quinta-feira, 30 de abril de 2009
Aumento da expectativa da vida
http://www.faz.net/s/RubC17179D529AB4E2BBEDB095D7C41F468/Doc~E76389E2A86C34E4AAA60BDEE66E827B2~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html
Para traduzir use: http://translate.google.com/
(copiar o texto da lingua estrangeira e pôr na janela)
A universidade em crise
"GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans)...--
Leia mais:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3
Vaga para doutorando em sociologia econômica
Friedrich Engels - nova biografia
Review: "... He (Friedrich Engels) had always been an involuntary factory owner. Without agreeing to tend his German father’s business interests in Manchester he would have lacked the income for himself and Marx to live in the comfort they took as their right. The profligate Marx was constantly on the edge of penury. Engels counted his pennies (or rather his tens of thousands of pounds) more carefully but did not stint in his pleasures. He rode out regularly with the prestigious and costly Cheshire Hounds. He drank wine of quality and Pilsner beer in quantity. He treated himself to bevies of young women, including prostitutes. He dressed in fashion.Engels kept up bourgeois appearances by holding his capitalist and communist lives separate. The frock-coated German industrialist bought a second home in Manchester where he installed his fiery Irish mistress Mary Burns and welcomed his socialist comrades. Mary’s sister Lizzy took her place as his lover when she died. Northern industrialists knew he was a “red” but Engels was discreet about his political and sexual activity and avoided social ostracism. After 1869, when the Ermen brothers bought him out of the business, he moved to London and continued to flourish handsomely through judicious investments. He was one of those coupon-snipping rentiers that he and Marx subjected to withering contempt in their pamphlets..."
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6154072.ece
segunda-feira, 27 de abril de 2009
Recursos da pesquisa: Schumpeter
HET Pages: Growth After Marx, Business Cycle Theory
Bibliography of Schumpeter
International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society page.
Graz Schumpeter Lectures - in German, but many resources!
"Review of Schumpeter's Nature and Essence of Theoretical Economics", by George Ray Wicker, 1911, AER
"Review of Schumpeter's Theory of Economic Development", by John Bates Clark, 1912, AER
"Review of De Vecchi, Entrepreneurs, institutions and economic change: the economic thought of J.A. Schumpeter" by Spencer J. Pack, 2000, HOPE
Schumpeter Page at McMaster
Schumpeter Page at Akamac.
Schumpeter Page at Laura Forgette
Lecture on Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy at Macquarie Univ., Australia.
"Schumpter's Evolutionary Theory" by Esben Sloth Andersen
"Joseph Schumpeter et le rôle de l´entrepreneur", 2000, Le Monde
European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy
R. Langlois's "Schumpeter and the Obsolescence of the Entrepreneur"
J.A. Schumpeter Page by Edward J. Harpham at UT-Dallas.
Articles about Schumpeter by Harpham at UT-Dallas.
Schumpeter page in Germany
Schumpeter Page in Britannica.com
Another Schumpeter page in Germany
Something called the "Schumpeter Project" in Belgium.
Review of Schumpeter's 1942 CSD
Stolper's Book on Schumpeter
Shionoya's book on Schumpeter
The "Schumpeter Meeting Room" at ING Bank.
Graz Schumpeter Lectures
http://homepage.newschool.edu/het//profiles/schump.htm
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MCCPRI.html?show=reviews
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5619.html
Creative destruction: http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/liu/english25/materials/schumpeter.html
Schumpeter prize:
http://www.iss-evec.de/schumpeter_prize.htm
Schumpeter Conference 2010:
http://schumpeter2010.dk/
Taxas de risco e suceso de inovações e invenções
What percent of inventor ideas are successful? What percent of inventions are commercialized?
"... 99.8% fail. Only 3,000 patents out of 1.5 million patents are commercially viable. “In truth, odds are stacked astronomically against inventors, and no marketing outfit can change them. ‘There are around 1.5 million patents in effect and in force in this country, and of those, maybe 3,000 are commercially viable,’ [Richard Maulsby, ... says. ‘It's a very small percentage of patents that actually turn into products that make money for people. On top of all that, to get ripped off for tens of thousands of dollars adds insult to injury.” Patent success rates. Patent odds of success. Percent of patents commercialized..."
Leia mais:
http://www.inventionstatistics.com/Innovation_Risk_Taking_Inventors.html
domingo, 26 de abril de 2009
sexta-feira, 24 de abril de 2009
Falsos coletivos
Leia mais sobre falsos abstrações de coletividades e entende como remédio o individualismo metodológico: http://mises.org/story/3409
quarta-feira, 22 de abril de 2009
Schumpeter
Capitalism…is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. CSD, 82.
[Capitalism is]…the perennial gale of creative destruction. CSD, 84.
Economies don’t grow, they evolve. The dictionary defines growth as an increase in quantity or size. If an economy were to literally grow, it would have more or bigger companies hiring more of the same kinds of workers and producing more of the same goods and services. Evolution, in contrast, is a process of continuous change, leading to a higher, more complex and better state. Capitalist economies evolve, and their evolution is endogenous, arising spontaneously from the ingredients of the capitalist economic system. The competition to innovate (so as to gain market share or simply survive) pushes living standards forever onward and upward like a perpetual-motion machine. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that progress will slow over time; indeed, it may even speed up as new technologies spill over into other areas, making whole new industries possible or economically feasible. Technology spillovers—unintended consequences—are the alchemy of the capitalist macroeconomic system. Doom-saying in the capitalist economy is a losing proposition. The essential point to grasp is that in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process. CSD, 82.
Innovation is the outstanding fact in the economic history of capitalist society or in what is purely economic in that history, and also it is largely responsible for most of what we would at first sight attribute to other factors. BC, 86.
Surely, nothing can be more plain or even more trite common sense than the proposition that innovation…is at the center of practically all the phenomena, difficulties, and problems of economic life in capitalist society. BC, 87.
These revolutions periodically reshape the existing structure of industry by introducing new methods of production—the mechanized factory, the electrified factory, chemical synthesis and the like; new commodities, such as railroad service, motorcars, electrical appliances; new forms of organization. CSD, 68.
Those revolutions are not strictly incessant; they occur in discrete rushes which are separated from each other by spans of comparative quiet. The process as a whole works incessantly however, in the sense that there always is either revolution or absorption of the results of revolution, both together forming what are known as business cycles. CSD, 83, footnote 2.
Our model…does not give to prosperity and recession…the welfare connotations which public opinion [typically] attaches to them. Commonly, prosperity is associated with social well-being, and recession with a falling standard of life. In our picture they are not, and there is even an implication to the contrary. BC, 142.
Times of innovation…are times of effort and sacrifice, of work for the future, while the harvest comes after.…The harvest is gathered under recessive symptoms and with more anxiety than rejoicing.…[During] recession…much dead wood disappears. BC, 143.
If we glance at those long waves in economic activity, analysis…reveals the nature and mechanism of the capitalist process better than any-thing else. Each of them consists of an "industrial revolution" and the absorption of its effects. CSD, 67.
The Firm, Innovation and ProfitFirms—particularly new ones—are the means by which innovation enters the economy. Firms have a life cycle that begins with the introduction of a new, better or cheaper product and ends likewise (with a competitor’s introduction elsewhere). Firms tend to be the most profitable when young, before competitors have had the time to enter the market with a cheaper, better alternative. Economic development flows from innovation, and innovation requires anticipated profit, but profit sows the seeds of its own demise by beckoning other suppliers (even outright copiers). Patent laws, in this regard, can help to preserve profit and thus stimulate innovation. But over the long term, the law of the corporate jungle is clear: mutate or die.
Most new firms are founded with an idea and for a definite purpose. The life goes out of them when that idea or purpose has been fulfilled or has become obsolete or even if, without having become obsolete, it has ceased to be new. That is the fundamental reason why firms do not exist forever. Many of them are, of course, failures from the start. Like human beings, firms are constantly being born that cannot live. Others may meet…death from accident or illness. Still others die a "natural" death, as men die of old age. And the "natural" cause, in the case of firms, is precisely their inability to keep up the pace in innovating which they themselves had been instrumental in setting in the time of their vigor. BC, 94–95.
Without development there is no profit, without profit no development. TED, 154.
The carrying into effect of an innovation involves, not primarily an increase in existing factors of production, but the shifting of existing factors from old to new uses….If innovation is financed by credit creation, the shifting of the factors is effected not by the withdrawal of funds—"canceling the old order"—from the old firms, but by the reduction of the purchasing power of existing funds which are left with the old firms while newly created funds are put at the disposal of entrepreneurs: the new "order to the factors" comes, as it were, on top of the old one, which is not thereby canceled. BC, 111–12.
The capitalist process, not by coincidence but by virtue of its mechanism, progressively raises the standard of life of the masses. It does so through a sequence of vicissitudes, the severity of which is proportional to the speed of the advance. But it does so effectively. One problem after another of the supply of commodities to the masses has been successfully solved by being brought within the reach of the methods of capitalist production. CSD, 68.
The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably means also production for the masses. CSD, 67.
Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them. It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improve-ments that would mean much to a rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort. CSD, 67.
Capitalism inevitably…educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest. CSD, 146.
One of the most important features of the later stages of capitalist civilization is the vigorous expansion of the educational apparatus and particularly of the facilities for higher education. CSD, 152.
The hostility of the intellectual group—amounting to moral disapproval of the capitalist order—is one thing, and the general hostile atmosphere which surrounds the capitalist engine is another thing. CSD, 153.
Capitalist evolution produces a labor movement which obviously is not the creation of the intellectual group. But it is not surprising that such an opportunity and the intellectual demiurge should find each other. Labor never craved intellectual leadership but intellectuals invaded labor politics. They had an important contribution to make: they verbalized the movement, supplied theories and slogans for it—class war is an excellent example—made it conscious of itself….They naturally radicalized it, eventually imparting a revolutionary bias to the most bourgeois trade-union practices….Having no genuine authority and feeling always in danger of being unceremoniously told to mind his own business,…[the intellectual] must flatter, promise and incite, nurse left wings…appeal to fringe ends.…Thus, though intellectuals have not created the labor movement, they have yet worked it up into something that differs substantially from what it would be without them….[This]…explains why public policy grows more and more hostile to capitalist interests. Intellectuals rarely enter professional politics and still more rarely conquer responsible office. But they staff political bureaus, write party pamphlets and speeches, act as secretaries and advisers, make the…politician’s…reputation….In doing these things they…impress their mentality on almost everything that is being done. CSD, 153–54.
Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets….The only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment. CSD, 144.
References
BC: Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1939), Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process (New York: McGraw-Hill).
CSD: ——— (1950), Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers), orig. pub. 1942.
HEA: ——— (1954), The History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press).
TED: ——— (1936), The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
Fonte: http://www.dallasfed.org/research/ei/ei0103.html
A doença do analfabetismo estadístico
SUMMARY Many doctors, patients, journalists, and politicians
alike do not understand what health statistics mean
or draw wrong conclusions without noticing. Collective
statistical illiteracy refers to the widespread inability to
understand the meaning of numbers. For instance, many
citizens are unaware that higher survival rates with cancer
screening do not imply longer life, or that the statement
that mammography screening reduces the risk of dying
from breast cancer by 25% in fact means that 1 less woman
out of 1,000 will die of the disease. We provide evidence
that statistical illiteracy (a) is common to patients, journalists,
and physicians; (b) is created by nontransparent
framing of information that is sometimes an unintentional
result of lack of understanding but can also be a result of
intentional efforts to manipulate or persuade people; and
(c) can have serious consequences for health...--
Leia mais: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/pspi_8_2_article.pdf
quarta-feira, 8 de abril de 2009
Como confrontar contingências
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published: April 7 2009 20:02 Last updated: April 7 2009 20:02
1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.
4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.
5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.
6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning . Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.
7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.
8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.
9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).
10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.
Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news.
In other words, a place more resistant to black swans.
The writer is a veteran trader, a distinguished professor at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute and the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
The Financial Times Limited 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d5aa24e-23a4-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss
terça-feira, 7 de abril de 2009
segunda-feira, 6 de abril de 2009
From "push" to "pull" - the big shift
"... We're moving from a world of push to a world of pull. Push programs operate on one key assumption - that it is possible to forecast future demand. When demand can be forecast, we can efficiently push resources to where they will be needed when they will be needed. But what happens when our forecasting ability diminishes--as it surely has in these big shifting times? Push programs become bottlenecks preventing effective responses to unanticipated changes in demand. In the business world, the result is often large accumulations of inventories. The transition will be painful but the rewards will be significant. Push programs to mobilize resources have generated enormous prosperity over the past century. That approach is now unraveling. We are now in the early stages of defining and deploying an alternative approach based on pull platforms..."
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bigshift/
sexta-feira, 3 de abril de 2009
Internet hits
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-yie7&p=%22The%20Bailout%20Reader%22&type=
4,467 visitas Currency Arrangements in Europe. Are there Lessons for Latin America? Dr. Antony Mueller 29 de enero de 2004
3,922 visitas Safeguarding the Independence of the European Central Bank Dr. Antony Mueller 28 de enero de 2004
4,507 visitas Do Current Account Deficits Matter? Dr. Antony Mueller 27 de enero de 2004
6,679 visitas Financial Cycles, Business Activity and Asset Valuations Dr. Antony Mueller 26 de enero de 2004
5,064 visitas Inflation and Deflation in a New Capital-Based Macroeconomic Antony Mueller 9 de febrero de 2006
Porque os probres ficam pobres
"...THAT the children of the poor underachieve in later life, and thus remain poor themselves, is one of the enduring problems of society. Sociologists have studied and described it. Socialists have tried to abolish it by dictatorship and central planning. Liberals have preferred democracy and opportunity. But nobody has truly understood what causes it. Until, perhaps, now.
The crucial breakthrough was made three years ago, when Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania showed that the working memories of children who have been raised in poverty have smaller capacities than those of middle-class children. Working memory is the ability to hold bits of information in the brain for current use—the digits of a phone number, for example. It is crucial for comprehending languages, for reading and for solving problems. Entry into the working memory is also a prerequisite for something to be learnt permanently as part of declarative memory—the stuff a person knows explicitly, like the dates of famous battles, rather than what he knows implicitly, like how to ride a bicycle.
Since Dr Farah’s discovery, Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg of Cornell University have studied the phenomenon in more detail. As they report in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they have found that the reduced capacity of the memories of the poor is almost certainly the result of stress affecting the way that childish brains develop.
Dr Evans’s and Dr Schamberg’s volunteers were 195 participants in a long-term sociological and medical study that Dr Evans is carrying out in New York state. At the time, the participants were 17 years old. All are white, and the numbers of men and women are about equal.
Stress in the city
To measure the amount of stress an individual had suffered over the course of his life, the two researchers used an index known as allostatic load. This is a combination of the values of six variables: diastolic and systolic blood pressure; the concentrations of three stress-related hormones; and the body-mass index, a measure of obesity. For all six, a higher value indicates a more stressful life; and for all six, the values were higher, on average, in poor children than in those who were middle class. Moreover, because Dr Evans’s wider study had followed the participants from birth, the two researchers were able to estimate what proportion of each child’s life had been spent in poverty. That more precise figure, too, was correlated with the allostatic load.
The capacity of a 17-year-old’s working memory was also correlated with allostatic load. Those who had spent their whole lives in poverty could hold an average of 8.5 items in their memory at any time. Those brought up in a middle-class family could manage 9.4, and those whose economic and social experiences had been mixed were in the middle..."
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13403177&source=hptextfeature
sábado, 28 de março de 2009
Dicas para encontrar e formular um tema de trabalho
Aqui uma pequena lista de princípios de pesquisa na área de Sociologia econômica que eu acho útil a seguir.
I. Analise do problema
1. Identifique o problema sócio-econômico
2. Acertar a discrepância entre situação e meta
3. Analisar os fatos (a situação) na luz de um estado ideal (meta)
4. Definir (descrever)
a) o ideal (a meta)
b) a situação (incluindo a sua etiologia)
c) a discrepância
4. Sequência da análise
a) "cortar" o problema em pedaços adequados (mínimo 2, máximo 5-7)
b) acertar as conexões entre as partes ("modelo")
c) analisar as partes com a pergunta em que forma representam causas e soluções de problema
d) analisar a dinâmica do sistema
5. Juntar a análise (sínteses)
6. Avaliar o resultado (certezas, incertezas, fatos certos, pressupostos, manchas brancas)
7. Fazer um resumo (problema, análise, soluções)
II. Um principio metodológico:
Distinguir entre o fenómeno (que aparece no nível social ou macro) e a causa e solução do problema (que reside no nível individual ou micro, ou, simplesmente, na acção humana).
III. Medidas (instrumentos)
Baseado numa teoria de causa(s) e efeito(s), se deriva as medidas adequadas para solucionar um problema ou explicar as causas de um problema. Em analisar os instrumentos (ferramentas) que serem aplicados para a solução se precisa dar em conta que a aplicação de medidas tem custos (matérias e não-matérias, monetárias ou não-monetárias) e que quase qualquer forma da aplicação de medidas e assim qualquer tipo de solução contem consequências não-desejadas ao lado das consequências desejadas.
IV. Estilo de apresentação
Explicar! Explicar! Explicar! Escrever didacticamente, guiar ou leitor, usar exemplos, língua simples mas preciso, uso de conceitos, clara estrutura do trabalho, dos capítulos, dos parágrafos, das sentencias.
V. Princípios para avaliar a qualidade de um trabalho acadêmico
1. Criatividade em encontrar e tratar um problema (inovação científica)
2. Precisão da análise (confiablidade)
3. Contextualização dos resultados (mostrar limitações e lacunas)
Aulas
Novo encontro: quarta, 8. de Abril, 14 horas.
Tema: Introdução à sociologia econômica
Texto: www.nesfi.ufsc.br/uploads/arquivos/1152044984_SwedbergTS.pdf
quinta-feira, 26 de março de 2009
A "bolha da democracia"
"... What is this bubble? It is the bubble of constitutional and representative democracies that lack the consent of all of those being governed. It is the bubble of states that promise more and more social gains and cannot deliver upon these promises. It is a bubble of governments that are chain letters and Ponzi schemes. It is a bubble built upon robbing some to pay others.
All of these bubbles must, by the dynamic of their intrinsic nature, come to an end. They all must, by the necessity of facing reality, be deflated. And, in the process, the peoples of the earth will have to come face to face with themselves and will have to fashion new social and political relations.
The constitutional and representative democracies cannot be saved by changing the leadership, because they are based on rules of force that must come to grief. They cannot be changed by voting. No stable economy can be reflated by a central bank, and no stable nation can be reflated by voting in new leaders. Counter-intuitively, the government bubble will burst when more and more people do not vote and withdraw their support from a government based on unworkable and unjust rules of force.
Democracy, as people are now exercising it through majority force throughout the world, is rotten to the core. It is common within these government systems for people to rush to take advantage of anyone else they can, in their greed. Democracy has become one big speculative bubble, as many people have placed bets on an ever-expanding gain for themselves at the expense of others. This cannot go on indefinitely, so it is a bubble that has to burst.
Chain letters must come to an end. Ponzi schemes must unravel. The music must stop and there will not be enough chairs for all to sit on. Speculative bubbles must burst. Governments built upon ever-expanding circles of greed and gain must fail. Trees do not grow to the sky..."
Leia mais: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff284.html
quarta-feira, 25 de março de 2009
Crise fiscal do Estado moderno
Gustavo Patu, em "A Escalada da Carga Tributária":
Como é possível que, em menos de uma década, durante tempos de paz, democracia e em plena hegemonia do pensamento liberal, a carga tributária do Brasil tenha crescido tanto? E por que motivos há tanta resistência à realização de uma reforma tributária no país?
O jornalista Gustavo Patu, coordenador de economia da sucursal da Folha de S.Paulo em Brasília, responde essas questões no livro "A Escalada da Carga Tributária", da Publifolha. O título traça o panorama da história recente dos tributos brasileiros e os motivos que levaram a carga a crescer tanto nas últimas décadas.
Pobres pagam mais e produtos nacionais perdem mercados
Do Plano Real à criação da Super-Receita, Gustavo Patu aborda os planos econômicos, as políticas de governo e os demais fatores que produziram o aumento da carga tributária no país.
O jornalista explica porque todas as propostas de reformas tributárias foram paralisadas. E mostra porque os tributos indiretos produzem uma distorção perversa. "Não são os empresários quem têm mais a reclamar. Nem os ricos. Na tributação sobre o consumo, quanto menor a renda, maior será a parcela tomada. Sabe-se que os pobres brasileiros arcam com um custo desproporcionalmente alto para o financiamento do Estado", explica o jornalista.
"A Escalada da Carga Tributária" mostra ainda os efeitos danosos dessa carga. Os altos impostos fazem com que os produtos nacionais (em especial os mais elaborados) percam mercados no exterior e, ao mesmo tempo, dificultam a compra de máquinas, veículos e equipamentos importados...--
sexta-feira, 20 de março de 2009
A sociologia de dinheiro
Psychologists Stephen Lea at the University of Exeter, UK, and Paul Webley at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, have suggested another reason for unhealthy and obsessive attitudes to money. They believe that it acts on our minds rather like an addictive drug, giving it the power to drive some of us to compulsive gambling, overwork or obsessive spending (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol 29, p 161). "It is an interesting possibility that all these are manifestations of a broader addiction to money," says Lea. Compulsion appears to be a problem for people with several money-related disorders which are increasingly being identified by psychologists (see "Money problems").
Lea and Webley propose that money, like nicotine or cocaine, can activate the brain's pleasure centres, the neurological pathways that make biologically beneficial activities such as sex feel so rewarding. Of course, money does not physically enter the brain but it might work in a similar way to pornographic text, argue Lea and Webley, which can cause arousal not by giving any biochemical or physiological stimuli, but by acting through the mind and emotions.
Some evidence for the notion of "addiction" to money comes from brain imaging studies. In one experiment, for example, a team led by Samuel McClure, a psychologist at Princeton University, asked volunteers to choose between receiving a voucher for Amazon.com right then, or a higher-value one a few weeks later. Those who chose the instant reward showed brain activity in the areas linked with emotion, especially the limbic system, which is known to be involved in much impulsive behaviour and drug addiction. Those choosing the delayed reward showed activity in areas such as the prefrontal cortex known to be involved in rational planning (Science, vol 306, p 503). --
Leia mais: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127001.200-why-money-messes-with-your-mind.html?page=2
quinta-feira, 19 de março de 2009
Seminário Nacional de Sociologia Econômica em Florianópolis
O Nucleo de Estudos Sociologicos do Mercados (NUSMER) convida todos os interessados a enviarem trabalhos para o I Seminário Nacional de Sociologia Econômica, a realizar-se de 19 a 22 de maio de 2009 na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis. O convite é aberto aos pesquisadores, docentes e alunos tanto da graduação como da pós-graduação das Ciências Sociais como de outras áreas afins. Estão abertos três grupos temáticos para recepção de artigos, os quais serão disponibilizados posteriormente na forma de anais: 1. Mercados, Estado e redes sociais; 2. Empresa, consumo e sociedade; 3. Dinheiro, finanças e cultura. A chamada de artigos será de 01 a 30 de dezembro/2008. Informações no site: www.nusmer.ufsc.br/seminario2009. Dúvidas pelo email: sociologiaeconomica @cfh.ufsc. br.
Syllabi em sociologia econômica
1.
Course Title: Economic SociologyLecturer: Zhelyu Vladimirov
Optional Course for undergraduate students held at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski.” Download
2.
Course Title: Economic Sociology: What Counts?Lecturer: David StarkGraduate seminar, held in fall 2004 at the Department of Sociology, Columbia University Download
3.
Course Title: Soziologie der Märkte (Sociology of Markets)Lecturer: Sophie MützelSeminar des Lehrbereichs Vergleichende Strukturanalyse, Wintersemester 2004/ 2005 , Humboldt Universität Berlin Download
4. http://www.sociologia.ufsc.br/programas/cso6008(20051).html