Arminio Fraga

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Founding Partner at Gávea Inestimentos

Inequality remains high in Brazil, in absolute terms, and opportunities wise. In order to advance, it will be necessary to invest more in the social sphere. Resources would come from the elimination of regressive taxes and subsidies, and from social security and State reforms. These sources should also have a direct benefic impact on inequality and...

This report was written by The Committee on International Economic Policy and Reform, a non-partisan and non-ideological group of independent experts, comprised of academics and former government and central bank officials. The objective of the group is to analyze global monetary and financial problems, offer systematic analysis and advance reform...

Brazil’s negotiations with the IMF in 2002 concerning possible financial support for its economic program took place amid a growing lack of confidence by investors in the course of the country’s future economic policies and prospects, and thus in its ability—or even willingness—to service its debt. The victory of the opposition candidate in the pre...

The first section of this paper compares Latin America's economic performance in the 1990s with the 1980s and finds definite macroeconomic and social progress during the decade. The following section considers the policy performance of the region during the 1990s and finds that, on a country-by-country basis, the nations of Latin America that were...

This paper calculates indices of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indices for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although more progress is needed to boost political auton...

The purpose of the paper is to highlight some essential features of an approach to the resolution of international financial crises, based upon an assessment of what has been essential for restoring normal relations between debtors and creditors in recent crises. We focus on the nexus between the debtor and the private creditorsand on what they can...

The financial crisis that erupted in Asia in 1997 quickly spread to other developing regions, as international investors panicked and pulled their capital out. In this article, the governor of Brazil's central bank outlines the steps Brazil took to avert financial disaster when inflows of private foreign capital suddenly dried up.

Standard real business cycle models must rely on total factor productivity (TFP) shocks to explain the observed comovement of consumption, investment, and hours worked. This paper shows that a neoclassical model consistent with observed heterogeneity in labor supply and consumption can generate comovement in the absence of TFP shocks. Intertemporal...

Stabilization and structural reform that has characterized Latin America as of late is based upon an increasing adherence to sound fiscal and monetary policies. The economic deprivation brought on by the debt crisis has served as a powerful impetus behind these developments. The macroeconomic policies leading up to the crisis have been put aside in...

The control of monetary aggregates in Brazil has to face three large problems: 1) high government budget deficit, 2) the ineffectiveness of the interest rate as a policy instrument in a high inflation environment; 3) unpredictable financial innovation. The first two problems are especially important when one is trying to design stabilization progra...

This paper develops a simple two-country portfolio model of the exchange-rate risk premium which incorporates price uncertainty in both countries. It is shown how the risk premium depends on the world shares of outside assets and wealth, as well as on the variance-covariance matrix of prices and the exchange rate. In particular, when purchasing pow...

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 had one aspect that is unusually useful for economic analysis. It provided an example of a clear-cut announcement of future policy actions at specified dates.This provides an opportunity to apply recent advances in the analysis of expectations dynamics to data that have been generated in an environment that inc...

Starting from the consolidated government budget constraint it is possible to illuminate a number of issues concerning Brazil’s current economic situation. The main conclusions that emerge from the analysis are that the fiscal imbalance will require a substantial increase in the government’s debt in real terms and that the impact of this increase o...

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Princeton University, 1985. Includes bibliographies.