When judges are believed to be politically biased, many nasty predictions may derive from it. Economic literature in Brazil shows some controversies over what is the direction of the bias, but mainly, economists believe that courts tend to favor debtors, leading to high disincentives for...

The prolific literature on de facto judicial independence misses a key variable to explain political bias: the government's discretion over the appointment of Supreme Court Justices. In this paper, we explore a distinct feature of the Brazilian judiciary system to assess political bias due to...

This chapter presents the main strategies towards greater enforcement of the Brazilian Competition Law. It focuses on the two major problems faced by Brazilian competition authorities: (a) merger review, and (b) dissemination of competition values among the judiciary, public prosecutors, and...

This paper investigates the pattern of geographic distribution of industrial employment in Brazil, based on evidences from six industrial sectors. The de-concentration pattern observed in the period 1974/88 was re-enforced during the 90's, driven by the institutional change in 1989/90 (trade...

When judges are believed to be politically biased and judicial decisions are considered to be unpredictable, many nasty consequences may derive from it. The economic literature in Brazil shows some controversies over what is the direction of the bias, but mainly, economists believe that courts...