Carlos Roberto Azzoni

Growth Dynamics and Space in Brazil

The authors bring together two strands of the empirical literature and analyze the geography of the regional economic performance of the states of the Brazilian Federation from 1939 to 1998. Using tools from spatial statistics, they examine the spatial dependence of regional per capita income in Brazil during the past six decades. They also examine the role of geography in explaining economic growth patterns using intradistribution dynamic tools based on Markov transition matrices and stochastic kernels in a discrete and a continuous framework. The analyses reveal the existence of two spatial clusters in Brazil, a low-income cluster in the northeast and a high-income cluster in the southeast. Moreover, the spatial pattern of economic growth in Brazilian states cannot be viewed without accounting for spatial spillovers. The authors show that states with relatively rich neighbors have a greater chance of being prosperous.

Geography and Income Convergence Among Brazilian States

The objective of the study is to identify the role of geographical variables in explaining differences in per capita income among Brazilian states. It also aims at ascertaining the degree to which such variables affect convergence or divergence trends in per capita income among these states. In order to investigate these issues it uses micro-data, instead of the more traditional aggregate data, averaged up from household to birth cohort level. Both the level and the change in average household income per capita across Brazilian states are correlated to geographical and household variables. The aim is to capture not only the influence of household human capital and wealth variables on the convergence of per capita income (along the lines of the neoclassical model), but also that of spatial or geographical characteristics, such as public infrastructure, health and education services. Therefore, this paper simultaneously considers data on geographical variables and repeated cross-sections of household surveys. The use of cohort level data means that we can construct cohort/state/year means for all variables of interest and control for state, life cycle and composition effects for the first time in this literature. The results indicate that the geographical variables seem to be important determinants of income levels and growth. Altogether, the results indicate that human capital and infrastructure variables are important areas for government intervention, as these are some of the main factors behind the differences in steady-state rates of income growth in Brazil.

A importância do agronegócio familiar no Brasil

This paper presents the results for the familiar activity level of the agricultural agribusiness in the Brazilian economy for the period from 1995 to 2003. Using input-output models it was possible to estimate the importance of the Gross Domestic Product of the familiar agribusiness in the national economy. The results show that around 1/3 of the Brazilian agribusiness come from the agricultural production done by the familiar agriculture, it was also noticed that the recent development of the familiar agriculture and of its links has been very positive, suppressing, the growth rates found in the non-familiar segment.

Social Policy as Regional Policy: Market and Nonmarket Factors Determining Regional Inequality

We decompose the recent changes in regional inequality in Brazil into its components, highlighting the role of spatially blind social programs. We aggregate personal income micro data to the state level, differentiating nine income sources, and assess the role of these components in the observed changes in regional inequality indicators. The main results indicate that the largest part of the recent reduction in regional inequality is related to the dynamics of the market‐related labor income, with manufacturing and services favoring deconcentration. Labor income in agriculture, retirement and pensions, and property rents and other sources favored concentration. The social programs Bolsa Familia and Beneficios de Prestacao Continuada are responsible for more than 24 percent of the reduction in inequality, although they account for less than 1.7 percent of the disposable household income. Such positive impact on regional concentration is impressive, since the goals of the programs are clearly nonspatial.

Demand elasticities for food products in Brazil: a two-stage budgeting system

The object of this article is to estimate demand elasticities for a basket of staple food important for providing the caloric needs of Brazilian households. These elasticities are useful in the measurement of the impact of structural reforms on poverty. A two-stage demand system was constructed, based on data from Household Expenditure Surveys (POF) produced by IBGE (The Brazilian Bureau of Statistics) in 1987/88 and 1995/96. We have used panel data to estimate the model, and have calculated income, own-price, and cross-price elasticities for eight groups of goods and services and, in the second stage, for 11 sub groups of staple food products. We estimated those elasticities for the whole sample of consumers and for two income groups.

Financial constraints and investment decisions: evidence from a highly unstable emerging economy

This study analyses the role of financial constraints on the investment decisions of 497 Brazilian firms. We use panel data, with firm-specific information for different years, allowing for the abandonment of the representative firm model. Information on capital intensity at the firm level is used to group firms. We estimate different models and the results suggest the presence of financial restrictions, especially for capital-intensive firms.

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.

Who in Brazil Will Gain from Global Trade Reforms

The potential impacts of multilateral trade liberalisation on developing countries are the subject of numerous controversies. One particular concern is that Brazil, a major agricultural exporter and a country with one of the worlds most unequal income distributions, will reap a substantial share of the potential benefits to developing countries from agricultural trade reform, and that most of those benefits will go to large-scale commercial farmers rather than to the countrys smallholders. This claim is explored via a global general equilibrium model and a national model of Brazil containing multiple agricultural and non-agricultural households. Brazil is found to account for nearly one-half of all the benefits to developing countries deriving from global agricultural trade reform. These gains are associated with improvements in the welfare of each group and a lower incidence of poverty. Large-scale producers gain more than smallholders as they tend to be relatively specialised in export products, but there are important gains to agricultural employees, who are relatively poor, and to urban households, who benefit from the expansion of the agro-food sector. Overall, there is no discernible impact on income inequality, and no evidence that the gains to commercial farmers occur at the expense of poorer households.

Estimating the costs of environmental protection in Brazil

Abstract In this paper an effort is made to estimate the amounts of money the government of the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, must transfer to counties in which environmentally protected areas of any sort have been established by the state. A methodology to estimate these transfers is proposed, based on the potential loss of production in the protected areas, and the corresponding amounts are calculated. The results indicate that protecting 7.68% of the states territory will cause a maximum decrease in its GDP of 0.05%. The estimation of monetary values for environmental costs is of interest because it provides a basis for judgement among different environmental protection alternatives and between these and other investment projects.

Neighborhood and Efficiency in Manufacturing in Brazilian Regions: A Spatial Markov Chain Analysis

This paper analyzes the geography of regional competitiveness in manufacturing in Brazil. The authors estimate stochastic frontiers to calculate regional efficiency of representative firms in 137 regions in the period 2000–2006, in four sectors defined by technological intensity. The efficiency results are analyzed using Markov Spatial Transition Matrices to provide insights into the transition of regions between efficiency levels, considering their local spatial context. The results indicate that geography plays an important role in manufacturing competitiveness. In particular, regions with more competitive neighbors are more likely to improve their relative efficiency (pull effect) over time, and regions with less competitive neighbors are more likely to lose relative efficiency (drag effect). The authors find that the pull effect is stronger than the drag effect.