This dissertation investigates the feasibility of implementing a social currency in the municipality of Paraíba do Sul (RJ). The study articulates operational guidelines and an economic model to estimate its impacts on regional development, grounded in the principles of solidarity economy and inspired by successful experiences in Brazil, such as the Palma and Bem currencies, and particularly Maricá’s Mumbuca. The research adopts a qualitative and exploratory approach, combining literature review, document analysis, and the collection of primary and secondary data. The proposed economic model is an adaptation of the Keynesian multiplier, incorporating variables such as the marginal propensity to consume locally and the conversion rate of the social currency into the national currency. This methodology aims to minimize income leakages and maximize internal circulation. In addition to presenting a historical and conceptual analysis of the solidarity economy, the work compares representative cases and proposes institutional and legal guidelines adapted to the context of Paraíba do Sul. Expected results include strengthening local commerce, reducing financial exclusion, and promoting more inclusive and sustainable territorial development.

This dissertation proposes a structural model for analyzing the spatial diffusion of regional development, applied to the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, with the aim of investigating how structural economic factors propagate across the territory and condition differentiated regional trajectories. It starts from the hypothesis that development is not only the result of isolated local attributes, but of dynamic processes of regional interdependence influenced by neighborhood effects and diffusion mechanisms.

To capture these mechanisms, an empirical approach is developed that integrates a Random Forest adapted to capture fields of local importance and graph neural networks (Graph Convolutional Networks – GCN), allowing the simultaneous modeling of nonlinearities and complex spatial dependencies. The proposed methodology makes it possible to identify patterns of economic diffusion not fully captured by traditional spatial models, in addition to enabling conditional structural simulations to assess regional sensitivity to variations in socioeconomic and infrastructural factors.

The results are interpreted in light of the historical formation of Brazilian regional development, especially the processes of agrarian structure, urbanization, industrialization, and territorial integration that shaped the trajectories of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, allowing for an assessment of the correspondence between empirical diffusion patterns and long-term structural constraints.

By articulating advanced spatial modeling and historical-structural interpretation, the dissertation contributes to an integrated understanding of Brazilian regional development, in addition to proposing new analytical tools for the study of territorial heterogeneity and regional economic diffusion mechanisms.

In Brazil, agribusiness plays a significant role in the country's economic development, being a global leader in the production of various agricultural products. However, there is a high level of income inequality, particularly affecting family farming, which hampers its productive performance. A vast body of literature identifies Pronaf as a mechanism capable of improving productive performance, as this credit provides family farmers with access to technologies and innovation, infrastructure improvements, technical training, and, consequently, offers the potential for farmers to increase their technical efficiency. In this context, the present study aims to analyze the effect of Pronaf on the technical efficiency of family farming in Brazil, considering the existence of spatial dependence effects in the variables. To this end, an Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) will first be conducted. Then, to obtain technical efficiency scores, the stochastic production frontier method will be employed, incorporating spatial dependence into the model, allowing the spatial lags of the exogenous variables to alter the production frontier technology. Finally, to assess the effect of Pronaf on the technical efficiency of Brazilian family farming establishments, an econometric regression will be carried out using the model that proves to be the most robust and appropriate for the data.

The tax revenues of the State of Rio de Janeiro (ERJ) have been studied in recent years due to their economic importance. The ICMS (Tax on Transactions Relating to the Circulation of Goods and on Interstate and Intermunicipal Transport and Communication Services) is the state’s largest source of revenue, and its forecasting is required by the Fiscal Responsibility Law for each fiscal year. Therefore, short-, medium-, and long-term projections of ICMS revenue are crucial for public spending decisions and, consequently, for the economic development of the ERJ. In this context, an analysis and forecasting of ICMS in the ERJ is proposed using time series models and neural networks. These models are integrated with hierarchical modeling through bottom-up and top-down approaches, enabling the evaluation of public policy effects on each economic sector of the ERJ. Initially, Box-Jenkins models, exponential smoothing, seasonal naïve models, and neural networks (NNAR and MLP) were applied. Subsequently, SARIMAX, NNAR, and MLP models with exogenous variables were used. Finally, exponential smoothing and SARIMA models (with and without exogenous variables) were employed within the hierarchical structure using both bottomup and top-down approaches. The results showed that the exponential smoothing model using the hierarchical structure with a bottom-up approach was the most suitable for the last year analyzed. Furthermore, it was concluded that the models struggle to maintain accuracy in the context of structural changes, and it is expected that the changes proposed by the tax reform will negatively impact forecast quality.

This dissertation analyzes sustainable growth in Brazil through the degree of
decoupling between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors from 1991 to 2021. The
objective is to investigate, at both federal and regional levels, the relationship between
sectoral GDP variation and CO2 emissions variation, using the Tapio index, which
classifies decoupling into eight possible scenarios. GDP data were obtained from
Ipeadata (IBGE), and emission estimates were sourced from the SEEG platform of the
Climate Observatory. The results show that, in the agricultural sector, strong negative
decoupling predominates, indicating rising emissions alongside declining GDP. The
only year classified as strong decoupling was 2007. Regionally, the South presented
the most environmentally efficient performance, in contrast to the Center-West, where
high emissions were not matched by proportional production output. In the
manufacturing sector, the scenario was more favorable. In seventeen out of the thirty
years analyzed, the Tapio index showed stages of strong, weak, or recessive
decoupling, demonstrating some progress in breaking the link between economic
growth and GHG emissions. However, nine years were classified as strong negative
decoupling, reflecting simultaneous deterioration of environmental and economic
indicators, particularly during the 2010s. The structural shift from an agro-export model
to a green industrialization is presented as a viable strategy for anticipating the
inflection point of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), thus reconciling economic
growth with environmental sustainability. The study highlights the importance of
industrial policies focused on productive modernization based on low-carbon
technologies, as well as the need for long-term planning to foster the transition toward
a green economy. Given Brazil’s relatively clean energy matrix and abundance of
natural resources, a new sustainability-oriented industrialization emerges as a
promising path to align economic development, social inclusion, and environmental
preservation.

The agglomeration economy, a concept that has been ingrained for several decades, remains an essential field of research for understanding regional development. This analysis investigates the interaction between productive concentration and deconcentration, emphasizing the inherent complexities and challenges associated with geographic specialization. Focusing on Baixada Fluminense, a region in the state of Rio de Janeiro marked by a rich and complex history, from colonial times to the present day. This work addresses the agglomeration economy and its influence on regional development, focusing on the State of Rio de Janeiro. It explores the dynamics between productive concentration and deconcentration, highlighting the importance of public policies in the configuration of economic geography, recognizing that productive concentration or deconcentration has significant impacts on the quality of life of local populations. Socioeconomic issues faced by Baixada Fluminense are presented, such as inequality, poverty and lack of basic infrastructure, using the Input-Product methodology in the analysis of the productive agglomeration and the impact on Baixada Fluminense. However, there were few studies in the literature regarding the economic relevance of Baixada Fluminense for the economy of Rio de Janeiro. The fact is that the region is relevant and needs a closer look in order to gain greater prominence as well as instruments to analyze, plan and implement development policies to reduce regional inequalities that the region suffers.

The objective is to verify the contribution of sustainable agricultural practices to the performance of the Brazilian agricultural sector, in addition to measuring the contribution of production factors (work, capital, land and inputs) considering each sustainable agricultural practice and verify the effect of each sustainable agricultural practice in the gross value of production. The production theory represented mathematically by a Cobb-Douglas production function was adopted in order to identify its effect. And to verify the effects of sustainable agricultural practices, an equation will be estimated for each type of cultivation technique using the Ordinary Least Squares Method.

The data used in this work comes from the 2017 Agricultural Census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics – IBGE. The units of analysis will be the 5,564 Brazilian municipalities. To estimate the production function, the gross value of agricultural production in 2017 in reais was chosen as the product variable. Production factors were represented by the following variables: cultivation area in hectares encompassing crop, livestock and agroforestry areas; capital goods represented by machines, tractors and equipment for agricultural establishments; number of people employed in agricultural establishments and agricultural inputs including pesticides, fertilizers, seeds and seedlings, pesticides, fertilizers and veterinary products. The variable of interest, cultivation technique, was selected because it represents sustainable agricultural practices developed by rural producers. As well, regional dummy variables representing the five Brazilian regions were inserted into the regression model.

As results, the variables work used, machinery, cultivated area and inputs used were statistically significant and presented positive elasticity coefficients for all sustainable agricultural practices mentioned in the model, indicating that the sustainable agricultural technique used contributed to the efficient use of production factors.

The results showed that aggregate agricultural practices contributed to an increase in the gross value of production of agricultural establishments in Brazilian municipalities, indicating that replacing conventional agricultural practices with sustainable agricultural practices is capable of bringing financial returns to the Brazilian rural sector. Highlighting the cultivation techniques, level planting and crop rotation, which presented positive and statistically significant coefficients.

As benefits for a greater number of establishments that adopt sustainable agricultural practices, they can cite the reduction in the use of inputs that are costly and harmful to the environment by inputs that are beneficial to the environment, in addition to increasing the supply of healthy products contributing to the health of the population. population and price reduction. Sustainable agricultural practices contribute to the environment and despite being little used within the total number of agricultural establishments, they were able to generate income for rural producers who made use of their methods.

The State of Rio de Janeiro (ERJ), a historical economic pillar of Brazil, faced substantial
challenges throughout the 20th century, resulting in a notable loss of dynamism with loss of
participation in the national economy, such as the transfer of the capital to Brasília in 1960,
which represented obstacles to the state's economy, negatively affecting its economic
structure and performance. Subsequently, a deep crisis hit the ERJ between 80 and 95, but the
situation improved from the second half of the 90s, driven by the growth of the oil extraction
industry, which became one of the main drivers of the country's GDP. state. The discovery of
oil reserves in the Campos basin in 1974 marked the beginning of a period of expansion for
the ERJ, transforming it into Brazil's main oil producer and exporter. Law No. 9,478 of 1997,
which put an end to Petrobrás' monopoly, was a milestone, allowing the entry of private
investments in the oil and gas sector. ERJ's economy grew at a slower rate than the Southeast
and Brazil in the period from 2000 to 2020, although it maintained a relevant economic
position in the region and the country. However, with the ERJ specializing the economic
dynamics in oil, which, despite creating qualified jobs and requiring substantial investments,
has limited integration of the local production chain, affecting the generation of urban
employment and income. Furthermore, the Oil and Gas sector, despite representing a
significant part of Rio de Janeiro's economy, faces challenges in the medium and long term,
including the reduction of oil reserves and the growing share of oil revenues in public coffers.
This condition is aggravated by the prolonged economic crisis in the state, where the
exploitation of non-renewable resources can exclude other productive activities. This study
aims to analyze the productive structure of ERJ, with an emphasis on the Oil and Gas sector,
and evaluate the impact of oil revenues on the economic development of municipalities in Rio
de Janeiro. Using the input-output matrix and Geographically Weighted Panel Regression, we
sought to understand the connections and impacts of the O&G sector on the state economy.
The sectoral analysis revealed that the oil sector, although capable of generating employment
and income, occupies a less prominent position in terms of production, with little integration
with the state economy and a focus on exports. The assessment of the socioeconomic impacts
of royalties indicated that they only had an effect on the most coastal municipalities,
suggesting a potential ineffectiveness in the distribution and management of additional
financial resources. This highlights the absence of a clear strategy to increase regional
economic competitiveness and avoid a deterioration in the relative position of the state of Rio
de Janeiro in the national economic scenario.

Keynes' postulates of uncertainty and liquidity preference were very important to think about a monetary economy of production. Based on Keynesian and post Keynesian theories, this paper analyzes how the preference for liquidity impacts the countries through the hierarchy of money. The preference for liquidity that at times of global crisis impacts countries differently, intensifying or relaxing the effects of the crisis according to the condition of each country in the global economic structure. Since economic agents always behave in search of reducing their risks and losses, and therefore in times of declines in the world economy agents seek to allocate their income in assets with greater liquidity and since currency is the asset with the highest degree of liquidity, allocating their resources in currency turns out to be the safest. Therefore, monetary policies can influence the trends of instability in countries.

Imperialism became a new evolutionary phase of capitalism, from which theorists of this discussion, such as Lenin, were present in their contributions. Based on this approach, this work seeks to understand the impact of sanctions applied by the United States in other countries, carried out through SWIFT, a country considered the global hegemony and an imperialist country. The present study shows how countries have been developing alternatives to reduce dependence on the dollar, consequently, on the United States. The focus will be on Russia and China, countries that have recently developed their own payment system and carry out transactions in their own currencies.

This work will approach, through an economic point of view, the question of the heterogeneity of the Brazilian regions in terms of economic development, as well as the mechanisms underlying the condition of extreme inequality that characterizes the Brazilian case. More specifically, it is intended to assess how the behavior of banking agents can influence regional economic development. The hypothesis is that different changes in the environment of the phases still exist for specific regions, dealing specifically with central and peripheral regions, considering the economic cycle. The study is carried out for the period from 2010 to 201.

The Oil and Gas industry has an important role in the economic and social relations of the
contemporary world. The availability of these resources to cities, states, countries and
municipalities can generate something that goes beyond simple industrial development in a
specific niche. The productive activities of O&G have a wide productive chain, and, in
addition, generate oil revenues, popularly known as royalties, which, when appropriately
used, can be an engine that generates development. Brazil has large oil reserves, especially
after the Pré-Sal discovery. The state of Rio de Janeiro, in particular, has the privilege of
having a large part of these on its coast, which consequently generates oil income in large
volumes. This research approaches the development of the Oil and Gas industry in the state of
Rio de Janeiro and the influences that the receipt of oil revenues, royalties and special
participations, can cause in the socioeconomic development of its municipalities, in the period
from 2008 to 2016. The purpose was to verify the role of oil revenues in the composition and
evolution of the FIRJAN Municipal Development Index of each city in Rio de Janeiro, with
special attention to the top three that received the most such revenues in 2016: Carapebus,
Maricá and Niterói. In addition to the historical and statistical approach, an empirical
temporal analysis of the effects of these incomes on the socioeconomic development of the
municipalities was sought, using a regression model with panel-structured data, with the
FIRJAN Index of Municipal Development being the dependent variable and oil revenues as
an independent variable. Also, the same model was used to observe the decomposition of the
index, creating analyzes in the areas of Employment and Income, Education and Health. As a
result, positive relationships were found between the receipt of oil revenues and the
development of municipalities in the state of Rio de Janeiro in a general context. For the cities
of Carapebus, Maricá and Niterói, no conclusive answers were found, and thus, no evidence
of positive or negative relationships between such incomes and the progress of these
municipalities.

In an environment of dispute over private investments, mainly external, reduction of coordinated federal policies for regional development, unequal regional growth and tax autonomy on the part of the States, results in the fiscal war between subnational entities. This study aimed to compute the importance of the metalworking sector for the economy of Rio de Janeiro, to measure the socioeconomic impacts due to the entry into operation of new companies that expressed an interest in investing in the state of Rio de Janeiro and, finally, to estimate the budgetary impact and net financial contribution in the state collection of ICMS and FECP, if the differentiated tax treatment provided for in Law No. 8.960/2020 becomes effective in the state. By achieving the proposed objectives, this work was also able to answer the allegations made by the MP/RJ in the direct action of unconstitutionality (ADI), as it estimated the budgetary and financial impact and the waiver of public revenue of Law No. 8.960/2020 . To achieve the proposed objective, the input-output method was used. As a database, the matrix with sector x sector technology with base year 2015 built by Cabral and Oliveira (2020) with the Rio de Janeiro metalworking sector disaggregated was used. The results revealed that the Rio de Janeiro metalworking sector represents 4.9% of Rio de Janeiro's GDP. The main productive chains of the metal-mechanical pole happen with the sectors Extractive industries; Machines and equipment; Other manufacturing industries; Transport, storage and mail and Scientific, professional and technical activities. When analyzing the impact of the investments of the eight companies that expressed an interest in establishing their activities in the territory of Rio de Janeiro, if the differentiated tax treatment provided for in Law No. 2,191.81 million (in R$ 2020), will generate 4,731 direct, indirect and induced occupations in the Rio de Janeiro economy and increase the collection of ICMS and FECP by approximately R$ 118.3 million. In this way, he estimated that if Law 8.960/2020 came into force, the net impact of ICMS and FECP collection only with the investments already announced in the ADI, would be around R$ 4.86 million. This result reveals that in the case of Law Nº 8.960/2020, it can be understood as a public policy of productive densification and deconcentration of economic activity in order to catalyze the socioeconomic development of the municipalities in the interior, since the metalworking sector in Rio de Janeiro presents qualification and income levels higher than the national economy. In view of this, it is possible to conclude that the Law of the metalmechanical pole of the state of Rio de Janeiro can be understood as an instrument of regional development.

Electricity transmission and distribution processes generate energy losses that impact the efficient functioning of electrical systems. Total energy losses are subdivided into technical and non-technical losses. Technical losses occur naturally due to physical properties that cause the dissipation of part of the energy generated in the transmission lines and other components of the system, being generally stable. Non-technical losses, also called commercial losses, generally occur due to electricity theft, fraud, meter reading errors and defective meters, being related to socioeconomic factors, system corruption and to managerial aspects of utilities. The average real and regulatory non-technical losses, weighted on the billed low voltage market, were 15,3% and 12,4%, respectively, in the period from 2008 to 2015. This considerable amount of losses causes a reduction of revenue for the utilities and makes the tariffs less and less reasonable. This happens because the losses are transferred to the consumers up to the limit of regulated non-technical losses, at the time of the utilities tariff review. This transfer has direct and indirect impacts for utilities, the government, and consumers, generating a vicious cycle of non-technical losses. In this perspective, this dissertation has three synergistic objectives, namely: i) through a traditional literature review, survey the most relevant national and international publications to the non-technical losses research agenda; ii) to undertake a pioneering bibliometric analysis, to systematize the measures to mitigate the commercial losses hitherto proposed by the literature, to identify the major references of articles and authors on the subject, present the research areas that address the topic, the most relevant journals, the countries that publish the most, and the most used keywords, besides identifying the evolution
of the research topic; lastly, iii) to measure the direct and indirect impacts on the household electricity consumption and on Brazil’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of partial transfer of non-technical electricity losses in the low voltage market on tariff. To reach this last goal, it was used the input-output methodology and the Brazilian matrix for the year 2015 provided by the IBGE with the vector of family consumption disaggregated by income deciles. The results showed that when the amount referring to the cost of commercial losses was not transferred to families and redistributed on consumption basket, it had a direct and indirect impact of BRL 12.9 billion, which represented a net impact on Brazil’s GDP of BRL 5.1 billion. This measure would be more equitable and fairer, in addition to leading to more reasonable tariffs. 

Some South American countries have experienced an unprecedented economic situation at the beginning of the 21st century: economic growth, low inflation and income distribution. The result was the reduction of poverty at historically low levels. This research project will seek to contribute to the debate on this period through an analysis that can measure the degree of structural transformation that took place in these countries. The focus of the work will be the experience of Bolivia (2006-2014),

The aim is to assess whether the productive structure of these countries has undergone a process of diversification of the economic activities carried out in their countries and to what extent this has resulted in a sophistication of these activities at the technological level. Finally, the extent to which these two processes have contributed to improvements in employment conditions, wages and income will be assessed. This project will gather a large database on the productive structure of the countries, focusing on the manufacturing industry.

 

The instability in the resources allocated to the health sector and Social Organizations in the administration of some healthcare units expresses uncertainty in the management of public health in Rio de Janeiro. Therefore, the objective is to verify the level of health efficiency in the municipalities of Rio de Janeiro since the entry of Social Organizations in the management of the sector, from 2009 to 2019. To this end, was used the Stochastic Frontier Analysis method, precise in capture random effects that may bias the estimation. The database consist in data on health expenditures and transfers to the sector taken from the SIOPS/DATASUS, socioeconomic data taken from the SIDRA/IBGE and data referring to health production and structural capacity of the units, taken from the TABNET/DATASUS. All databases refer to the 92 municipalities of Rio de Janeiro, in the period between 2009 and 2019. Also includes the amount and value invested in contracts signed between the RJ State Health Department and private entities. Thus, in the face of the concern to lose free and quality public health services guaranteed by the Federal Constitution, the development of this research sought to verify the role of Social Organizations and investigate the effectiveness of the public-private partnership in management of health in Rio de Janeiro, contributing with an analysis of the SHO performance and with the observation of the pros and cons of this management model. The results obtained by the research showed a notable relevance of personnel expenses in converting the sector's resources into the production of health services, in addition to a positive relationship between the presence of Social Organizations and technical inefficiency. The estimated efficiency scores revealed an average of 0.85 and the municipalities that achieved optimal efficiency rely on SHO in the administration of their health units, while those with lower levels of effectiveness had only the public sector in their management. However, the model used found that even though the SHO present a direct relationship with inefficiency, the value applied in contracts favors the technical efficiency of the municipality. In view of this, it is concluded that the contracts made by the State Department of Rio de Janeiro with the SHO should be directed to municipalities that have low efficiency scores, to promote equity in the quality of the health sectors of the municipalities in the State.

Due to the importance of formal employment and the need to provide theoretical foundations
and empirical analysis for an analysis of the main determinants of formal employment growth
in the State of Rio de Janeiro. This dissertation tries to clarify the determinants of economic
growth, with an analysis focused on employment growth, considering that formal work is one
of the main tools in the fight against social inequalities. The main determinants of
employment growth for the Rio de Janeiro economy were estimated. From temporal analyzes
for the periods 2010-2014 and 2014-2018, the main actors of economic growth were
estimated. The state of Rio de Janeiro is still one of the most expressive for the country, both
economically and in terms of population, in the period from 2010 to 2018, the state was the
scene of world events, the Olympic World Cup, however, even with so much national
relevance. , the Rio de Janeiro economy does not present the same growth performance when
compared to national results and this problem is already historical. In this sense, the main
contribution of this work was to analyze the determinants for economic growth.

This dissertation aims to conduct a study on Rare Earth Elements (ETR), or simply Rare Earths (TR), as a possible key element for the promotion and consolidation of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (or INDUSTRY 4.0) in Brazil. In this sense, this dissertation begins with an INTRODUCTION, presenting a synthesis about the economic trajectory of the two main economic powers of today: the United States and China. CHAPTER 1 deals with the concept of RT, reporting its history, general properties, location, worldwide production and practical applications of these elements in everyday life and in industry. CHAPTER 2 discusses the occurrence of RT in Brazil, the extraction policies behind them, among other particularities. CHAPTER 3 introduces the concept of Industry 4.0 and the conditions favorable to the promotion of this type of industry. CHAPTER 4 suggests an econometric specification to verify whether there is indeed a relationship between the extraction of ETR and the development of Industry 4.0. Once proven, its degree will then be measured: to what extent the extraction of RTEs corroborates the development of Industry 4.0, and how this relationship is presented especially in Brazil. Finally, the last section corroborates the FINAL CONSIDERATIONS on the subject.