André Luis Squarize Chagas

A Spatial Propensity Score Matching Evaluation of the Social Impacts of Sugarcane Growing on Municipalities in Brazil

The expansion of sugarcane growing in Brazil, spurred particularly by increased demand for ethanol, has triggered the need to evaluate the economic, social, and environmental impacts of this process, both on the country as a whole and on the growing regions. Even though the balance of costs and benefits is positive from an overall standpoint, this may not be so in specific producing regions, due to negative externalities. The objective of this paper is to estimate the effect of growing sugarcane on the human development index (HDI) and its sub-indices in cane producing regions. In the literature on matching effects, this is interpreted as the effect of the treatment on the treated. Location effects are controlled by spatial econometric techniques, giving rise to the spatial propensity score matching model. The authors analyze 424 minimum comparable areas (MCAs) in the treatment group, compared with 907 MCAs in the control group. The results suggest that the presence of sugarcane growing in these areas is not relevant to determine their social conditions, whether for better or worse. It is thus likely that public policies, especially those focused directly on improving education, health, and income generation/distribution, have much more noticeable effects on the municipal HDI.

A Demanda por Vinho no Brasil: elasticidades no consumo das famílias e determinantes da importação

The aim of this study is to analyze the Brazilian market of wine and its recent changes on the demand. One of the hypotheses that guides this work is that the recent increase in household income in real terms and the appreciation of Real against dollar quotes, that happened between 2002 until 2011, have contributed to a shift in the consumption profile of main alcoholic beverages in Brazil. To corroborate these hypotheses, AIDS and VAR Models were estimated. It was observed that the demand for wine is less price elastic than beer but not compared to other alcoholic beverages. Changes in income appear to have almost the same impact on wine and beer consumption than other drinks, less elastic. Regarding the supply of imported wines in the domestic market, the Structural Vector Autoregressive (VAR) showed the variance of the amount of the imported wine could be explained, in part, by income and the price of the product, while exchange rate presented less importance. Moreover, part of the quantity variance cannot be explained by these variables.

Socio-Economic and Ambient Impacts of Sugarcane Expansion in Brazil: Effects of the Second Generation Ethanol Production

The growing demand for clean energy sources to replace petroleum has substantially expanded the use of biofuels—fuels produced from agricultural products. For Brazil, instead of representing a hindrance to growth because of the need for changes in the country’s energy mix, this represents a great opportunity to generate value and income, since the country has clear comparative advantages in producing these fuels from renewable sources. The main biofuel in the country is ethanol, made from sugarcane. The country’s cane growing sector has been undergoing intense transformations, with the attraction of foreign capital, opening of new distilleries and intensification of mergers and acquisitions. However, doubts have been raised about the socioeconomic effects of the spread of sugarcane growing, such as the effects on the environment, labor market, social conditions and food prices, among others. This work reviews the papers that discuss these impacts. The results suggest that the expansion in recent years helps to improve the capital-labor relationship; the sugarcane growing is not the cause of increased land and food prices; the environmental indicators in sector is better than fossil fuel sector, or other relevant concurrent; the sector has no significant effects (positive or negative) on social conditions in cane growing regions, and that the sector can contribute positively by increasing local tax revenue.