Naercio Menezes-Filho

ICT Adoption and Productivity in Developing Countries: New Firm Level Evidence from Brazil and India

This paper uses a unique new data set on manufacturing firms in Brazil and India to estimate production functions, augmented by information and communications technology (ICT). We find a strong positive association between ICT capital and productivity in both countries that is robust to several different specification tests. The paper also breaks new ground when using the Indian data to investigate the effect of the institutional and policy environment on ICT capital investment and productivity. We find that poorer infrastructure quality and labor market policy are associated with lower levels of ICT adoption, while poorer infrastructure is also associated with lower returns to investment.

The Structure of Worker Compensation in Brazil, With a Comparison to France and the United States

We employ comprehensive linked employer-employee data for Brazil to analyze wage determinants and compare results to Abowd et al. (2001) for French and U.S. manufacturing. While returns to human capital in Brazilian manufacturing exceed those of the other countries, occupation and gender differentials are similar. The worker-characteristics component accounts for much of the greater wage inequality in Brazil, but the establishment-fixed component has scant explanatory power. Thus, firm- or industry-level factors offer little scope for explaining the differences in wage inequality. Brazils wage structure resembles that of France, a country with some similarity in labor market institutions.

Os determinantes empíricos da felicidade no Brasil

This paper investigates the role that economic variables play in the determination of happiness, using reported happiness as a proxy to individual well-being. We use microdata extracted from the World Values Survey for five countries, emphasizing the Brazilian case. Our findings suggest that there is a positive and significant correlation between happiness and income. Unemployment seems to have an even higher impact, arising as a large source of unhappiness. Other variables, such as age, gender, education and marital status are controlled for. In most cases, happiness appears to be positively correlated to being married. Moreover, happiness is apparently U-shaped in age (minimizing at 50s).

Discriminação de rendimentos por gênero: uma comparação entre o Brasil e os Estados Unidos

Este trabalho compara as diferencas de rendimentos entre os homens e as mulheres no Brasil e nos Estados Unidos, utilizando a decomposicao de Oaxaca. O rendimento medio das mulheres, no Brasil, era equivalente a 68% do rendimento dos homens em 1981, mas em 1996 ja equivalia a 80%. Nos EUA, essa razao era de 66% em 1981 e passou para 78% em 1996. No Brasil, as caracteristicas das mulheres sao superiores as dos homens e a diferenca salarial ocorre devido a um menor rendimento associado a idade das mulheres. Nos EUA, as caracteristicas dos homens e das mulheres sao similares e o retorno a idade tambem explica grande parte do diferencial de salarios. Isto pode ocorrer se a idade das mulheres nao refletir sua experiencia no mercado de trabalho, devido a suas decisoes de fecundidade, e algumas evidencias sao mostradas neste sentido.

Tecnologia e demanda por qualificação na indústria brasileira

The main aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between skill upgrading and measures of technology in Brazilian manufacturing for the last two decades. We use R&D intensity as a proxy for technological change. We find robust evidence of technology-skill complementarity, especially for the period between 1994 and 1997. Furthermore, when U.S. R&D intensity is used as an instrument for Brazilian R&D intensity, its impact on skill demand rises threefold. This provides us with evidence that technological transfer is impacting skill-upgrading in Brazil.

Unions and the Economic Performanceof Brazilian Establishments

Using a pooled sample, this paper indicates that unions seem to affect the economic performance of Brazilian establishments, especially in terms of profitability, employment and productivity. Unions tend to reduce profitability, whereas the relationship between union density and productivity, employment and average wages seems to be concave. These performance indicators first rise with union density up to a certain density level (usually about 50 percent) and then start to decline. These results indicate that some unionism may be good for the plants` economic performance, although too much unionism may start having negative effects.

Os determinantes dos gastos em P&D no Brasil: uma análise com dados em painel

This paper aims at examining the determinants of R&D expenditures in Brazil. We use a new database (from ANPEI) with firm level information on R&D and other technological expenditures from 1994 to 1998, and several econometric techniques. The results show that R&D expenditures follow a random walk and that larger firms spend proportionally less in R&D. The main determinant of R&D seems to be investments in physical capital, which indicates some form of complementarity between the two types of investment. Finally, profitability does not seem to be an important determinant of R&D expenditures in Brazil, suggesting that long-term determinants are more important.

Trade Liberalization and the Demand for Skilled Labor in Brazil

O ver the past three decades, labor markets in developing countries went through important changes in terms of wage differentials and the employment composition of their workforce. One of these changes was the fast rise in the supply of workers with intermediate levels of education, both in absolute terms and relative to the supply of workers with higher and lower education levels. Moreover, the wage differentials between college-educated workers and those with intermediate levels of education rose, while the differentials between the latter and workers with up to elementary education fell. These changes had important implications for poverty and inequality. Many Latin-American countries also went through trade liberalization processes in the 1980s and 1990s as part of a package of market-orientated reforms. These reforms induced important changes not only in their product markets, by changing relative prices and increasing the productivity of manufacturing firms, but also in the labor markets, by spurring labor reallocation and transition into the informal sector. A significant body of research links the changes in the wage differentials reported above to the trade liberalization process, following a literature that first examined the impact of trade liberalization on inequality in the United States and other developed countries.

A relação entre o desempenho da carreira no mercado de trabalho e a escolha profissional dos jovens

Este artigo examina como o desempenho relativo no mercado de trabalho de cada profissao afeta a escolha profissional dos futuros universitarios. O desempenho no mercado de trabalho e medido pela media e pelo desvio padrao dos salarios recebidos por profissao e pela sua taxa de desemprego no censo demografico nos anos proximos ao vestibular. O numero de pleiteantes a ingresso na carreira e medido pelo numero de inscritos no exame da Fuvest. Utiliza-se dados em painel para os anos de 1991 e 2000 para controlar pelo efeito especifico de cada profissao. Os resultados apontam para um efeito positivo e robusto do salario medio da profissao sobre a escolha profissional, que persiste na analise de painel, e para efeitos negativos da dispersao salarial da renda e do desemprego que, no entanto, nao se mostraram significantes.

Estimação da oferta de trabalho das mulheres no Brasil

Este artigo estima equacoes de oferta de trabalho para mulheres conjuges no Brasil, no periodo entre 1992 e 1999, comparando tres modelos existentes na literatura, o de Stone-Geary, o de Heckman-MaCurdy e o de Blundell-Duncan-Meghir. Utiliza-se um metodo econometrico de pseudopainel, apropriado para cross-sections repetidas, no qual o agrupamento dos dados por coorte, tempo e escolaridade permite controlar o fenomeno estudado por caracteristicas observaveis e nao observaveis dos individuos. As elasticidades de oferta de trabalho encontradas variam entre -0,213 e 0,050, dependendo do modelo utilizado e da especificacao escolhida para a oferta de trabalho.