Elite quality and development
Posted inEconomics Politics Social

Elite quality and development

The Elite Quality Report 2020 claims to be the “first ever international measurement of elite quality,” aiming to distinguish between elites who are high-quality value creators and elites who are low-quality value extractors.   For readers of this blog, the report will be of interest because it finds the BRIS countries clustered in...
February 6, 2021Posted inEconomics, Politics, Social
Assorted Links: Crime and Corruption
Posted inSocial

Assorted Links: Crime and Corruption

The next few posts will highlight some of the interesting Brazil-related research that crossed our desks in the last quarter of 2020. This post focuses on five recent works on crime and corruption. Juan Albarracín and Nicholas Barnes begin their review essay on criminal organizations in the Latin American Research Review with shocking...
January 18, 2021Posted inSocial
A mixed view on the economy
Posted inEconomics

A mixed view on the economy

A mixed read on the Brazilian economy from the IMF, raising expectations about growth this year, even as they point to a long list of potential risks, such as rising public debt, and limited fiscal space for any additional stimulus or expansion in social spending. Mincing fewer words, former finance minister Pedro...
October 9, 2020Posted inEconomics
Comparing Brazilian Cabinets since 1960
Posted inPolitics

Comparing Brazilian Cabinets since 1960

A new and crazily ambitious cross-national and historical dataset of cabinet members provides good comparative international data to confirm some of what is often affirmed about Brazil. For example, in comparative terms, the article shows that the country has high cabinet turnover, low female cabinet participation, and high levels of party representation...
October 9, 2020Posted inPolitics
(Non-)Reciprocity as Economic Policy
Posted inEconomics Politics

(Non-)Reciprocity as Economic Policy

Natalia Ferreira de Carvalho Rodrigues, of the Fundação Getulio Vargas, offers a nuanced evaluation of one of Brazil’s most egregious fiscal policies, the Refis program for tax debt forgiveness, which the federal government has repeatedly used since the turn of the century to try to prop up employment.  Bottom line conclusion: although...
October 9, 2020Posted inEconomics, Politics
National violence data
Posted inSocial

National violence data

As usual, there is lots of valuable data and analysis of crime in this year’s Atlas da Violência, published by IPEA in conjunction with the Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, with data through 2018. The report highlights that homicides have begun declining back to 2011 levels. While this is of course good news,...
October 9, 2020Posted inSocial