With the trade liberalization reform of 1990 Brazilian industry started a deep
process of restructuring to increase its integration with the word economy. So, it is important
to understand the forces operating in information technology revolution and globalization
as two most important forces driving the transformation in the word market, defining
a new competitive advantage.

JEL Classification: F60; O43.

This paper builds on the theory of regulation developed by Stigler and Peltzman.
According to these authors, a regulator chooses his/her strategy seeking to maximize political
support from consumers and producers, viewing welfare and efficiency as secondary issues.
This process determines a regulated price that is between the competitive and monopolistic
levels. Our paper develops a modified version of Peltzman’s model by considering the idea
that the regulator’s behaviour might change with the proximity of elections. The addition
of a timing dimension to the problem and its implication for consumers, producers and the
regulator’s behavior suggest that the optimal strategy now implies in a price cycle in regulated
industries. The regulator has incentives to impose higher prices when elections are relatively
far ahead and lower (real) prices in periods that immediately precede an important election.
We show that the Brazilian gasoline market between 1969-1984 supports our results.

JEL Classification: E31; D72; L71.

The article discusses some issues concerned with the idea of flexibility in the
labor market. Firstly, it presents different approaches on the existence of an informal sector
in the economy and distinguishes the modem process of tertiarization, observed in industrialized
countries, from the growth of tertiary activities found in most developing countries.
Secondly, a brief discussion on the recent juncture of the Brazilian labor market is presented.
The conclusion is that a higher degree of flexibility in the Brazilian labor market has been
searched throughout the informalization of legal activities and also by an incipient process
of modern tertiarization.

JEL Classification: J46; J86; L24.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate under which circumstances a policy
designed to open the economy may not succeed in changing employment level. This kind
of circumstances happens because in this model it is considered both internal and external
dynamics to a correct arbitrage of real exchange rate.

JEL Classification: F16; F13; F43.

Brazilians dub the eighties “the lost decade”. After forty years of an average
annual growth of 7%, the GDP per inhabitant dropped 5% in that decade. Ignácio Rangel,
a Marxist economist, foresaw the coming of the crisis in 1978, and suggested the only way
out: the privatization of the public utilities. That was before Reagan and Thatcher. The “Brazilian
Duality” is the mainspring of Rangel’s thought. According to it, the national economy
must be analysed from both its “internal side”, i.e., the national economy itself, and its “external
side”, the world economy.

JEL Classification: B31; B24.

This paper examinates the changes on Argentinian economic policy on its new
democratic period. It deals primarily on the responses given under the orientation of orthodox
and neoliberal visions to inflation and debt issues.

JEL Classification: E31; F62.

Although the share of the debt in French francs in total Brazilian debt was of
only 6% in 1930, the analysis is of interest due to the marked concentration of inflows just
before World War I, to the concentration of indebtedness in high risk loans to states and municipalities
and to the fact that France was the only creditor country to return to gold with
a broken parity. The process of Brazilian progressive indebtedness in francs is described and
the performance of loans in different currencies is evaluated in relation to alternatives such
as the purchase of government bonds.

JEL Classification: N26; F34.

This paper has two main objectives. The first one is a full characterization of
the neoclassical concept of rationality, showing its constitutive attributes. The second is the
presentation of alternative research programs in microeconomics that differ from the neoclassical
one because they contradict one or more of these attributes. Besides, it intends to
show that microeconomics is today an open field of research and not the field of neoclassical
theory. By the way, microeconomics is defined as the science of decision processes in complex
systems like organizations and markets.

JEL Classification: B13; B22.

This paper discusses three interdependent topics. The first is that the economic
reforms implemented in Latin America after the mid-1980s were not sufficient to ensure
exchange rate stability in the region. The second is that there are favorable conditions to
start the process of macroeconomic convergence between Latin American countries. The
third topic refers to the strategic role to be played by Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico
as reducing the degree of asymmetry generated by the presence of the American economy.

JEL Classification: O43; F31; E58.

This paper reviews the political and theoretical developments that lead to the
Real Plan. First, the importance of the discovery of inertial inflation is discussed. Secondly,
the impact of the choice of Fernando Henrique Cardoso for the Ministry of the Economy.
Then, the conditions for the implementation of the URV and the reasons for the superiority
of the plan in comparison to the previous attempts of stabilization of Brazilian economy.

JEL Classification: E31; E52; E58.