This study addresses a key challenge: to analyze the current coordination of the Bioceanic Road Corridor initiative to promote infrastructure integration and cooperation between the State of Mato Grosso do Sul, the Paraguayan Chaco, the NOA regions of Argentina and the ports of northern Chile by...

This study addresses a key challenge: to analyze the current coordination of the Bioceanic Road Corridor initiative to promote infrastructure integration and cooperation between the State of Mato Grosso do Sul, the Paraguayan Chaco, the NOA regions of Argentina and the ports of northern Chile by...

This paper estimates residential water demand functions taking into account the block rate pricing schedule usually set by water utilities. The progressive pricing, although preserves the convexity property on the budget set, induces the consumer budget constraints be non-linear, what violates...

The accumulation of human capital plays a crucial role in growth theories and it is incorporated in the growth models in a very simplified way. Therefore it does not take into account the economic development process complexity. They consider that the amount of human capital is an important...

This paper aims at analyzing the relationship between economic growth and financial development on theoretical and empirical grounds. We briefly review the arguments that support the existence or not of a positive and causal relation between these two variables, as well as the arguments that...

A prática de incentivos fiscais à inovação é comumente adotada por diversos países com objetivo de estimular as formas na realização de atividades tecnológicas, sendo especialmente dirigidos as atividades de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento (P&D). O uso generalizado desses incentivos culminou...

This paper aims to measure, using a difference-in-differences estimator, the impacts of the privatization of water and sewage services on child mortality in municipalities in the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo states. We obtain evidence that privatization is associated with a significant decrease...

Micro-credit and micro-finance emerged in the 1970’s in some Asian and Latin American countries as an instrument for fighting poverty and social exclusion. Using 2006-9 portuguese micro-level data, we estimate the failure rate of Portuguese micro-credit projects as 18,4%/year. This failure...

Estimates based on household surveys often differ considerably from administrative records. In the PNADs, for instance, the estimated number of beneficiaries of the Programa Bolsa Família (PBF) and of the Benefício de Prestação Continuada (BPC) are always lower than the official figures....

The Brazilian municipalities show a huge disparity in income level. The GDP per capita difference between the richest and the poorest municipalities is about 190 times, according to IBGE (2000) database. Institutionalist theory provides a plausible explanation for the gap among municipalities...