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The Brazilian Constitution enacted in 1988 demands a complementary law to regulate the financial system in Brazil. This paper analyses the existing official project focusing on macroeconomic stabilization and independence of thc Central Bank.

In this article, the author discusses financial questions deemed as key issues, and that should be carefully analyzed in highway privatization projects within the Brazilian reality. Expected returns, compared tariffs, costs, demand and capital structure are the core on this work. The author performs a simulation exercise based on one of the cases most frequently remembered as a candidate to privatization in the State of São Paulo: the system comprising the Anchieta and the Imigrantes Highways, which make a connection between the City of São Paulo and the City of Santos, on the coast. The author’s conclusions indicate that it is a feasible undertaking, provided that some restrictions/innovations are included in its design.

This article analyses the critical statements of French authors like Carlo Benetti and Jean Cartelier on Marxist theory of value and money. It consists of a critical research of the standpoints presented to deny the commodity character of the labor force and of the money, as well as the positive proposal presented by them.

Debt for nature swaps generally involve significant fiscal costs. As for the benefits for the developing country and its government, they are potentially ambiguous. The projects financed by the swaps typically involve the protection of exotic flora and fauna in which a considerable part of the social returns are externalized to the rest of the world. This, coupled with high social rates of discount in crisis-ridden developing countries, could mean that thc benefits accrued to the international community actually end up exceeding those perceived by the population at large in debtor country! Hence the need to reorient the international agenda for swaps so that the environmental projects financed by them have a more direct impact on local population, e.g., control of urban air pollution and sewerage and industrial contamination of rivers and seas. Meanwhile, in view of the great international externalities involved, the protection of exotic flora and fauna could be financed through straight donations that do not involve fiscal costs for the debtor country.

The article discusses the impacts the unification of EC markets from 1993 may have upon Brazilian manufactured exports. Although the focus falls on the impact of Europe92, the analysis also encompasses the effects of the broader process of expansion of the European economic space, with the formation of the European Economic Zone (EEZ), between the EC and EFTA, as well as EC’s inevitable integration with Eastern Europe. The main finding is that the reduction of NBTs stemming both from Europe-92 and the formation of the EEZ will have a net positive effect on Brazilian manufactured exports. However, it is also argued that Brazil is threatened both by indirect effects derived from some aspects of policy harmonization, as well as by the possibility of being discrimi-nated against by more favoured EC partners of the ACP and the periphery of Europe.

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