the space of opportunities. To this end, it introduces a formal framework based on the concept of the Opportunity Growth...

This note examines in detail Brazil s export performance over the past 15 years, focusing not only on growth and composition, but also on different performance dimensions, including diversification, sophistication, and firm dynamics. The analysis uses international comparisons to better situate...

This paper studies the long-run impact of policies aimed at fostering gender equality on economic growth in Brazil. The first part provides a brief review of gender issues in the country. The second part presents a gender-based, three-period OLG model that accounts for women's time allocation...

Over the medium time horizon, skill upgrading, differentials in sectoral technological progress, and migration of labor out of farming activities are some of the major structural adjustment factors shaping the evolution of an economy and its connected poverty trends. The main focus of the...

This paper empirically studies the dynamics of labor market adjustment following the Brazilian trade reform of the 1990s. The paper uses variation in industry-specific tariff cuts interacted with initial regional industry mix to measure trade-induced local labor demand shocks and examines...

The aim of this paper is to provide feedback on the question of socioeconomic benefits from rural road development and the impact of transport infrastructure on the poor, particularly the poorest and the bottom 20 percent of the population. This paper relies on impact evaluation methodologies,...

This paper seeks to fill a knowledge gap relative to the low uptake of services for women living in situations of violence. The phenomenon is observed in many countries, including in Brazil, despite its robust legal framework to prevent and protect women from domestic violence. Through...