This paper compares the technical efficiency of Brazilian public and private companies in water supply. To measure efficiency a stochastic production frontier model is estimated using two competitive distributions for the inefficiency error component: truncated normal and exponential. The...

Using data for the 27 Brazilian states during the period 1980-2009, we found that the media index in an important determinant of the suicide rates. The econometric results suggest that an increase of 1% in the media index increases the suicide rate for young males (age between 15 and 29 years...

Technological innovations in agribusiness world did not allow the Malthusian theory became a reality. According to studies by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the introduction of more refined techniques of cultivation and soil treatment, as well as the findings...