Cohn lays out a new strategy of how states can produce economic development in poor nations – by considering barber shops, beauty parlours, hotels and restaurants in Brazil. Cohn considers the case of nations with budgetary limits that cannot afford to follow the East Asian model, and finds alternative policies that create jobs and reduce poverty.
Brazil approaches its 2018 election with an economy that is gradually recovering from the deepest recession in its recent economic history. However, for many Brazilians, the recovery has not yet translated into new and better jobs, or rising incomes. This book explores the drivers of future employment and income growth. Its key finding: Brazil needs to dramatically improve its performance across all industries in terms of productivity if the country is to provide better jobs for its citizens and generate lasting gains in incomes growth for all. This is particularly important as Brazil is aging rapidly and the boost the country has enjoyed thanks to its young and growing labor force in the past decades will disappear in just a few years’ time. The book recommends a change in the relationship between the state and business, from rewarding privileged incumbents to fostering competition and innovation—together with supporting workers and firms to adjust to the demands of the market. The book is addressed to all scholars and students of Brazil’s economy, especially those interested in why the country’s economic performance has not kept up with earlier achievements since the reintroduction of democracy in the mid-1980s. Its conclusions are urgent and pertinent but also optimistic. With the right policy mix, Brazil could enter the third century of its independence in 2022 well on track to join the ranks of high income countries.
We document the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Brazilian labor market focusing on employment, wages and hours worked using the nationally representative household surveys PNAD-Continua and PNAD COVID. Sectors most susceptible to the shock because they are more contact-intensive and less teleworkable, such as construction, domestic services and hospitality, suffered large job losses and reductions in hours. Given low income workers experienced the largest decline in earnings, extreme poverty and the Gini coefficient based on labor income increased by around 9.2 and 5 percentage points, respectively, due to the immediate shock. The government’s broad based, temporary Emergency Aid transfer program more than offset the labor income losses for the bottom four deciles, however, such that poverty relative to the pre-COVID baseline fell. At a cost of around 4 percent of GDP in 2020 such support is not fiscally sustainable beyond the short-term and ended in late 2020. The challenge will be to avoid a sharp increase in poverty and inequality if the labor market does not pick up sufficiently fast in 2021.
Skills and Jobs in Brazil: An Agenda for Youth is a new report focusing on the challenge of economic engagement among the Brazilian youth. In the context of a fast aging population, Brazil’s greatest economic opportunity is to increase its labor productivity, especially that of youth. This report documents important new facts about the extent of the youth economic disengagement, while at school and at work. Today, close to half of the Brazilian youth aged 15-29 years old is not fully economically engaged, because they are neither working nor studying, are studying in schools of poor quality, or are working in informal and precarious jobs. The report shows how the youth prospects in the labor market are dimmed by policies favoring existing workers over new entrants; in addition, it shows how youth are often ill equipped to meet an increasingly challenging labor market. The report suggests new education, skills, and jobs policy changes that Brazil could prioritize moving forward, so that it can take advantage of the last wave of its demographic transition. The report discusses in particular depth policies aiming to increase learning and reduce school dropouts in upper secondary education, and labor market policies that aim to support more effective and faster youth transitions from school to work.
Continued social and economic progress in Brazil will depend on high employment, sustained labor productivity and income growth, and opportunities for the poor and disadvantaged to upgrade their own productivity and convert it into sustainable incomes.
When Bloomberg News invited the young American journalist Alex Cuadros to report on Brazil's emerging class of billionaires at the height of the historic Brazilian boom, he was poised to cover two of the biggest business stories of our time: how the giants of the developing world were taking their place at the center of global capitalism, and how wealth inequality was changing societies everywhere. The billionaires of Brazil and their massive fortunes resided at the very top of their country's economic pyramid, and whether they quietly accumulated exceptional power or extravagantly displayed their decadence, they formed a potent microcosm of the world's richest .001 percent. They held sway over the economy, government, media, and stewardship of the environment; they determined the spiritual fates and populated the imaginations of their countrymen. In 2012, Eike Batista ranked as the eighth-richest person in the world, was famous for his marriage to a beauty queen, and was a fixture in the Brazilian press. But by 2015, Batista was bankrupt, his son Thor had been indicted for manslaughter, and Brazil--its president facing impeachment, its provinces combating an epidemic, and its business and political class torn apart by scandal--had become a cautionary tale of a country run aground by its elites. Over four years, Cuadros reported on media moguls and televangelists, energy barons and shadowy figures from the years of military dictatorship, soy barons who lived on the outskirts of the Amazon, and new-economy billionaires spinning money from speculation. His zealous reporting takes us from penthouses to courtrooms, from favelas to art fairs, from scenes of unimaginable wealth to desperate, massive street protests. Within a business narrative that deftly dramatizes the volatility of the global economy, Cuadros offers us literary journalism with a grand sweep.--Adapted from dust jacket.
In Buried Indians, Laurie Hovell McMillin presents the struggle of her hometown, Trempealeau, Wisconsin, to determine whether platform mounds atop Trempealeau Mountain constitute authentic Indian mounds. This dispute, as McMillin subtly demonstrates, reveals much about the attitude and interaction - past and present - between the white and Indian inhabitants of this Midwestern town. McMillin's account, rich in detail and sensitive to current political issues of American Indian interactions with the dominant European American culture, locates two opposing views: one that denies a Native American presence outright and one that asserts its long history and ruthless destruction. The highly reflective oral histories McMillin includes turn Buried Indians into an accessible, readable portrait of a uniquely American culture clash and a dramatic narrative grounded in people's genuine perceptions of what the platform mounds mean.
Look to Brazil for safe, stable investments As the future of the American economy seems to get bleaker by the day, it is tempting to look abroad for business opportunities. Europe and Asia don't provide much hope, but what about somewhere that's both closer to home and sunny year-round? In Brazil is the New America: How Brazil Offers Upward Mobility in a Collapsing World, James D. Davidson shows that the current financial situation in Brazil is a haven for those looking to make money in a world in turmoil. With a population just 62 percent the size of that of the US, Brazil has added 15,023,633 jobs over the past eight years, while the US has lost millions. In a world burdened by bankrupt governments and aging populations, Brazil is solvent, with two people of working age for every dependent. In a world of "Peak Oil" Brazil is energy independent, with 70 billion barrels of oil, 60% of the world's unused arable land, and 15% of its fresh water. Comparatively non-leveraged—and with significant room for growth and expansion, as well as vast natural resources, Brazil is a haven of opportunity. Written by James D. Davidson, the editor/publisher of Strategic Investment and cofounder of Agora and the media outlet, Newsmax, Brazil is the New America details: How the original "America" now embodies the brightest hope for realizing the American Dream while the "Old America" is headed for a dramatic decline in the standard of living Investment opportunities not only for those willing to relocate, but anyone who can consider investing there The cost structure of employment in Brazil versus the United States Brazil has already learned its lesson about the dangers of inflation. Cash has taken the place of credit, and high interest rate returns are now the norm.
Walking west on 46th Street in Manhattan, just three blocks from Rockefeller Center, one passes Brazilian restaurants, the office of New York's Brazilian newspaper, a Brazilian travel agency, a business that sends remittances and wires flowers to Brazil, and a store that sells Brazilian food products, magazines, newspapers, videos, and tapes. These businesses are the tip of an ethnic iceberg, an unseen minority estimated to number some 80,000 to 100,000 Brazilians in the New York metropolitan area alone. Despite their numbers, the lives of these people remain largely hidden to scholars and the public alike. Now Maxine L. Margolis remedies this neglect with a fascinating and accessible account of the lives of New York's Brazilians. Showing that these immigrants belie American stereotypes, Margolis reveals that they are largely from the middle strata of Brazilian society: many, in fact, have university educations. Not driven by dire poverty or political repression, they are fleeing from chaotic economic conditions that prevent them from maintaining amiddle-class standard of living in Brazil. But despite their class origin and education, with little English and no work papers, many are forced to take menial jobs after their arrival in the United States. Little Brazil is not an insentient statistical portrait of this population writ large, but a nuanced account that captures what it is like to be a new immigrant in this most cosmopolitan of world cities.
