The objective of the proposed work is to study the similarity between the networks of senators formed based on their voting patterns and that formed based on their speeches. To achieve this, two networks need to be constructed. For the voting network, connections are established between senators, with stronger connections between those who vote together more frequently. The speech network utilizes natural language processing methods and a similarity calculation technique based on textual data. A distance calculation method is then used to compare the two networks. By conducting this analysis for various legislatures, it will be possible to evaluate the consistency between politicians' speeches and voting patterns, as well as how this relationship has evolved over time.

The objective of this work was, based on the literature on innovation advocated by Schumpeter and the analytical tools conceived by Leontief and its extensions, to identify and discuss changes in the patterns of interdependence of an economy focusing on technological changes from an input-output analysis. These changes will be related, above all, to other key variables: relative prices and sectorally disaggregated investments. To this end, an analysis of Brazil between 2000 and 2019 was conducted. 

This work analyzes the exchange rate pass-through and its determinants in emerging countries. It examines the impact of shocks on the exchange rate pass-through and identifies the source of the shocks that determine the degree of exchange rate pass-through. We show that the source of the shocks is essential to the price level response. The study also investigates the Brazilian Stock market responses conditional on the source of the shocks. The findings suggest domestic outcomes are more relevant for the Brazilian stock market return than foreign outcomes. Additionally, we show how local currency depreciation affects economic activity through trade and financial channels in different countries. We found a positive relation for the trade channel and a negative sign for the financial channel. However, in countries with more foreign currency claims than liabilities, the financial channel operates in the opposite direction, improving domestic financial conditions and boosting economic activity. This highlights the importance of banks’ foreign exchange rate position in determining the sign of the financial channel.

The main goal of this research is to verify how Law and Economics contribute to the mitigation of environmental damage, especially the one caused by mining activities. To attend this, the following specific objectives were determined:

(i)            to understand how Environmental Economics emerged and the main aspects of it;

(ii)          to examine the emergence and chronological evolution of the Brazilian Environmental Law, its legal system and the main rules on the subject;

(iii)         to verify the existence of interfaces or gaps between the two areas, Law and Economics, regarding the environmental issue;

(iv)         to analyze the National Environmental Policy and its instruments to preserve, improve and recover environmental quality.

The thesis was structured in two parts. Part 1 presents how Law and Economics embrace the environmental issue, highlighting the possible interfaces or gaps. Part 2 deals with environmental public policies, especially the mechanisms to encourage the preservation of environmental quality. This research presented evidence that the treatment of environmental damage, given its importance and urgency, requires different fronts of knowledge to be effective. Furthermore, this multidisciplinary gives rise to an alignment of efforts to face more rigorously the environmental problem. Thus, one of the main contributions of this research is the effort to unite Environmental Economics and Environmental Law, in a congruence that here was called Economic Analysis of Environmental Law.

Natural disasters have been increasing in Brazil over the last three decades. The literature shows that their impacts are intensified in regions where there is a higher concentration of poor and vulnerable people. In view of this, this thesis, whose subject of study was natural disasters, was structured into three essays. The first aimed to analyze the evolution of scientific articles relating natural disasters and economics, identifying the main subjects covered throughout the period, highlighting current themes and possible gaps, using bibliometrics. The main results show that the focus of research has been on the economic impacts of post-disasters and the main gap found was the low number of studies attempting to identify the economic causes of natural disasters. The main objective of the second study was to evaluate the spatial distribution of the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) in the FUs and its relationship with data relating to natural disasters and economic data, using the method known as Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA). The main results show the existence of spatial dependence of the SVI, as well as its correlation with the other study variables. Finally, the main objective of the third article was to analyze the relationship between environmental disasters and the population's perception of environmental problems, in Brazil and in the five major Brazilian regions, using an MQO model. The main conclusions show that the correlation exists especially in places where the incidence of monetary losses due to disasters is higher.

In this work we approach the modal transport system and the infrastructure in the southwest and south of Amazonas, aiming not only to reduce the predatory risk in the region but also to defend that the implementation of local railways favors the economic development and the population welfare. The research makes use of an economic instrument to equate the valuation of the modal cargo transport system with a view to the sustainability of the region of influence of the municipality of Boca do Acre/AM. In this sense, we also explore a future rail interconnection between the waterways of the Purus and Madeira rivers, as large fluvial areas, 

and their influence in the states of Acre and Rondônia as part of this region. Basically, the work addresses:

1º) Review of land freight transport rules, in road, rail, waterway (inland navigation) and multimodal modes;

2º) Comparative studies of transport offers by regions of the country;

3º) Creation of means that can guide the elaboration of an instrument of economic valuation.

Throughout the chapters we present economic concepts such as market failure, monopoly, positive and negative externalities and concepts of methods of economic valuation of the environment, among others.

With a data collection, we will start with a statistical and econometric analysis that makes it possible to qualify the use of freight and passenger rail transport as a more sustainable means to favor the economic and social development of the region.

The thesis is divided into three chapters.

In Chapter 1 we used a simple linear regression model, based on the Ordinary Least Squares Method (OLS) that evaluates chicken production in comparison with corn production and the distance of some cities in Acre, Rondônia and Amazonas from the capitals Porto Velho and Rio Branco and, based on distance in kilometers, we identified that distance can be a negative factor in relation to the distribution of products, but the offer of transport and improvement of infrastructure can favor local productive activities.

In the second chapter, we further explore the issue of infrastructure, particularly punctuating freight transport in the southwest and south of the Amazon and the environmental aspect, where we compare CO2 emissions by land transport modal, per million RTK, and analyze energy consumption in the freight transport in 2021. Summarizing the data, we defend the inclusion of the rail mode as a transport option in the region studied, enabling the interconnection of two important river basins.

Finally, we evaluated the southwest and south of the Amazon with a view to reducing CO2 emissions, also aiming to increase regional development by improving infrastructure. In the situation, we explored the agricultural sector of Amazonas, the average annual environmental costs in relation to the deforested area and annual environmental costs for the construction of roads and railways, in American dollars (USD), and the comparison of freight transport costs per ton and the calculation of emissions. We approach some valuation methods and signs for a possible project of economic valuation of the environment in the area of infrastructure focused on rail transport, indicating the hedonic pricing method for transport as the differential to establish a valuation model using the specified taxes.

In a context in which public policies aim to foster the growth of the agricultural sector, this study examines the impact of rural credit on soybean production in the Brazilian Midwest. Thus, this theme topic that returns to the economists' research agendas, since increasing challenges arise regarding the increase in the offer of agricultural products, in order to meet a demand encouraged by income increases in several countries. The analyzes were developed mainly from information on municipal agricultural production and the volume of rural credit destined for costing and investment activities, in the years 2009 and 2017, for the 467 municipalities in the Midwest region, which are consolidated as a national agricultural granary. The location quotient was used to verify the level of relative concentration of the rural credit market and soybean production in the municipalities. Then, the regional and rural credit effects on soybean production were estimated using an econometric regression. The results show that the granting of rural credit has positive and significant effects on soybean production, with the higher result for costing credit compared to investment credit. In this scenario, the rural credit policy remains an essential instrument for governmental stimulus to the agricultural sector. 

This study addresses the theme of peripheral insertion, dependency, and (under)development, focusing on the impact of Brazilian maquiladora industries in Paraguay. The research aims to understand how the presence of these companies in Paraguay influences the economic, social, and political dynamics of the country, highlighting the effects on the productive structure, working conditions, and power relations. To theoretically underpin this analysis, reference is made to the seminal works of CEPAL structuralism and Marxist theory of dependency. Starting from the hypothesis that the Paraguayan industrialization process through maquilas is rooted in Brazilian dependent industrialization, the study seeks to understand how these economic relationships contribute to the deepening of underdevelopment and dependency in the region. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the study proposes reflections on more equitable development alternatives for Paraguay, aiming to contribute to academic debate and the formulation of fairer and more autonomous public policies.

This work comprises three papers that explore the interplay of firm heterogeneity and market-power-driven misallocation. The first paper addresses Zipf's law, which states that the probability of a variable being larger than x is roughly inversely proportional to x. More specifically, this paper evaluates if this ``law'' holds for the distribution of firm size by the number of employees in Brazil. We use publicly available binned annual data from the Central Register of Enterprises (CEMPRE), which is held by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and covers all formal organizations. Remarkably, we find Zipf's law provides a very good, although not perfect, approximation to data for each year between 1996 and 2020 at the economy-wide level and also for agriculture, industry, and services alone. However, a lognormal distribution also performs well and even outperforms Zipf's law in certain cases. In the second paper, we develop a static Cournot model that, using mainly macroeconomic data, decomposes total factor productivity (TFP) into technology and allocative efficiency components, measured by the distance from the optimal allocation. Our approach is complementary to existing methods from the growth-accounting literature, which use highly general models that do not impose any specific market structure, but require comprehensive firm-level data that are hardly available. Applying the proposed framework to Brazil for 2000-2019, we find an upward trend in the allocative efficiency, reflecting the observed increase in the labor share and thus the estimated decrease in the aggregate markup in the country, in sharp contrast with most developed countries. Moreover, we find that the cycles in Brazilian TFP are mainly due to allocative efficiency, with the economic boom from the mid2000s being explained essentially by efficiency gains. The technology component of TFP grows much more steadily, around 0.8-0.9% per year, suggesting it reflects structural characteristics of the economy. Finally, the third paper employs the Cournot model developed in the second article in the Penn World Table, decomposing TFP from 1950 to 2019 for up to a hundred countries. Utilizing this decomposition, we revisit key facts of economic growth. On the one hand, we evaluate the world income frontier as proxied by the US, finding that changes in misallocation can significantly impact short-run growth. For example, during 2001-2007, the US witnessed notable technology improvement coupled with declining allocative efficiency, suggesting that the dot-com boom and advancements in information technology led to productivity gains but concentrated in certain firms. On the other hand, we examine the economic performance around the world. Our analysis reveals that misallocation plays a significant role in explaining cross-country income differences, particularly within low-income countries, even though a substantial unexplained portion persists. In contrast, misallocation does not clearly emerge as a primary driver of economic growth variations across countries or over time. Finally, limited support for the convergence hypothesis in allocative efficiency suggests misallocation's link with long-lasting country-specific factors, such as institutions, rather than transient phenomena like the diffusion of innovations.

The debate about the relevance of public expenditure for economic growth is extremely relevant, as it directs public policies and consequently affects the lives of the population. It has always generated great controversy, because besides economic growth the subject involves the solvency of public sector and the stability of public debt, as well as other macroeconomic topics. The importance of the subject is present at all levels of government, and it gains even greater prominence at the state level in Brazil, since it is a country characterized by a high degree of fiscal decentralization, distributing great power to the subnational governments, furthermore in recent years it has become necessary to create institutional instruments with the aim of putting Brazilian states back on a sustainable fiscal path. In this context, it is expected, along with a reduction in expenditures, a better allocation for public expenditure that are in fact effective in contributing to economic growth. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze under the framework of the model proposed by Devarajan, Swaroop and Zou (1996) which expenses are productive - contributed to long-term economic growth - and which are unproductive. I use a panel data of Brazilian states between 2013 and 2016 in which the regressors consist of the proportions of each category and function of spending and the regressand is a moving average of growth rates between t+1 and t+4. The results for the division of expenditures in current and capital expenditures confirm those found by Devarajan et al., i.e., there’s a positive relationship between the fraction of current expenditures and economic growth, and also a negative relationship with capital expenditures. For the functional division of public expenses, the results for the linear model indicate that spending on Public Security has a positive and significant effect. As an extension to the original model proposed by Devarajan et al., a possible non-linear relationship between public expenditures and economic growth was examined, as proposed by Rocha and Giuberti (2007), and the results do not found evidence that there is a non-linear relationship between the public spending and economic growth.

This dissertation aims to analyze and discuss what were the changes that occurred in the dynamics of the manufacturing industry in Brazil between the years 2010 and 2020. As a key sector of the economy, we sought to understand within the authors of Brazilian deindustrialization if Brazil fits into this process and whether it is homogeneous across sectors, and which would be the best indicators to be used. It is understood that traditional analysis indicators, such as the VTI/VPBI ratio, may be biased and not express the total movement of the sector. Therefore, in this work, an attempt was made to contribute to the debate with alternative forms to the theme of deindustrialization, contributing to the construction of indicators at sectoral levels. Thus, as a measure of performance analysis, a new industrial performance indicator relative to the sector will be used, built with a machine learning method of Principal Components Analysis (PCA), verifying the changes in the productive structure by the different levels of technological intensity and identifying whether there is a relative loss of any specific sector within the manufacturing industry. In addition to this tool, the instrument of the input-output Matrix product model (MIP) will be read, allowing a more complete analysis of the dynamics of the manufacturing industry from the creation of the Rasmussen-Hirschman indices of forward and backward chaining and the import coefficients of tradable inputs and final demand.

This study investigates, through a Structural Decomposition of Employment and Total Output, with estimated and disaggregated in 67 sectors Input-Output Matrices for the brazilian economy, the process of tertiarization in the 2010s. The study concludes that there are signs which point out to the the fact that jobs created in the tertiary sector are linked to low productivity of labour. Furthermore, the study concludes that "Informational Services" gained importance in the productive structure.

This study examines the continuity of dishonesty between the university academic environment and that conducive to corruption. The main hypothesis to be tested is the greater propensity for corruption of academically dishonest individuals. The database has 1213 responses, which sought to measure “corruptibility” and academic dishonesty through the presentation of scenarios and statements, and the use of an agreement scale in relation to the latter. Using linear and non-linear models, the results obtained point to a positive, direct and statistically significant relationship between academic dishonesty and the level of “corruptibility” of the individual and his probability of performing a corrupt act.

This paper analyses the effect of the adoption of the Fiscal Administration Modernization on brazilian states (PROFISCO I), financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), on the Tax on the Circulation of Goods and Services (ICMS) collection. Implemented in stages in the federative units since 2009, PROFISCO I reached 23 of the 27 federal unities, promoting the scanning of tax documents and improving the fiscal data processing and analysis by tax administrations. Using an adapted version of the Synthetic Difference-in-Differences (SDID) estimator (ARKHANGELSKY et al., 2021), the impacts of each adoption of the program were estimated, as well as the way in which these impacts were distributed over time. The tests were performed considering monthly and yearly data aggregation. In general, the estimation results did not have a specific pattern. In addition, very few of these results had statistical significance. The exception is the insertion of exogenous variables in the SDID models in the annual frequency data, a situation in which the effects are positive and significant. It is not evident, therefore, that adoption of the program does necessarily imply an improvement in collection at any time.

The debate on the best way to conduct monetary policy is of great relevance in Latin America, where high inflation rates have been a recurring problem in several countries. This article aims to understand the main views of this debate, with an emphasis on the role that the Central Bank must fulfill according to different economic schools of thought. Initially, we will provide a brief review of the origins and key points of the rules versus discretion debate in monetary policy. Subsequently, we will succinctly present the different economic theories of inflation. Furthermore, we will analyze the role played by monetary autorities in building credibility, discussing fixed exchange rate regimes and escape clauses, as well as the concept of Central Bank independence, inflation targeting regimes, and the importance of transparency and effective communication. Finally, we will analyze the performance of Argentina and Brazil in relation to the different monetary policies adopted between 1990 and 2018. This study will allow us to evaluate how monetary policy choices have impacted inflation control and the economic outcomes of these countries over time. In doing so, we aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of the monetary policy debate in Latin America, providing insights on best practices and lessons learned from past experiences.

In the last two decades, business Dynamics, entrepreneurship, and fluidity in the labor market have substantially decreased in developed countries. This phenomenon has profound consequences for productivity growth, wage growth, and job creation. However, there is a lack of studies analyzing these factors for developing countries. Using combined data from companies and employees provided by RAIS (Annual Social Information Report), this article explores the evolution of business dynamism in Brazil. The results show that, similar to developed countries, Brazil has also seen a decline in business dynamism, with a reduction in the creation of new companies, participation and employment share of young companies, and job reallocation. On the other hand, unlike what is observed in developed countries, there is a decrease in labor market concentration.

The order of transactions within blocks in Ethereum affect the results of smart contracts such as decentralized exchanges, thereby providing opportunities for malicious actors to profit at the users’ expense. These attacks contribute to increased costs, reduced legitimate transaction throughput, and potentially threaten consensus-layer security. For those reasons, numerous strategies have been proposed to counteract them, including on-chain commit & reveal mechanisms. These approaches separate transaction submission and finalization into distinct blocks while concealing crucial transaction details during the initial submission, making attacks more difficult. Expanding upon previous agent-based studies of frontrunning in decentralized finance, this dissertation aims to quantify the impact of delays inherent in commit & reveal mechanisms on price accuracy and the potential profit loss for traders due to reordering attacks that remain feasible despite these countermeasures.

This study analyzes the role of the State and its responsibility on the issue of food insecurity, both in regular periods and in critical situations. Thus, the general objective of this thesis is to understand how food insecurity policies are conditioned by State policies and regulation in Latin American countries. We will especially analyze the Brazilian case, advancing the analysis to the period of the pandemic. For this purpose, this case study will delimit, within the macroeconomic field, how the main lines of thought understand the role of the State and the market; how employment and income are determined in an Economy and how the problem of food insecurity is faced.

The thesis deals with Social Organizations (SOs) in the provision of public services and aims to make, in the light of the theory of games, an adequate design for the efficient provision of quality services by SOs, analyzing the existing incentives in this partnership model in Brazil. Considering the relevance of the role of SOs in the provision of public services in the country, and that, more than twenty years after the institution of the OSs model, in the provision of public services in the country, there is no crystallized pattern of implementation of this form of partnership between the State and non-profit organizations, it is necessary to undertake a review of the current incentives included in this relationship in favor of a model that favors the quality of services and the achievement of results. Thus, the present study proposes to analyze the existing incentives in this service provision system and to develop and present an incentive design that describes a successful partnership in the achievement of public services, considering the efficiency of expenditure and the quality of services. For this purpose, partnerships via state and municipal OSs were analyzed, according to fortunate and unfortunate experiences and, based on the information learned, a model was built based on the Theory of Information and Incentives with a view to theoretically specifying the strengths and vulnerabilities present in this format of partnership. A statistical study was also carried out, using the Newcomb-Benford Law, in order to test the reasonableness of the theoretical model developed. As a result of the work, regarding the possibilities of changes in the design of the mechanism that regulates this relationship, with a view to better taking advantage of the advantages and reducing the vulnerabilities of the partnership model via OSs, the following strategies stand out: changes that promote contracting with altruistic organizations; redefinition of granting subsidies and exemptions for non-profit institutions, linking them to the results delivered by the organization; institution of incentives to obtain resources via donations; changes that promote contracting with organizations that have expertise in carrying out the activity that is the object of the partnership; institution of awards granted by the government or by private institutions in partnership with the government, in recognition of the provision of excellent services; improvement of transparency rules; institution of an official and public website to record complaints of corruption and poor service provision, as well as to record praise for the work of Social Organizations that partner the State; constitution of central groups in governments, within the scope of each federal entity, specific to manage the State's partner OSs, which act as disseminators of good practices and ideas capable of generating social benefit; and inclusion of a device in the management contract that provides for a form of recognition, compensation or reimbursement of expenses incurred by OS, with own resources applied in activities directed to the object of the contract. 

Brazilian fiscal sustainability has been questioned mainly since 2013 and after several recent shocks, such as the 2014-2016 recession and COVID-19 in 2020. This is despite the fiscal framework in force in that period, including the spending cap. Fiscal sustainability can affect economy’s growth and stability, mainly due to economic agents’ conventions and the currencies’ hierarchy. Therefore, the first two chapters seek to verify the sustainability of Brazil’s public debt. In the first chapter, the debt dynamics of Brazil until 2040 is made based on its conditioning factors, including outlining scenarios based on different hypotheses. The components of debt variation “r-g” and the primary result are quite relevant in this dynamic, but the stock-flow adjustments have proved to be crucial in the last 15 years, often being the first or second most important determinant of debt variation. It cannot be concluded that debt is on an explosive trajectory, but, in more pessimistic scenarios, this could happen. In the second chapter, after reviewing the literature on different methodologies for analyzing debt sustainability, three of them were used. The first is through the stationarity analysis of the public debt. The second is through a cointegration analysis between revenues and expenses to verify whether these series move together. The third is based on estimating the Brazilian fiscal reaction function. The debt measures showed stationarity. The revenue and expenditure series were not shown to be cointegrated. The fiscal reaction function showed a significant response of the primary result to debt increases. According to these approaches, except for the second which has certain limitations, the public debt appears to be sustainable from a general perspective. However, the situation is not comfortable, also because Brazil's debt is higher than that of other emerging countries. Debt could be reduced with an increase in economic growth, with an increase in revenues, with a reduction in expenses, or with a combination of these options, and the reduction of interest rates can help in the process. In this regard, a robust fiscal framework could favor economic agents' expectations about fiscal sustainability, which would tend to reduce interest rates. Furthermore, this framework can be more growth-friendly, also benefiting debt sustainability. In the third chapter, an analysis of the literature on fiscal rules is carried out, investigating international practice. It appears that the fiscal framework in Brazil has inconsistencies. The primary result rule often produces a pro-cyclical fiscal policy that penalizes more qualified spending, harming economic growth and fiscal sustainability itself. The spending ceiling proves to be unfeasible, unless the role of the State in accordance with the 1988 Constitution is modified. Furthermore, the ceiling induces practices such as tax waivers to encourage the economy, postponement of expenses and increasingly out of cap expenses. The fiscal framework is also ineffective when we estimate the country's fiscal reaction function considering a variable on the strength of fiscal rules in Brazil. The new framework proposed in 2023 by the government makes progress, but has some problems. The adoption of a cycle-adjusted primary result rule is suggested, with the abandonment of the golden rule and the expenditure cap. The rule would resolve the pro-cyclical character of fiscal policy and would take into account the commodity cycles that affect the Brazilian economy. Another relevant point in the discussion of fiscal sustainability is the composition of fiscal adjustments and their consequences on economic growth. Fiscal multipliers could form part of a strategy to optimize fiscal policy, favoring growth and, therefore, fiscal sustainability itself. Thus, the fourth chapter, after reviewing the literature on fiscal multipliers in Brazil and in the world, seeks to estimate the multiplier of public investment by the Central Government for the period between 2008 and 2022. The method used is local projections, which has a series of advantages compared to other alternatives, and has no application for investments in Brazil. The results point to high multipliers, particularly in the first 10 to 18 months after the public investment shock. This implies the need to preserve and increase public investment in the country, which can have positive effects on economic growth and on the sustainable trajectory of debt as a proportion of GDP in the country.

The present Thesis is divided into four chapters, each of which are independent, but have common objectives; they are: to analyze how the Sraffian Supermultiplier (SSM) was formed and how it behaves considering exports as an alternative proposal to autonomous consumption and including the labor market. The first chapter seeks to present the historical context of the formation of the SSM and how the national and international debate on the subject has been treated. For this, it was exposed that the original theory was based on the work of Sraffa and Garegnani; however, it was only formalized in the mid-1990s. The model published at the time proposes that economic growth must necessarily consider that the autonomous consumption of capitalists is responsible for determining the progress of economies. However, this proposal did not satisfy all critical thinkers of post-Keynesianism who, from Lavoie's work in 2015, have generated an extensive debate. The arguments and replies aim to verify if, in fact, the theory is efficient in considering this autonomous component as a guarantor of sustainable growth and the convergence of the utilization capacity to its normal level. The second chapter proposes a new approach considering two different autonomous components, exports and consumption, generating three different cases: (I) when the growth of exports (𝑔𝑋) is equal to the growth of autonomous consumption (𝑔𝑋); (II) 𝑔𝑋 > 𝑔𝑍; and (III) 𝑔𝑋 < 𝑔𝑍. Through this new model, the stability conditions and the existence of a Hopf bifurcation were analyzed for the three cases; however, only in the last two is it possible to guarantee stability and bifurcation. Furthermore, the robustness of the model proposed in this chapter is proved through numerical simulations and, with the use of the computational approach, the results of the endogenous cycle can be guaranteed. The third chapter seeks to contribute to the literature by proposing that labor supply, in the long-run, is not necessarily perfectly elastic, so that, in a special case, it may be perfectly inelastic. This hypothesis generates a significant difference with the traditional postKeynesian approach that, primarily, does not consider that the labor supply can be limited to values lower than the full capacity of using the factors in the long term. With this, it is possible to verify how the behavior occurs on both sides, productivity and demand, under the hypothesis of restricted work. As a result, this modification showed that, in its original form, SSM cannot sustain growth without generating excess demand and increasing labor shortages. The fourth chapter makes the labor market hypothesis in the original version of the model more flexible, showing how the elasticity of labor supply (and thus, not considering any of the extreme cases above), affects productivity and aggregate demand, imposing whatever dynamics of labor supply is restrictive to the model. Thus, as can be seen, vii despite being independent, all four chapters deal with the same theme and have a common objective.

The present thesis is divided into three chapters that have the common objective of studying the evolution of productivity and markups over time for selected industries, as well as discussing the procedures for the estimation of production functions. The initial chapter provides a literature review regarding the methodologies for estimating production functions and markups at the firm level. The second chapter investigates the evolution of productivity and markups of US passenger airlines from 1995 to 2019. The results indicate that the entry of Low-Cost carriers initially increased the level of competition in the sector, resulting in a reduction in markups during the period 1996-2008. The increase in fuel prices during this period also contributed to this reduction in markup, as airlines faced difficulties in passing cost increases to ticket prices. However, the sector later underwent several mergers and acquisitions, which apparently reduced the level of competition and led to an increase in markups. Lastly, the third chapter addresses the Brazilian steel industry during the period 1990-1998, a period marked by intense sector restructuring. During this period, noteworthy events include the privatization of major steel companies, administrative rationalization, subsequent corporate consolidation, and the movement towards trade liberalization in the first half of the decade. Despite these transformations, there was no significant improvement in productive efficiency in the Brazilian steel industry during this period. On the other hand, there was a substantial reduction in the dispersion of both productivity and markups, indicating an improvement in allocative efficiency within the sector. Thus, despite the significant increase in market concentration during the period, market power decreased.

In this thesis, we try to understand how inequalities manifest themselves in the territory in terms of economic complexity. In addition to the focus on regional productive structure, we seek to understand to what extent economic complexity and its spatial spill-overs influence GDP per capita growth and socio-economic development in Brazilian microregions. The research is conducted using the theoretical framework of structuralism and elements from the literature on economic complexity, emphasizing points of convergence that contribute to understanding regional development. By using formal labor market data, the Economic Complexity Index (ECI) proposed by Hidalgo and Hausmann (2009) is adapted to better capture the internal dynamics of the Brazilian economy. Thus, Regional Economic Complexity Indices (ECI-r) are proposed and calculated, and they are used to measure the productive structure of subnational entities. The temporal scope encompasses the years 2007 to 2020, and the empirical investigations cover Brazilian states and microregions. In addition to computing ECI-r, we innovate in this thesis innovates by testing the empirical validity of this indicator for Brazilian microregions. Furthermore, it contributes to the literature on economic complexity by considering regional and spatial dynamics through empirical analysis using spatial econometric panel data models. The results indicate that economic complexity in Brazilian states and microregions does not change significantly in the period between 2007 and 2020, supporting the understanding that structural changes occur in the long term. On the other hand, the geographical dimension points to the existence of inequalities between Brazilian states and microregions, which are generally not mitigated by gains in economic complexity. Spatial analysis suggests evidence of positive spatial autocorrelation for economic complexity, meaning that the dynamics of ECI-r in a specific microregion should not be understood in isolation. Finally, spatial econometric analysis shows a positive association between economic complexity and GDP per capita growth and socio-economic development indicators.

There is great interest in improving inflation forecasts for better planning and decision making by households, the private sector, and policy makers. However, even outperforming univariate models can be a difficult task. We use machine learning methods and a large data set to forecast industrial goods inflation on Brazilian IPCA for horizons up to t+12, considering the time span between January 2007 and August 2021. We assess the forecasts of four regularized linear methods and two nonlinear tree based methods, with random walk and AR models as benchmarks, in a pseudo out-of-sample framework. We also assess the results without unemployment data as regressors, considering the discussions around the relevance of unemployment data on inflation forecasting. The nonlinear methods outperform the regularized linear methods and the benchmarks. We also find evidence that the variable selection mechanisms of random forest and gradient tree boosting perform better than on linear regularized models to forecast industrial goods inflation. Random forest stands out in terms of forecasting error and as the method that better controls the bias-variance trade-off. It also displays a more uniform performance than gradient tree boosting across the forecasting horizons.

This work analyzes the link between wage expenditure among Premier League football clubs and their performance in the league. The main purpose is to check if higher wages imply on better performance on the pitch and to quantify this impact. I test three different econometric specifications for the two performance metrics chosen (team’s ranking and points percentage). The regarded specifications are Fixed Effects, System GMM and Exogenous Instrumental Variable System GMM. In the end I am able to observe a positive relation between wages and performance and also check an interesting behavior for the roster variable. The models adopted in this research present a smaller group of instruments in comparison to ”Aggregate wages of players and performance in Italian Serie A”, which is the academic paper that motivated this research. The smaller group of instruments allow me to have a better control over instrument proliferation and overfitting.

Mining activities have been present in Brazil since the colonization period. It has influenced social and economic transformations. Indigenous people have inhabited the Amazon and other regions since before Brazil's discovery. Their territories are known to be mineral sources and have inevitably attracted miners. Does indigenous land tenure impact mining? In this paper, we follow the Institutional and Organizational Analysis framework to build our hypothesis, and use the PPTAL program to run a propensity score matching and estimate the impact of homologation on mining. We find that the indigenous territories that were treated (homologated) have fewer mining requests compared to the control (not-homologated) group after the program ended

The benefits of trade liberalization have been shown in economic literature for decades. Nonetheless, there is a substantial lack of data, especially on a firm level, to support a deeper analysis on the impacts of these trade policies, but the development of production function methods that rely on fewer data have made this analysis possible. Therefore, studies have show up some unexpected results of trade liberalization processes on firms. This study replicates the methodology used to analyze indian trade liberalization, making use of the estimation of production functions to estimate the behavior of markups on Brazilian steel industries during the trade liberalization that happened over the 90s. The Brazilian steel industry undergone an aggressive trade reform and privatization, and yet no changes on relative prices can be seen. Also, some report on the period have show a rise on profits and the privatization data show that the sector suffered a concentration, caused by the privatization process where some companies bought many different industries. The production function and markups for the sector were estimated for the years between 1990 and 1998. Despite the alert point mentioned, the estimated markup have been show to decrease on the period, indicating that the trade reform had results as expected from the economic literature.

: In 2015 Brazil formalized the commitment among the members of the United Nations to universalize access to water and sewage by 2030 and, for that, it will have partial management assistance from the private sector. Through the National Sanitation Information System (SNIS) in the period 2006 to 2019, we will examine the incentives for municipalities to switch to private management. Using Synthetic Differences in Differences estimation, we assess sanitation quality indicators to measure the difference between private and public management. The results indicate an increase in providers' productivity and investments after the privatization processes; we did not find a statistically significant change in other indicators.

ABSTRACT

The Economics of Restoration is an interdisciplinary field that aims to integrate concepts and tools from the fields of ecologic and environmental economics and restoration ecology. Studies that focus on how to make better use of economic concepts and practices in restoration programs and projects are in great demand given a large number of areas in need of restoration, and the scarcity of resources. The contribution of this thesis is to investigate the advances and understand the challenges faced by the Economics of Restoration field. Five chapters, written as individual papers, were developed to conduct the investigation. A bibliometric analysis opens the thesis by mapping the literature and identifying the main topics of research, what are the basis of the field and the challenges to date. From the bibliometric analysis, we were able to identify the state of the art in how costs and benefits of restoration are being measured, incorporated, and communicated in the literature. This is presented in chapter 2. In chapter 3 we turn to the main topics that need to be further addressed to strengthen the decision-making processes when it comes to restoration actions. And, in the final two chapters, we present two case studies to investigate how economic and ecologic objectives can be integrated into restoration projects to account for different aspects of restoration areas. Of special interest was if economic activities could be used to fund restoration practices to enhance ecological resilience. In the thirty years of development of the Economics of Restoration field, much progress has been made regarding tools and instruments of restoration. The current main challenge is to improve communication and sharing of information between policymakers, society, researchers, and other stakeholders involved in restoration. The benefits of restoration are not yet fully shared with or understood by society, especially by the local communities. Regarding projects and programs, balancing ecological and economic outcomes is a challenge that needs to be addressed early in the planning of restoration. The economic viability of projects is tenuous given the complexity and specificity of restoration, and there is little room to maximize only ecological outcomes since economic activities must be incorporated into projects to balance the costs of restoration. This thesis shows how modelling the priorities of interest is crucial and we believe that this work is a useful tool and information source for policymakers and researchers in the field.

In this thesis, I provide a critical assessment of the current hegemonic order, highlights its contradictions and structural flaws, and most importantly opens the door to a debate analyzing authoritarian neoliberalism, one of the most disturbing contemporary developments. All this from the perspective of political economy without separating the current issues from their historical roots. The literature on authoritarian neoliberalism has increased recently, but it often tends to focus on a specific case and pay limited attention to authoritarian connections to the neoliberal path as a whole. For this reason, I sought to build a deep discussion that addresses the recent shift towards authoritarian neoliberalism without neglecting the connection of this shift with the historical course of neoliberalism. Thus, the thesis follows a chronological path that starts from a point in the past and leads us towards the recent crisis that struck neoliberalism with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although authoritarian neoliberalism is a current issue crystallized in the wake of the global financial crisis, I argue that its explanation depends on our awareness of past neoliberal transformations and the contradictions inherent in the core of today's dominant thought. Taking this into account allows emphasizing the critical role of the state in building and consolidating the neoliberal order, thus avoiding the fall into the mistake of inaccurate reductionisms that show neoliberalism as an anti-state ideology. I was keen to include experiences from different countries and reviewed the various manifestations of authoritarian liberalism revealed by the experiences of countries such as the United States, Turkey, Hungary and others. It also provided an assessment of the Brazilian experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, thus combining his critical discussion with contemporary analysis of a practical case that has recently sparked interest.

Due to the deficit in social security system in many economies, structural reforms in the current pay-as-you-go system are commonly discussed and the establishment of a fully funded system is a central topic. In this case, it is necessary to analyse if both systems are seen as substitutes ou complements for each other. In the case the systems are seem as substitutes, then there is an oppotunity for future pension reforms to implement a systems’ transition. Even more, in the case a fully funded system is stablished, a return rate needs to be set to capitalize the contributions, and the eventual surplus of the capitalized social security needs to be directed. Therefore, assuming that the national government is the only one who can set the return rate of the fully funded system, that the eventual surplus generated in this system should be distributed to the pay-as-you-go system, that the government’s goal is to maximize the social welfare and the newly workers will be able to choose to which system to contribute, we propose a model to calculate the optimal return rate that need to be settled by government and we estimated the proportion of the population that will choose to contribute to each social security system.