This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1963.

Complementarities between political and economic institutions have kept Brazil in a low-level economic equilibrium since 1985.

A multi-disciplinary team of authors analyze the economics of Brazilian deforestation using a large data set of ecological and economic variables. They survey the most up to date work in this field and present their own dynamic and spatial econometric analysis based on municipality level panel data spanning the entire Brazilian Amazon from 1970 to 1996. By observing the dynamics of land use change over such a long period the team is able to provide quantitative estimates of the long-run economic costs and benefits of both land clearing and government policies such as road building. The authors find that some government policies, such as road paving in already highly settled areas, are beneficial both for economic development and for the preservation of forest, while other policies, such as the construction of unpaved roads through virgin areas, stimulate wasteful land uses to the detriment of both economic growth and forest cover.

This book assesses the performance of the first Lula government (2002-06) from different perspectives including economics, politics, history and social policy. While the focus is on Brazil, it also refers to the experiences of similar countries both for comparative purposes and for evidence of the success or otherwise of this 'new' era for Brazil.

In Brazil, the confluence of strong global demand for the country's major products, global successes for its major corporations, and steady results from its economic policies is building confidence and even reviving dreams of grandeza—the greatness that has proven elusive in the past. Even as the current economic crisis tempers expectations of the future, the trends identified in this book suggest that Brazil will continue its path toward becoming a leading economic power in the future. Once seen as an economic backwater, Brazil now occupies key niches in energy, agriculture, service industries, and even high technology. Yet Latin America's largest nation still struggles with endemic inequality issues and deep-seated ambivalence toward global economic integration. Scholars and policy practitioners from Brazil, the United States, and Europe recently gathered to investigate the present state and likely future of the Brazilian economy. This important volume is the timely result. In Brazil as an Economic Superpower? international authorities focus on five key topics: agribusiness, energy, trade, social investment, and multinational corporations. Their analyses and expertise provide not only a unique and authoritative picture of the Brazilian economy but also a useful lens through which to view the changing global economy as a whole.

In terms accessible to non-economists, Marcos José Mendes describes the ways democracy and inequality produce low growth in the short and medium terms. In the longer term, he argues that Brazil has two paths in front of it. One is to create the conditions necessary to boost economic performance and drive the country toward a high level of development. The other is to fail in untying the political knot that blocks growth, leaving it a middle-income country. The source of his contrasting futures for Brazil is inequality, which he demonstrates is a relevant variable in any discussion of economic growth. Inequality illuminates causes of seemingly-unconnected problems. This book, which includes freely-accessible documents and datasets, is the first in-depth analysis of an issue that promises to become increasingly prominent. - Contrasting visions of Brazil's future described in economic terms - Easy-to-understand graphs and tables illustrate analytical arguments - All Excel-based data available on a freely-accessible website

English translation of a portuguese-language study entitled formacao economica do Brasil on obstacles to economic development and factors affecting economic growth in Brazil - covers historical and geographical aspects, the role of Portugal, financial aspects, investment, inflation, agriculture, the mining industry, industrialization, labour force problems (incl. The elimination of forced labour), wages, trade, interest groups, etc. References.