Strategies for Growth: The Changing Role of the State - Brazil Conference Report

This two-day conference in Brazil concludes a three-year research initiative by Columbia University’s Center on Global Economic Governance (CGEG), in conjunction with the Columbia Global Centers in Paris, Beijing, and Rio de Janeiro. The project was developed in response to the global financial crisis of the previous decade and the challenges that Europe, East Asia, and Latin America have faced, both individually and collectively, in its aftermath. The conference will consider strategies for economic growth in the regional context, as well as identify challenges and solutions specific to Brazil.

The conference was organized by Columbia's Center on Global Economic Governance, the Columbia Global Centers, the Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública e de Empresas at Fundação Getulio Vargas and Canal UmBrasil.

You can read a full report of the conference, as well as collected relevant policy briefs by clicking here.  Below, you can also watch interviews of scholars from Brazil and around the world  who partcpated in the conference discuss the role played by the Brazilian state, how its policies and the current political crisis have affected and will affect the developments in Brazil's economy.

Participant Interviews

1. Click here to watch the full video or here to read the piece Folha de S. Paulo covering José Scheinkman's interview. José Scheinkman is the Charles and Lynn Zhang Professor of Economics at Columbia University.
2. In this interveiw, Daniela Campello discusses how elections in Brazil are affected by external economic factors. Daniela Campello is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at FGV-EBAPE.
3. In his interview, Otaviano Canuto discusses how some rent-seeking elites have shaped misguided policies in Brazil. Otaviano Canuto is the Executive-Director for Brazil at the World Bank. Please click here to read the Folha de S. Paulo piece.
4. Paul Lagunes, an Assistant Professor at Columbia University, discusses in his interview how corruption erodes living standards in countries around the globe.
5. The former Minister of Finance of Chile, Andrés Velasco, discusses fiscal policies in Latin America during the boom years in his interview.
6. Edmund Amann discusses Brazil's position on the global economy in his interview. Edmund Amann is a Professor at the Leiden University, in the Netherlands.
7. In his interview, Jan Svejnar discusses State intervention strategies in emerging markets. Svejnar is the James T. Shotwell Professor of Global Political Economy at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Center on Global Economic Governance.