This paper surveys and evaluates the Brazilian experience of privatization. A
New consensus emerges in the Collor Government, favouring trade liberalization and privatization.
The import substitution strategy is exhausted, and the dependency and structuralist
ideas are in crisis, but this does not mean that the liberal ideas are now dominant. New
market-oriented strategy has rather a pragmatic character.

JEL Classification: O1; O5.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the negotiation of Brazil’s foreign debt
within a strategy of economic growth. It draws a general profile of the main characteristics
of Brazilian indebtedness, emphasizing the gross errors of economic policy made during the
period 1974/89. The paper presents a fairly simple model of foreign-debt dynamics and describes
the framework of debt-negotiation program aims at fighting inflation and restoring
economic growth.

JEL Classification: F30; F34.

The purpose of this note is not to describe the evolution of the debt crisis, to
apportion responsibility for its occurrence or persistence, or to prescribe remedies for ending
it (though these topics will be touched on incidentally), but to extract lessons from this unfortunate
historical episode. I focus on what I perceive to be the five principal lessons.

JEL Classification: F30; F34.

This paper examines the controversy between Malthus and Ricardo about the
determinants of the rate of profit. It suggests a stylized model which allows a differentiation
between the “limiting principle” and the “regulating principle” Malthus proposed. It also
comments on selected quotations from texts by Malthus, Ricardo and Keynes.

JEL Classification: B1.

The purpose of this paper is to re-assess the role of uncertainty in Keynes’s macroeconom-ics by exploring the concepts of probability, rational belief and rational action, as they ap-pear in the Treatise on Probability. Three main claims are then made. First, there exist sub-stantial links between the conception of human rationality in the Treatise on Probability and that in the General Theory. Secondly, Keynes attributes considerable importance to the ration-al elements involved in the process of investment decision and suggests that they normally lead to macroeconomic stability. Instability is thus explained by a specific institutional shock to an economy, which is already prone to crises due to the imperfect working of certain key markets. From this perspective, the post-Keynesian literature is misleading in blaming uncer-tainty for capitalist instability and unemployment. Thirdly, following Keynes’s hints, I sug-gest that an institutionalist research programme would provide a firm basis to model invest-ment behaviour under uncertainty in a more realistic way than usually done.

JEL Classification: B3; B4.

This article deals with some of the elements on the debate on the reform of the
Brazilian State, which is taking place at the present time. It takes it to account the Keynesian
origin of the contemporary interventionism and the trajectory of the implementation of
national program of industrialization. This program was, at first, discussed in the l930’s and
later, in the 1940’s, dealt theoretically by CEPAL. It deals with the bottlenecks created by the
industrialization and argues that the crisis of the 1980 were due to the contradictory nature
of the financial crisis of the public sector. Finally, it proposes some basic ideas for the reform
of the state as a condition to a new strategy of development.

JEL Classification: N40.

The recent integration affords are being hampered by the inconsistency of macroeconomic
policies. In this paper an exercise of shared sovereignty is discussed. A special
emphasis is given to exchange rate. The idea is to achieve macroeconomic stability.

JEL Classification: E6.

The end of the Cold War and the revolutionary transformation of the Second
World have provoked a pessimistic wave about the destiny of the Third World, now called
“South”. The death of the State Socialism does not necessarily determine a future of misfortunes
to that group of countries, including Brazil. Some “South” countries will escape from
an obscure destiny, but others will not, depending upon the competence of their elites and of
their political forces in order to define and implement a national development project. This
article deals with the context in which Brazil and Latin America are after the Cold War.

JEL Classification: O1; O5.

This paper estimates the impact of regional export structures on the risk and
return of regional export portfolios. The Markowitz model is used to assess the risk and
return of export products structures of three Brazilian economic regions. More specifically,
the paper tests the hypothesis that economic regions with highly diversified export structure
will observe more efficient export portfolios than those with only moderate or no portfolio
diversification. In order to test this hypothesis, we used the export structures of three
Brazilian economic regions: the South, the Southeast and the Northeast. The results show
that portfolio theory can provide policymakers with an alternative way of assessing export
earnings instability and export promotion strategies.

JEL Classification: F1; F3.

What was the driver for the success of the late industrialization on East Asian?
The active position of the State and the lending and learning process regarding technology
seems to be the right answer. This paper discusses these two hypotheses comparing them to
others.

JEL Classification: L52; 040.

This paper deals with the reduction of prices in agriculture trying to make sense
of their relation to inputs’ prices. We understand that even with the reduction in final prices,
the equally important reduction in inputs prices acted to soften the losses and may help
agriculture to regain productivity.

JEL Classification: Q11.

After some considerations on the historical aspects of South Korea, this note
deals with the introduction and the importance of robotics for the great development that
the country faced though the last decades.

JEL Classification: L63.