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Four years after the breakdown of the International Coffee Agreement this paper is an attempt to evaluate the position of the Brazilian government. Brazil was, in 1989, the country very much against the renewal of the agreement. To do that an examination was made of the empirical evidence during the last thirty years. Such evidence showed losses in Brazil’s coffee production, exports and market share. In practice, Brazil was the only country to carry the burden of the coffee agreement. The other countries profited at Brazil’s costs. It is also shown the large comparative advantage of coffee production in Brazil and that adjustments should be made in domestic policies.

Political Economy began to be known by Brazilian intellectuals by the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. During this colonial period, Brazil went through a series of changes brought about by the transfer of the Portuguese Royal Family to Rio de Janeiro. These changes affected Political Economy which began to be developed within the government and acquired different characteristics than those of European Political Economy of the same time. This article presents data related to this diffusion, the absortion of Political Economy by the State and to examine the specificity it takes up in Brazil as a consequence of the role the Portuguese government gives to it.

The paper approaches aspects of the political economy of trade liberalization. It examines the reasons for the establishment of protectionist practices, the social costs of such practices and the relation between distributive conflicts and protectionism, emphasizing the formation of distributive coalitions. We apply these concepts and ideas to the Brazilian case in order to examine the distributive effects of the protectio-nist structure which prevailed until the late 1980’s and the potential changes over the 1990’s. Finally, we develop a macroeconomic model to explore the effects of liberalization on the functional distribution of income and aggregate demand.

The article examines the labor supply conditions for the industrial sector in Rio de Janeiro City and São Paulo state in the first two decades of this century, during which period São Paulo surpassed Rio as the leading industrial area of Brazil. It is shown that São Paulo had a comparative advantage over Rio in labor costs; the rural-urban wage differential. It is argued that this advantage can be related to the larger presence of immigrant workers in São Paulo industry; the ample supply of immigrant labor is thus seen as a major cause of the relative growth of São Paulo industrial production, in the period.

In spite the considerable advance made to the literature on development by the recent United Nations attempt to measuring “human development”, this paper argues that, specially in the context of developing countries, where poverty and inequality are of substantial order, these two dimensions should be integrated and added to the index proposed by that organism. This is accomplished by a new measure that simultaneously take into account indices of poverty, income distribution and human development. Empirical results show that the extension suggested is important and more appropriate for policy purposes.

This paper shows that income distribution can change dramatically during the business cycle. This finding contrasts with the widespread belief that income distribu-tion changes slowly in the absence of wars and revolutions. Macroeconomics explains in good measure short-run variations in income distribution: inequality varies cycli-cally and it increases with inflation and unemployment. Furthermore, at least in Brazil, the minimum wage legislation does not contribute to a better income distribution. There is also evidence that populist policies which lead to real appreciation cannot be justified as supporting the poor. Thus, the best way to help the poor is demonstrably not through the manipulation of prices and wages, but probably through macro stability and a transparent tax-transfer system.

The title of the paper alerts the reader to the fact that while the role of money in Keynes’s earlier work is alluded to, it is mostly the monetary contribution of the General Theory (to which the author is particularly partial) which is surveyed here. The General Theory represents a breakthrough in monetary theory both broadly and narrowly defined. Money in the General Theory is all-pervasive. It is essential in the sense of Radner and Hahn. Money is also essential in allowing Keynes to break away, more profoundly than before, from equilibrium economics. Monetary theory narrowly defined also represents a breakthrough: speculative demand is a revolutionary concept, driving a wedge between the rate of interest and the rate of profit. The concept is elaborated and compared with Hicks’s treatment. The article ends with a brief section on the finance motive and endogenous money.

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