Brazilian Journal of Political Economy

Preschool expansion in Brazil: an analysis of historical determinants

Talita Silva, Thais Barcellos, Guilherme Hirata, João Batista Araujo e Oliveira — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0300

The school attendance of 4-5 years-old children raised from 3.7% to 78.9% between
1970 and 2018 in Brazil. This paper analyses the preschool expansion process in Brazil
in the last 50 years, documenting the preschool attendance and discussing how sociodemographic
and institutional factors usually associated with the expansion are related to the
process. The paper shows that female labor force participation, public investments, and demographic
factors were to some extent important but not crucial to the expansion of pre-school attendance in Brazil. Furthermore, the observed expansion seems to be a result of uncoordinated
and unplanned policies implemented in the period.

JEL Classification: H52, I21; N36.

Chinese global agribusiness project in the Brazilian soybean commodity chain: Historical structures and current actions

Giacomo Otavio Tixiliski — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0300

This article describes the political motivations and economic actions of China’s
global agribusiness project in the Brazilian soybean commodity chain. To verify these facts,
we use literature review and qualitative data analysis through a long-term description of the
political and economic actions of the Chinese agents. Additionally, we connect Chinese investments
on the Brazilian soybean commodity chain as a practical representation of these
actions. In sum, the article highlighted that long-term structures influence current actions in
China and is being strengthened by the active participation of Chinese firms in commodity
chains, such as Brazilian soybean.

JEL Classification: F23; N45.

The political economy of economic policy: industrial entrepreneurs and macroeconomic prices in Brazil (2003-2016)

Pedro Micussi — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0300

The article aims to discuss aspects of the contemporary Brazilian political economy,
showing how Brazilian large manufacturing entrepreneurs acted in defense of their interests
in the dispute over the design of economic policy throughout the Partido dos Trabalhadore
(Workers’ Party) governments between 2003 and 2016. It is argued that is possible
to identify an inter-class dispute over the definition of four macroeconomic prices – the profit
rate, the interest rate, the exchange rate, and the wage rate – which places industrial capitalists
sometimes against the rentier sector, sometimes against the labor movement in Brazil.

JEL Classification: E60; O1; P00; Z13.

Income transfers and household debt. The advancing collateralization of social policy in the midst of restructuring crises

Lena Lavinas, Eliane Araújo, Pedro Rubin — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0300

The aim of this article is to address how household debt and contemporary credit
markets seem to be the defining elements in the reshaping of social policy both in developing and developed countries. We start off by recalling how the implementation of income
policies as the core of a new social protection paradigm has contributed to promote marketbased
finance. We take Brazil as a case study to illustrate how this new connection between
state guaranteed income policies and credit markets has unfolded resulting in increasing
household debt. We show evidence that the connection between household debt and stateprovided
monetary benefits is effective and significant.

JEL Classification: E44; O11; O54.

Developmentalism as historical legacy

Renato Perissinotto — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0300

Our goal is, using the concept of critical juncture, to discuss developmentalism
as a historical legacy. To do so, in the first section, we provide a stylized description of four
typical cases (Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan) and then, employing the technique
of process tracing, propose a causal mechanism composed of structural and volitional factors
to understand the emergence of developmentalism. It concludes that developmentalism
illustrates the advantages of a historical social science that allows us to go beyond the analysis
of the ideational content of various developmentalist paradigms and move towards identifying
the historical conditions of their production as a political project.

JEL Classification: B0.

An analysis of the Chinese inward FDI development and regulation policy and the Five-Year Plans

Tomás Costa de Azevedo Marques, Giorgio Romano Schutte — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0300

At the end of the 1970s, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) promoted policies
to attract investments from the developed capitalist world, aiming for technological transfer
and offering a profitable environment in exchange. Although the TNC capital, know-how,
and technology have been key factors for Chinese development, the State has planned and
regulated those investments, so they can be aligned with an autonomous project of development,
avoiding the classic centre-periphery dependency relationship. This paper analysis focuses
on the Five-Year Plans, and the regulation policy laws for inward investment. At the
end we analyse the FDI data, which allowed us to identify the main changes and distinct
phases of the development of FDI and the State policy.

JEL Classification: F63; N95; O19.

Long waves of economic growth in Asia and Western Europe, 1950-2020: are there any circularcumulative causation and contradiction aspects?

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0300

This paper discusses some comparative analysis between the pattern of economic
performances in Asia and Western Europe during 1950s-2020s through political economies
perspective. The Asian and Western European economic performances are investigated
through some stylized facts in the sense of economic factors. Three analyses are used to explain
the general pattern of these regions. First, this study examines the pattern of GDP
growth per capita during the 1950s-2020s, focusing on several countries in this region. Second,
the analysis captures the pattern of linkages of economic variables in this region related
to the principle of Circular and Cumulative causation (CCC) and contradiction. Third, the
analysis employs a historical perspective underpinned by the results in the second analysis.
This third analysis is crucial to appreciating Asia’s global economic performance and also the
process of Western deterioration phenomenon through long wave, including the occurrence
recession and financial crises. The institutions of globalization and neoliberalism that put the
power of capital promoted a financial crisis several times during the decades of 1980s-2020.
The financial crisis is depicted by contradictions in the structural linkages among economic
factors in Western Europe over the period.

JEL Classification: B15; B52; P48.

Developmentalist policies in financialized economies: contradictions and impasses of the Brazilian case

Miguel Bruno, Leda Maria Paulani — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0300

This paper discusses the applicability of economic policies and other developmentalist
governmental actions to financialized economies. It mobilizes the theoretical-methodological
regulationist principles for a historical and institutional macro-analysis. After a
brief review of the concepts of the Regulation School, including the “economic policy regime”
(Théret, 1992; Lordon, 2002; Boyer, 2015), the Brazilian case is analyzed as a remarkable example
of institutional compatibility with rentier-financial accumulation to the detriment of
the accumulation of productive fixed capital. Several indicators of this case are presented.

JEL Classification: E02; E6; O1; O2; O3.

El Salvador: an analysis of the monetary integration law and the bitcoin law

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0300

The objective of this article is to analyze the two most important monetary laws
that have been implemented in El Salvador, namely the Monetary Integration Law (MIL)
and the Bitcoin Law. The most important articles of both laws will be analyzed, as well as
the consequences of dollarization, and the possible advantages and risks associated with the
adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender. Although this measure may have some positive aspects
by encouraging financial innovation and facilitating remittances, the macroeconomic risk
is very high due to the volatility of this cryptocurrency. So far no positive results have been
achieved as the acceptance has been very low and there has been a depreciation of the asset
in recent months.

JEL Classification: E40; E42; E44; E52; E58.

Value extraction, crowding out, and instability of the financial sector on Colombian productive development

Gonzalo Combita Mora — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 -0300

This research aims to illustrate how, under the scenario of global financialization,
Colombia’s productive model changed and now is led by finance which extracted value,
creating instability, and provoking a crowding out effect on real sector embodied here by
the manufacture share of GDP. The above became evident in the 1990s thanks to freemarket
reforms implemented. The research uses heterodox theory to empirically verify the
hypotheses by creating variables representing the proposed phenomena and exposing them
through descriptive analysis and a VARX model.

JEL Classification: B26; D46; E12; F65; O14.