The centenary in 2000 of Gilbert Freyre's birth occasioned a number of retrospectives on his place in Brazil's history. This article focuses on Freyre up to 1933, the year in which Casa Grande & Senzala was published. Emphasis is given to such formative influences as his undergraduate study at Baylor University, his graduate study at Columbia University and his subsequent travels in Europe. In these years Freyre rejected an invitation to stay in the USA and strengthened his resolve to return to Brazil and make his career as a writer. The theme he soon adopted was Brazil's viability as a modern nation, notwithstanding its supposed defects of race and climate.

Even though Mexico has been an important player in the international drug trade, this country's history in such illegal ventures has been insufficiently studied. In an effort to begin to understand how and when the country began to be an active participant in such illicit markets, this article first analyses regulations introduced in the United States regarding drug and alcohol consumption, marketing and production and assesses their impact on the Mexican side. Secondly, it argues that Mexico's participation in the narcotics trade, the routes that have developed and the Mexican states involved in this traffic have roots that can be traced to the beginning of the twentieth century at least.

The article discusses the use of cost-benefit analysis to assess conservation efforts, and applies this technique to Venezuela's National Parks Systems to assess how much Venezuela should spend in managing its National Parks. As with any major environmental decision, this calls for more than economic criteria. Social values, science and politics all affect environmental decisions, and economics should be but one factor considered. Nonetheless, cost-benefit analysis provides a valuable tool and a framework for improved understanding of the tradeoffs among different factors.

The article analyses the Brazilian experience in financing economic activity from the 1964–67 reform until the 1990s. Two issues are addressed: first, what conditions explain the development of a model based on public and external credit in Brazil, quite different from the capital market based system conceived in the 1964–67 reform? Second, what are the perspectives for the development of an alternative model in the country, led by the national private sector? Based on international experience, two alternatives are considered: a) the expansion of the capital market, in order to make possible large scale direct financing; b) the formation of a private banking credit system, complementing or replacing both public and external credit. Despite undoubted improvements, tendencies observed up to 1997 suggest the persistence of the ‘short-termist’ profile that typically characterised the Brazilian financial system. Thus, the development of both capital market and banking credit models depends on financial policies devoted to this goal. General guidelines for such policies are suggested in the last section of the paper.

In view of the inconclusive statistical results associated with democracy's impact on economic performance, this article unpacks the dependent variable (economic development) by examining democratisation's impact on education policy. To determine whether democracy compels politicians to provide higher levels of educational opportunity, it traces the process of repression and democratisation in Brazil along with government spending on education. It finds that democratisation has observable effects on education spending on three different levels: 1) the percentage of government spending allocated to education; 2) the distribution of federal funding among different levels of education; and 3) the distribution of funds within primary education among state and local actors.

From the monetary reform of July 1994 until January 1999 Brazil followed the policy of pegging the new currency (the real) to the US dollar. The central rate was initially fixed at 1[ratio ]1 to the US dollar, but no fluctuation band was set and the market rate was allowed to fluctuate substantially. After a sharp appreciation of up to 15 per cent the real remained at a premium to the dollar for two years (until June 1996). In March 1995, following the Mexican crisis, the Banco Central do Brasil adopted a crawling band without preannounced depreciations. This change in policy was meant to increase somewhat the flexibility of the exchange rate regime while still maintaining an anchor for inflationary expectations. The market rate depreciated by 13.9 per cent in the course of 1995 (December 1995 on December 1994), 7.1 per cent in 1996, 7.3 per cent in 1997 and 8.3 per cent in 1998. By December 1998 it had reached 1.2054 to the US dollar, a depreciation of only 20 per cent with respect to the central rate fixed at the end of the hyperinflation but about 40 per cent with respect to the rate prevailing in July 1994.