The 1990s represented for several Latin American countries, Brazil in particular, a remarkable period. New international scenario and changes in the traditional way of economic policymaking have led to an unprecedented economic environment, with low inflation rates, broader access to imported goods and reduced interference from the State, among other characteristics.By the end of such a unique period the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), a United Nations agency, sponsored a regionwide project of growth and equity in Latin America in the 1990s, as an effort to improve the knowledge of the economic reforms undertaken in Latin America during that decade. This book presents the main results of the project for the Brazilian economy, with systematic information and analysis of several aspects of those unprecedented changes. The works published here were made by well-known Brazilian experts, several of them with previous high-ranking experience in the public sector.

Few countries in Latin America have undergone as much economic and social change in the last 40 years as Brazil: an annual average rate of economic growth of 7% between 1950 and 1980; 4 decades of state-led import-substitution industrialization; rapid urbanization which in less than 30 years transformed a predominantly rural country into one in which two-thirds of the population live in cities; a significant enlargement of the middle classes whose mass society values and consumer expectations came to match those of the developed world. Yet in spite of these changes, Brazil stagnated in terms of income inequalities and levels of poverty: one third of its population is living below the poverty line, another third only just above it. Brazil now faces the most serious economic crisis in its history, with spiralling unemployment and an ever increasing deterioration in living standards. This volume concentrates on some of the pressing problems which are essential to understanding the questions of social and economic development and democratic consolidation; it brings together some of the best known academics in the field.

Nearly 40 percent of all Brazilians have migrated at one point and time, and in-migrants represent substantial portions of regional populations. Migration in Brazil has historically been a mechanism for adjustment to disequilibria. Poorer regions and those with fewer economic opportunities have traditionally sent migrants to more prosperous regions. As such, the southeast region, where economic conditions are most favorable, has historically received migrants from the northeast region. Migration should have benefited both regions. The southeast benefits by importing skilled and unskilled labor that makes local capital more productive. The northeast can benefit from upward pressures on wages and through remittances that migrant households return to their region of origin. The northeast of Brazil is a net sender of migrants to the southeast. In recent years, a large number of people moved from the southeast to the northeast. Compared with northeast to southeast (NE-SE) migrants, southeast to northeast (SE-NE) migrants are less homogeneous regarding age, wage, and income. SE-NE migrants are on average poorer and less educated than the southeast average, while NE-SE migrants are financially better off and higher educated than the northeast average. Fiess and Verner find that the predicted returns to migration are increasing with education for SE-NE migrants and decreasing for NE-SE migrants. They further observe that the returns to migration have been decreasing for NE-SE migrants and increasing for SE-NE migrants between 1995 and 1999. This finding helps explain migration dynamics in Brazil. While the predicted positive returns to migration for NE-SE migrants indicate that NE-SE migration follows in general the human capital approach to migration, the estimated lower returns to migration for SE-NE may indicate that nonmonetary factors also play a role in SE-NE migration.This paper - a product of the Office of the Chief Economist and the Economic Policy Sector Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region - is part of a larger effort in the region to understand migration patterns in Brazil.

This groundbreaking work is the first volume in English to examine Brazil's historic policy reforms of the 1990s and the political, economic, and social results. For years the large and ineffective government of Brazil could neither improve the country's greatly uneven distribution of wealth nor maintain inflation at reasonable levels. In the 1990s, long overdue changes bettered the government's fiscal performance, tamed inflation, and addressed chronic social ills stemming from the imbalance of wealth. But many problems, and many questions, remain. Why is Brazil still so poor, and why is inequality so intransigent? Were some of the reforms counterproductive, or could they have been implemented in a more effective way? Collecting essays by top Brazilianist scholars from various disciplines and intellectual traditions, Reforming Brazil provides new insights for international policy makers, economists, and scholars of Brazil.