The currency crisis in Brazil and its adverse effects on neighboring countries are widely perceived to be short-lived phenomena. However, optimists—stressing favorable growth and investment prospects in Latin America—tend to ignore home-made causes of Brazil's crisis and -underrate the risks...

Formerly a favourite location for private capital inflows, Brazil was virtually cut off from further bank lending in the 1980s. The country's rating in secondary loan markets plummeted, and foreign direct investment dwindled. New external financing was replaced by an accumulation of interest...

International capital markets are far from functioning perfectly. During the last decade, they overshot both ways: The earlier boom of private capital flows to emerging market economies (EMEs) turned out to be the prelude to the drama of seriously impaired access to foreign capital in the late...

Im Folgenden sollen anhand von einigen Tabellen und Grafiken die Erfahrungen Brasiliens mit Ethanol dargestellt und seine Pläne auch im Hinblick auf Biodiesel erläutert werden. Dabei stehen die Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse und die political economy im Vordergrund, die wiederum eingebettet sind in die...

The paper examines the applicability of GDP-linked bonds for the financing of developing countries and emerging markets. GDP-linked bonds are bonds of which the coupon and/or redemption payments are tied to the GDP of the issuing country. The study encompasses a detailed empirical analysis of...

This paper compares electricity market reforms in the European Union with reforms in Chile and Brazil. The paradigm of competitive market structures for the electricity sector, as developed in the economics literature, is outlined: competitive markets in generation and retailing and an...

The world is experiencing its worst recession in 80 years. What started as US sub-prime financial turmoil has developed into the first global recession since the infamous 'Great Depression' of the early 1930s. However gloomy the perspectives for the very short term are, there will be a recovery...