O artigo analisa se empresas com ações negociadas na Bovespa enfrentaram restrições financeiras a investimentos no período entre 2001 e 2005. A análise de painel com dados de balanço patrimonial e de preços de mercado das ações revela que os investimentos das empresas de grande porte apresentam maior sensibilidade aos fluxos de caixa. Esse resultado discrepante com a literatura tradicional de restrição financeira a investimentos é discutido à luz de argumentos teóricos e evidências empíricas de pesquisas mais recentes.

The paper focuses on evaluating whether Brazilian publicly traded companies faced financial constraints on investments over the period 2001-2005. Relying on balance-sheet and stock price data, a panel data analysis is carried out, yielding results in disagreement with the conventional literature: large firms' investments appear to be more sensitive to cash flows than smaller firms'. Nonetheless, the recent literature provides some theoretical rationale as well as empirical evidence consistent with these findings.

Este artigo investiga as fontes de vulnerabilidade e o grau de severidade das crises cambiais e financeiras na América Latina e no Leste Asiático. Evidências obtidas a partir de um conjunto de indicadores calculados por país e por região para cada ano entre 1990 e 2004 sugerem que as economias do Leste Asiático eram potencialmente mais vulneráveis em aspectos relacionados ao setor bancário, enquanto as fragilidades das economias latino-americanas concentravam-se nos desequilíbrios fiscais e nas transações correntes do balanço de pagamentos. Por sua vez, estimativas do grau de severidade das crises mostram que, embora atenuadas na crise asiática de 1997-1998, as diferenças regionais persistiam.

This article focuses on the sources of vulnerability to currency and financial crises as well as on their degree of severity in Latin American and East Asian economies. Evidence based on a number of indicators reckoned for each country and for each region for every year over the period 1990-2004 suggests that the East Asian economies were potentially more vulnerable to troubles in the banking sector, while Latin American economies' weaknesses seem to be concentrated on fiscal and current account imbalances. Furthermore, the severity crisis indicators point out that there still remained regional contrasts, lessened only during the 1997-1998 Asian crises.

Este artigo analisa a evolução da estrutura de propriedade de capital e de votos das empresas de capital aberto no Brasil no período 1997-2002. Sua principal contribuição reside em estimar a magnitude dos direitos de voto e de fluxo de caixa do acionista último com a maior parcela do capital votante de cada empresa. Examinam-se, também, as fontes da discrepância entre direitos de votos e de fluxo de caixa, avaliando-se a importância relativa da emissão de ações preferenciais sem direito a voto, acordos de votos, estruturas piramidais de propriedade, e posse cruzada de ações. A base de dados compreende 4478 relatórios que as empresas, cumprindo uma exigência legal, submeteram à CVM nesse período.

This paper focuses on the ownership and voting structures of limited liability companies in Brazil over the period 1997-2002. Its main contribution lies in measuring the magnitude of deviations between control rights and cash-flow rights for the ultimate shareholder with the largest voting rights. Furthermore, it pinpoints how these discrepancies are generated, evaluating the relative importance of the issuance of preferred stocks with no voting rights, voting agreements, pyramidal arrangements of ownership, and cross-shareholdings. The data set embraces 4,478 reports that companies, complying with a mandatory requirement, filed to the CVM over that period.

The objective and originality of this paper lie in identifying Stiglitz's main theoretical contributions to Financial Economics and in briefly portraying the contemporary economic thought out of which these contributions emerged as well as in suggesting their connections with the subsequent economic thought. Grounded on a detailed analysis of Stiglitz's works on finance, his most important theoretical findings are singled out and gathered into four issues: (1) the conditions under which the Modigliani-Miller theorem is valid; (2) the inconsistency inherent to the efficient market hypothesis; (3) the microeconomic effects of asymmetrical information in financial markets; and (4) its real macroeconomic effects. In all of these topics, the focal point of Stiglitz's theoretical research is the unrealistic underpinnings on which the Arrow-Debreu competitive equilibrium model relies. It is also emphasised that this same perspective he coherently followed to construct a fully-fledged theoretical framework would be preserved in his empirical investigations, notably about developing countries, on which he has concentrated effort since the beginnings of the nineties.

This paper has as its main objective to measure the magnitude of deviations between control rights and cash-flow rights for the ultimate shareholder with the largest voting rights of limited liability companies in Brazil. Furthermore, it pinpoints how these discrepancies are generated, evaluating the relative importance of the issuance of preferred stocks with no voting rights, pyramidal arrangements of ownership, and cross-shareholdings. The data set embraces 602 companies that in 2001 complied with the mandatory requirement of filing to the CVM.

A história da Estrada de Ferro Sorocabana é peculiar pelo fato de que empresários privados brasileiros, o governo federal e o governo do Estado de São Paulo foram sucessivamente seus proprietários e controladores, sendo arrendada entre 1907 e 1919 a um grupo estrangeiro. O transporte de café não representou, no início, uma parcela expressiva de suas receitas de frete, e mesmo depois não atingiria a importância que teve na Mogiana e Paulista, conside-radas as típicas "ferrovias de café." Diferentemente dessas empresas, que eram lucrativas, a Sorocabana manteve-se em situação financeira bastante difícil ao longo de quase todo o período entre 1872 e 1919. Este artigo explora as razões desta permanente precariedade financeira. A literatura sobre as ferrovias pioneiras no Brasil enfatiza que a lucratividade dependia crucialmente do tipo de proprietário e também se o café era a principal fonte de receita de frete. Essa e as seguintes hipóteses são avaliadas: expectativas exagera-damente otimistas sobre os fluxos futuros de caixa; má gestão; falta de governança engendrada pela estrutura de financiamento; má sorte; ou políticas governamentais equivocadas.

The history of the Estrada de Ferro Sorocabana is highly idiosyncratic. Owned and run successively by Brazilian businessmen, the federal government, and the government of the State of São Paulo, it would be rented out to a foreign company over the period 1907-1919. When it began operating, coffee did not represent a significant share of its overall freight receipt, and even later it would not achieve the relevance it did in Mogiana and Paulista, considered the typical "coffee railways." Unlike these two profitable companies, Sorocabana remained in dire financial straits almost throughout the period 1872-1919. This paper focuses on what lay behind its financial distress. The literature on pioneering railway companies in Brazil emphasises that profitability hinged on the type of ownership as well as on whether coffee was the main source of freight receipt. Besides this, the following hypotheses are evaluated: oversanguine expectations about future cash flows; poor management; shortage of governance engendered by its financing structure; bad luck; and bad governmental policy.

Este artigo tem como objetivo avaliar os mecanismos de governança das empresas nos Estados Unidos. A seção 1 focaliza as razões da ainda relativa escassez de detentores de grandes blocos de ações nas empresas norte-americanas de capital aberto. A análise prossegue concentrando-se no exame da eficácia de cada um dos supostos esteios do sistema de governança corporativa naquele país. Argumenta-se que a literatura disponível permite identificar as seguintes características nesse sistema: 1) o sistema regulatório-legal restringe, de fato, o potencial para a expropriação de acionistas minoritários, ainda que ao custo de inibir o ativismo de investidores institucionais; 2) os conselhos de administração, como regra, não cumprem seu papel de efetivamente monitorar os executivos, embora mais recentemente possam ser identificados casos em grandes corporações em que tenham sido mais pró-ativos; 3) o mercado de controle das empresas esbarra em vários tipos de dificuldades (desde empecilhos legais a custos de transação elevados e problemas de free-rider), suficientes para limitar sua capacidade de coibir ineficiências e rent-seeking dos executivos; 4) a competição nos mercados de produto e de capital pode coexistir por um longo tempo com expropriação dos acionistas e gestão inadequada.

This paper aims at evaluating the mechanisms of corporate governance currently at work in the United States. Section 1 turns its focus to the reasons accounting for the still relative scarceness of large shareholders in American publicly held companies. The analysis thereafter concentrates on assessing the efficacy of each of the pillars purportedly buttressing the American system of corporate control. The paper argues that the evidence provided by the existing corporate governance literature supports the following propositions: 1) the legal and regulatory framework actually restrains the scope for expropriating minority shareholders, though at the cost of inhibiting institutional investor activism; 2) as a rule, the board of directors do not comply with their mandatory duty of overseeing management, although some progress has recently been made, with directors in several companies becoming less submissive to chief executive officers; 3) the market for corporate control encounters a great number of difficulties (ranging from legal hurdles to high transaction costs and to serious free-riding problems), which are sufficient to cast a cloud on its reliability as a means of repressing managerial inefficiencies and rent-seeking; 4) competition in the product and capital markets is likely to produce effects only in the long-run.