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The Brazilian municipalities show an enormous inequality on its development level. Even within the states considered relatively prosperous, there are huge internal disparities on income levels. The richest Brazilian municipality"s GDP per capita is about 190 times greater than the poorest municipality"s, according to IBGE (2000) database. A possible explanation for this phenomenon relies on institutional theory. Many theoretical and empirical studies, mainly based on crosscountry data, emphasize the role played by institutions on the determination of long run development. Nevertheless, there still is little research concerning the income differences within the national territory and its connection to institutional quality. The literature points out that institutions matter for the level of economic development because of their effects on political power distribution, generation of economic opportunities, innovation, human capital accumulation, and so on. Based on this assumption, the present study main goal is to analyze the effects of Brazilian municipalities" institutional quality on their GDP per capita levels. The results indicate that institutions are relevant and its importance is greater for large municipalities. On the other hand, human capital human capital is more important to small municipalities. To address the endogeneity problem inherent to the relationship between institutions and development, we employ the 2SLS method.

ResumoO capital humano, a produtividade e o capital físico são considerados os principais fatores na determinação do PIB per capita das economias. Conforme a abordagem neoclássica, a acumulação de capital humano explica praticamente um terço da variação do rendimento per capita entre os países. No entanto, ainda persistem discussões sobre as formas em que esse fator afeta o PIB per capita. O objetivo do presente estudo é comparar duas formas funcionais da função de produção para os Estados brasileiros: as propostas por Solow (1956) e por Mincer (1974. Também foram feitas estimações do retorno marginal da educação, além da realização de uma análise da importância do capital humano na determinação do PIB per capita utilizando diferentes métodos de estimação, no período 1980-2002. Os resultados rejeitaram a especificação neoclássica com inclusão do capital humano em favor da minceriana. Adicionalmente, o retorno marginal estimado da educação foi de 15%, e os resultados empíricos sustentam a teoria de que o capital humano é um dos principais fatores na determinação do nível de renda. Palavras-Chavecapital humano, crescimento econômico, função de produção minceriana, retorno da educação AbstractHuman capital, productivity and physical capital are considered the main factors in the economies' GDP per capita determination. According to the neoclassical approach, human capital accumulation explains about a third of the variation in per capita income across countries. However, there is no consensus on the ways in which human capital influences GDP per capita. The present study's goal is to compare two production functions functional forms for the Brazilian States: the one developed by Solow (1956) and the one developed by Mincer (1974). The marginal return of education also has been estimated and we have analyzed the relevance of human capital on GDP per capita determination through a variety of estimation methods, for the 1980-2002 period. The empirical results rejected the neoclassical specification with human capital in favor of the mincerian's specification. The estimated marginal return of education is 15% and the empirical findings support the theory that states that human capital is one of the main factors affecting income level.

O objetivo do presente artigo é analisar a relação das taxas de câmbio, de juros e do crescimento mundial sobre o total das exportações brasileiras e de sua composição. As três variáveis mencionadas afetam não somente o montante exportado por um país, mas também sua composição. Adicionalmente, a estrutura dessa composição possui efeitos na própria dinâmica das exportações. O setor exportador, por sua vez, tem um papel-chave sobre o desempenho da economia brasileira, na medida em que as restrições externas ao crescimento têm se apresentado como um problema recorrente nos últimos 25 anos, o que ajuda a explicar o seu fraco desempenho. Essa importante relação entre as duas variáveis justifica um estudo mais detalhado da composição do setor exportador da economia brasileira.

Structural changes and labor market in Brazil. In the present article, we attempt to identify the sources of the changes in the labor schooling level in the three main sectors of the Brazilian economy: manufacturing, services and agriculture. It was verified that, despite the changes in the product and employment among sectors, mainly in the 1990s, the relative demands for qualified workers has not experimented significant changes. Moreover, in the periods in which schooling has increased more, the workers' wage has decreased more. This fact suggests that the increase in labor qualification was mainly due to the increase of this factor supply. The structural changes had contributed, in general, in a marginal and negative way to labor force level of qualification demand in all the three sectors.

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Resumo: O presente artigo apresenta evidências empíricas de que o Programa Bolsa Família teve um papel preponderante na eleição da candidata do Partido dos Trabalhadores, Dilma Rousseff, em 2010, e que esse efeito foi superior ao do desempenho econômico favorável nos dois mandatos do governo Lula. Utilizando dados agregados por município, os resultados, sob o modelo de regressão beta, mostram que esse cená-rio se mantém mesmo quando se leva em conta outras variáveis de cunho econômico, social e político e as especificidades regionais não observáveis. As estimativas obtidas apontam também para uma votação mais expressiva em Dilma nos municípios com menor nível de escolaridade, dando suporte à hipótese presente na literatura de que essas populações tendem a ser mais dependentes do Estado e, portanto, a primar pela manutenção do poder vigente. Os resultados obtidos são robustos a diferentes especificações. Palavras-chave: Eleições presidenciais. Bolsa família. Regressão beta.Abstract: This paper presents empirical evidence that the Bolsa Família cash transfer program played a major role in the election of Dilma Rousseff, the Workers' Party candidate, in 2010 presidential election. Our analysis indicates that this effect was more relevant than the impact of the favorable economic scene during the two Lula's mandates. Employing a sample of 5.564 Brazilian municipalities, the results obtained from Beta Regression models point out that this statement holds even when we take into account other economic, social and political variables, as well as unobservable regional

a economia brasileira puxada pela demanda agregada José lUis oReiRo lUCiano naKaBashi gUsTavo José de gUiMaRães e soUza* The Brazilian economy pulled by the aggregate demand. This article aims to present the demand-led growth theory and some empirical evidences for a demand-led growth regime in Brazil. First of all, we will do a brief review of the theory of demand led-growth, based in the seminal work of Kaldor (1988), for whom long-run growth is determined by the growth rate of consumption expenditures and the growth rate of exports. Based in the empirical methodology developed by Atesoglu (2002), we run some econometric tests for the hypothesis of demand-led growth for Brazilian economy. The results of such tests shown that near of 85% of GDP growth in Brazil in the period 1991-2005 is explained by variables at the demand side of the economy. Besides that, based in the methodology developed by Ledesma and Thirwall (2002), we shown that natural rate of growth for Brazilian economy is endogenous, increasing during boom times. This means that appears to be no restrictions in the supply side of the economy for a faster growth of Brazilian economy. Finally, we argue that a necessary condition for a sustained growth of Brazilian economy is the adoption of a export-led growth model. For such it is necessary to put an end on the actual over-valuation of real exchange rate