Underwriter Reputation in Brazilian IPOs

This study updates previous analyses of banks' activities in equity offerings in the Brazilian market. Using data for the 2004–2007 period, the study tests the hypotheses that banks with the highest reputations coordinate offerings with lower initial returns, lower levels of risk and charge more for their services. Three measures of reputation were constructed in line with measures used for the US market. None of the measures showed a statistically significant relationship with returns, risk, or remuneration. The difference between the mid-point of the preliminary price range and the offering price constituted the most significant element in the forecasting of returns.     

Performance Analysis of Sustainable Investments in the Brazilian Stock Market: A Study About the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE)

In this article, we studied the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) of the Brazilian Mercantile, Futures and Stock Exchange (BM&FBOVESPA), with the main objective of analyzing the performance of sustainable investments in the Brazilian stock market, during the period from December 2005 to December 2010. To achieve this aim, we characterized ISE portfolios and we compared its performance with the IBOVESPA (representing the market portfolio) and other BM&FBOVESPA sectoral indices. In the performance comparison, we used level of liquidity, return and risk indicators, as well as the following measures: Sharpe, Treynor, Sortino, and Omega. Our results show that although sustainable investments have presented some interesting characteristics, such as increasing liquidity and low diversifiable risk, they did not achieve satisfactory financial performance in the analysis period. This indicates that the constraints imposed by this type of investment in capital allocation in Brazil may be harming their return and risk attractiveness.     

Technical change: It should be positive and make sense!

We present the results of eight models that differ with respect to the time behavior of technical inefficiency and the presence of country heterogeneity. When taken into account, heterogeneity raises average technical change estimates, however technical progress rankings become counter-intuitive.     

Who bribes in public contracting and why: worldwide evidence from firms

We study procurement bribery utilizing survey data from 11,000 enterprises in 125 countries. About one-third of managers report that firms like theirs bribe to secure a public contract, paying about 8 % of the contract value. Econometric estimations suggest that national governance factors, such as democratic accountability, press freedom, and rule of law, are associated with lower bribery. Larger and foreign-owned firms are less likely to bribe than smaller domestic ones. But among bribers, foreign and domestic firms pay similar amounts. Multinational firms appear sensitive to reputational risks in their home countries, but partially adapt to their host country environments.     

Immigration and the path dependence of education: the case of German‐speakers in São Paulo,Brazil (1840–1920)

This article studies the path dependence of human capital accumulation in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It focuses on the impacts of German‐speaking immigrants on education through three channels: their share of the population in the nineteenth century, their on‐the‐job skills, and the schools they founded. Using a new dataset based on almanacs from 1873 and 1888, these effects are evaluated for the nineteenth, early twentieth, and early twenty‐first centuries. The article shows that the institutionalized demand for education of these immigrants, reflected by the establishment of schools, was their main contribution to the accumulation of human capital. The effect of German schools on educational levels required a period to mature and dissipated over time. Nevertheless, its influence was substantial at the beginning of the twentieth century, affecting enrolment levels in private and state schools, a result that suggests the existence of spillover and contagion effects. Moreover, current indicators for stocks and flows of human capital in São Paulo are strongly associated with their historical levels. At the same time, this path dependence is conditional on the type of school: while a positive persistence is found for the private system throughout the twentieth century, convergence occurred in state schools.     

The optimal disposition decision for product returns

We provide an analytic model for the optimal disposition decision for product returns. The manager decides which product returns to accept for processing at the remanufacturing facility, and which ones to sell immediately as-is at a salvage value. High congestion levels in the remanufacturing facility delay the sale of the remanufactured product at the secondary market, decreasing the value at which it can be sold; this may imply a more attractive salvaging option. This is particularly important for high-tech products with short life cycles, such as computers and printers. We propose a two-step policy. In the first step, the returned product’s random processing time is observed. In the second step, a disposition decision is made: if the processing time is larger than a threshold k* the product is salvaged; otherwise the product is remanufactured. We provide an approximate procedure to compute k* in industrial settings. Our numerical study demonstrates the superiority of our policy over the current industrial practice ignoring the time value of money.     

The luck of being of the right gender and color: a detailed discussion about the wage gaps in the Brazilian manufacturing industry

Quality & Quantity - This work analyzed the wage discrimination in the Brazilian manufacturing industry. By recurring to the most updated database, several gaps were analyzed between white and...