Until 1973 the postwar international payments system was, in large measure,
shaped by Keynes’s thesis that flexible exchange rates and free international capital mobility
are incompatible with global full employment and rapid economic growth in an era of multilateral
free trade (Felix, 1977-8). This resulted in a stable international monetary system
that permitted the global economy to experience unparalleled economic growth and prosperity
despite widespread capital controls and international financial market regulations.
Since 1973, the financial system has grown progressively more fragile with recurrent and
increasingly stressful international debt and currency liquidity crises threatening the stability
of the global economy.

JEL Classification: E12.

In this article we built external orientation indicators for the Brazilian manufacturing
industry. These indicators allow us to better understand the changes on trade orientation
during the 1990s and the effect of an external shock, considering both the revenue (external
sales and domestic competition with imports) and the cost (imported inputs) channels.
The study shows that the net external orientation coefficient for the manufacturing sector
as a whole dropped by 11.3% between 1989 and 1998, diminishing the positive effect that
currency devaluation would have on the manufacturing sector.

JEL Classification: F14; F60.

With the demise of development economics in the 1970s, the academic discipline
of economics had little specific theorizing on development to offer practioners and proffered
instead universal, liberal nostrums of free trade and free markets (Wing, 1990). These universal
prescriptions evolved into the first catalogued Washington consensus in the 1980s on
the urgency of market-oriented reforms in developing countries (Williamson, 1990). In the
1990s, a new connection formed between an emerging institutionalist subfield in economics
and the next consensus in Washington after the first generation of market-oriented reforms.
The opening of the third annual meetings of the International Society for New Institutional
Economics (ISNIE) at World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C. in September 1999
symbolized this new connection.

JEL Classification: B25; O10.

This paper examines the similarities and contrasts of strategies adopted by the
larger South American economies — Argentina, Brazil and Chile — in dealing with the
problems raised by the fall of their export revenues coupled with the almost complete interruption
of the inflow of foreign capital in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The characteristics
of foreign indebtedness of these countries in the late 1920s and the ways the external shock
affected their balance of payments from 1928-29 to 1933-34 are also considered. Their
differentiated adjustment processes including debt adjustment schemes adopted during the
1930s and early 1940s are compared. Permanent debt settlements are described and discussed.
Finally, it considers the links between growth performance of these countries and
differentiated foreign debt policies.

JEL Classification: F34; N16.

This article examines the new conditions created by the Brazilian Automotive
Regime since the second semester of 1995. First, it discusses the main controversies surrounding
the implementation of a new modality of industrial policy on the part of the federal
government and the incentives granted by the state governments to the companies of
the automobile sector in Brazil. Second, this article sketches a picture of the situation of
this industrial sector, with emphasis on the changes that are happening in the relationships
between assembling industry and auto parts industry. ln the context of the new climate of
competition created by the tendencies towards globalization of markets and by the new
guidelines of the industrial politics in place, this article shows that new modes of governance
in the relations between the local “montadoras” and their providers are replacing the old
competitive strategies.

JEL Classification: L62; L52.

The Mercosur countries face the challenge of consolidating the progress made
in the integration process and deepening this process in the direction of building a true
common market. There is an issue that, in this sense, takes on special importance on the
negotiating agenda: the harmonization of microeconomic policies (industrial, commercial, technological and regional). The purpose of this paper is to analyze the way in which the
harmonization of these policies was developed in the case of the European Community
to extract useful lessons to face this process in Mercosur. An attempt is made to analyze
how the conflicts generated around the following dilemmas were resolved in said experience:
which policies should converge to ensure fair game rules in the regional market? What
methodology (explicit harmonization or institutional competence) is the most adequate to
ensure this convergence? What philosophy should guide the implementation of community
microeconomic policies? What is the role of directly supranational institutions in the harmonization
of policies and in the audit of national policies?

JEL Classification: L52; F15.

The paper’s central argument is that good criticism to von Mises’ epistemology
must consider the concepts and world interpretation assuming his own philosophical
ground and that we can only try to refute it by showing some inconsistency or weakness
in its presumptions. For this task, at beginning we show Mises to layman public, and we
explain with detail his epistemological content. ln the end we write about the irrelevance of
some critical refutations, and we give examples of good internal criticism.

JEL Classification: B25; B31.

The objective of this article is to analyze the spin-off in the Brazilian military industry.
Two important points can be observed in the existing literature: first, the verification
that the spin-off has not occurred in the Brazilian case; and second, the limited number of
case studies on this subject. This article, which is based to a large extent on the author previous
work, argues that there has been technology transference from the Brazilian military
industry to the car industry. By taking into consideration the development of the Brazilian
military industry, it is possible to identify four factors which are responsible for the promotion
of the spin-off: the origin of technology; the way in which the development of this
technology occurs; the relationship between the military and civil sectors involved in the
transference of technology; and finally the industrial mobilization.

JEL Classification: O31; O32; L60.

This paper analyzes the main models used to measure market power by means
of brand data and verifies the advantages of the model developed by Cotterill, Franklin
and Ma over the others. This is a very flexible model which can be used to any conjectural
assumptions and allows the measurement of both unilateral and collusive market power.
Several ways of application are suggested, and very promising perspectives are recognized
for this type of study.

JEL Classification: D43; L13; L25.

Since the implementation of a floating exchange system by the Brazilian economic
authorities in mid-1999, the trajectory of the real exchange rate has been characterized
by extreme volatility, inherent in such a system. The Brazilian financial market, however,
has the advantage to possess a reasonably liquid derivative market which can contribute to a
less turbulent ‘relationship’ with a floating exchange regime. Nevertheless, any possible benefits
from this market to the Brazilian economy would require: the routine use of financial
derivatives by economic agents in their business management, the elimination of any restriction
to access to derivative markets by foreign investors, and the improvement of supervisory
and regulatory mechanisms.

JEL Classification: E42; E58; F31.