This was John Kenneth Galbraith’s keynote speech in the opening session of the International Colloquium John Kenneth Galbraith, The Spirit f Innovation, sponsored by the Université du Littoral. Paris, September 23-25, 2004. Initially Prof. Galbraith read a short letter from his father where he explained that age and medical restraint prevented his attendance at this greater tribute.

JEL Classification: B31.

Capitalism is coming from the modern industry phase to the post-modern industry phase. In modern industry, as was said in Capital, the main material content of capital relation was physical assets (systems of machines); in post-modern industry, the main forms of capital are impressed on intangible assets (scientific knowledge and technologies). As Marx in Grundrisse previewed it, now capital appropriates not only live labor, but general intellect too. From this point of view, neoliberalism and capital globalization are not viewed here, immediately, as results of financial capital domination, but as expressions of capital and labor contradiction in the post-large scale industry.

JEL Classification: B51, P16, O34.

 This Paper Intends To Describe The Main Causes Of The Virtuous Economic Expansion Of The Golden Age Of Capitalism (1948-1973). The Study Highlights That Some Important Institutional And Political Factors, Defined Under The Auspices Of The Cold War, Were Decisive To Allow The Nation States To Act In Favour Of Full Employment. 

JEL Classification: N14, N24, N34.

The main purpose of the paper is to test a model that explains variation in the ratio of expenditure with personnel in Brazilian states from 1965 to 1994. The independent variables include indicators of the political environment in the distinct states, such as number of veto players and level of political competition. Furthermore, variables that model the business electoral cycle and institutional changes during the period were also included in the model. The budgetary, electoral and legislative data were collected for 22 states from 1965 to 1995. OLS Regression with panel corrected standard errors was used to test the main hypotheses. Results indicate that the impact of political variables appears to be conditioned by the broader national institutional framework. During the authoritarian period expenditures with personnel were influenced by the electoral business cycle and by the presence of more than one party in the state legislature. In the democratic period, electoral vulnerability of state legislators and the electoral cycle are the most important political factors influencing expenditures with personnel.

JEL Classification: H72.

 This paper analyses the main effects of the Brazilian trade liberalization on the technical efficiency of the manufacturing industry and the trade pattern. The principal empirical findings suggest the following results for the 1990´s: i) expressive gains in labor productivity and reduction of the average real costs for most sectors of the manufacturing industry between 1988 and 1998; ii) the trade pattern were mostly driven by import changes; iii) on average, industries which showed the greatest gains in technical efficiency did not translated them into competitiveness gains in the global markets; and iv) on average, there were dynamic efficiency losses once, on the first hand, major gains in international competitiveness were located in the traditional sectors and, on the other hand, industries that made the major investments in Research and Development (R & D) were the same that had significant sectoral trade deficits throughout the 1990’s.

JEL Classification: F14, 012.

Since 1990, the problem of employment in Brazil has been associated to the model of regulation of the labor relations in a context of internationalization and reorganization of the national economy. This perspective proposes the flexibility of the model of social protection established in the National Constitution. This essay has the objective to point that the national problem of employment doesn’t explain by the actual social regulation model. It is product of the process of formation and regulation of the labor market established in the 40´s of the last century and of the way as this process was articulated with a particular trajectory of development of the Brazilian economy in the period 1930-80. In the last 20 years, the stagnation of the Brazilian economy in a context of reorganization of the productive structure has aggravated the employment problem.

JEL Classification: J23, P21, O54.

Bankruptcy law is an important economic institution because of its effects on credit and, consequently, on financial and economic development. This fact has led several countries to revise their law. This article presents an overview on the topic focusing in Brazil. Its main points are: credit in Brazil is not compatible with the country level of development; there is evidence that Brazil is among the countries where legal protection to creditors is worst; the international experience shows that changes in the bankruptcy law affects the market for credit; and the Brazilian law is extremely outdated.

JEL Classification: E51; G33; K42.

This paper aims at discussing critically Persio Arida’s proposal of adopting currency convertibility in Brazil. Arida (2003a, 2003b, 2004) points out that currency convertibility would make for lower domestic interest rates in Brazil, as well as for lower interest rates for the Brazilian external bonds. Besides, currency convertibility would stabilize capital flows, as well as exchange rate volatility in Brazil. We argue in this paper that this proposal does not lead necessarily either to less exchange rate volatility, or to lower interest rates. Besides, we close the paper by presenting some alternatives in terms of capital controls in Brazil.

JEL Classification: E0; E6; F4.