Suchergebnisse

This paper focuses on the role of economic factors inducing deforestation in Brazil and thereby threatening biodiversity, giving particular attention to the exploitation pattern of forest resources in Brazil. Some economic factors cannot be easily reverted since reversion would require long-term structural adjustments to alleviate social inequalities, to accomplish a satisfactory land tenure reform and to solve renumeration issues inhibiting human resource enhancement in governmental agencies. However, there is still room to introduce economic incentives in order to mitigate the current trend towards deforestation and biodiversity losses.

This paper investigates the effects of political (mis)alignment on public service delivery when mandates are shared between state and local governments. We analyze sewage treatment policies in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Relying on difference-in-differences estimations, we establish a causal relationship between political alignment and higher sewage treatment provision. Conceptually, we find that, with uncertain local commitment and weakly enforceable local obligations, shared mandates lead to a moral hazard issue implying service under-provision. Our results show that political alignment attenuates such moral hazard effects.

Regulation in the sanitation sector in Brazil is facing a great deal of debate regarding the government level in which conceding authority should reside and how private operators can fulfill social objectives. The main objective of this study is to show that these issues are not the crucial barriers to the development of the sector when one looks at the productivity performance of the operators. Therefore, we elaborate a detailed analysis of the productivity performance of the current structure of the sanitation sector in Brazil. In doing so, we are able to analyze how jurisdiction of operators as well as the nature of the management, either private or public, has affected performance of the current operators. Moreover, we investigate how the absence of tariff regulation has dissipated efficiencies and allowed the practice of monopolistic tariffs.