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This paper examines the impacts of emergency cash-transfers on individuals' social distancing behaviour and beliefs about COVID-19. We focus on the impacts of "Auxilio Emergencial" (AE): a large-scale cash-transfer in Brazil targeting low-income individuals who were unemployed or informally employed during the pandemic. To identify causal effects we exploit exogenous variation, arising from the AE design, in individuals' access to the cash-transfer programme. Using data from an online survey, our results suggest that eligibility to the emergency cash transfer led to a reduced likelihood of individuals contracting COVID-19, likely to have been driven by a reduction in working hours. Moreover, the cash transfer seems to have increased perceptions about the seriousness of coronavirus, while also exacerbating misconceptions about the pandemic. These findings indicate effects of emergency cash-transfers in determining individuals' narratives about a pandemic, in enabling social distancing and potentially in reducing the spread of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The pandemic-crisis effects on Brazilian manufacturing industries are investigated. • An input-output model is employed to address its sectorial composition and linkages. • The pandemic-crisis has further harmful effects on knowledge-intensive industries. • EIHC promotes high-tech industries, while it showed higher degree of import dependence. • COVID-19 may be crucial to rethink industrial policy space within societal purposes. The COVID-19 crisis represents a turning point to rethink industrial policy spaces and countries' productive autonomy, especially for developing economies, such as Brazil, that call for new ways of thinking about manufacturing within societal purposes. Using an input-output model, the paper explores the pandemic-crisis-effects in the case of the Brazilian manufacturing sector. We find that the pandemic-crisis has harmful effects on the Brazilian productive structure, revealing the dependence on imports of the Brazilian Health System. Reductions in manufacturing gross output and value-added are mainly seen in knowledge-intensive subsectors, followed by job losses and tax revenue reduction. We suggest that the pandemic points to some roads to reindustrialization and resilience, given the reorganization of international production networks and the growing dependence on imports in key manufacturing sectors. Thus, the potential role of the manufacturing sector to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth reveals the importance of building productive capacity beyond the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of COVI-19 and the restrictive measures on the mobility of people in Brazil have raised serious concerns about the survival and recovery of passenger transport companies, especially those that generate public agglomerations. There are some policy proposals that aim to recover this set of sectors in the face of the adverse effects of the COVID-19 outbreak. This study contributes to this debate in course and analyzes the economic effects of two scenarios of recovery for this type of transport services in the Brazilian economy up to the end of 2022: (i) one with a 50% recovery until the end of 2021 and (ii) another with a 50% sectorial recovery until June 2022. This distinction allows us to assess the impact of the speed of recovery. In both scenarios, we also consider likely changes in the labor market, family preferences, and government spending. To accomplish this task, we developed a dynamic computable general equilibrium model that recognizes a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) and has details of the transport sectors. The main findings suggest that the drop in these transport services is the main contributing factor to the decline in the Brazilian GDP growth (−2.2%) in the period of social distance measures. However, faster recovery of these sectors can generate a marginal effect of 0.5 percentage points on GDP at the end of 2021. In the recovery period, due to the redistributive effects of income, the family demand for public transport is expected to grow post- COVID-19 outbreak, while the demand for private transport is reduced, especially in the basket of goods of the poorest households. Vehicle, bus, and aircraft manufacture seems sensitive to the recovery time of the demand for transport services with public agglomerations. • The paper develops a SAM-based dynamic CGE models detailing the transport sectors. • With a faster recovery in the transport service, the endogenous response of the Brazilian economy is more intense. • The income effect of the emergency resource policy alters the modal distribution in the household budget. • Manufacture of vehicles, buses and aircraft are sensitive to the recovery time scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social distancing has been adopted as a strategy to contain the advance of the pandemic until specific solutions to combat the virus are available. Many economic sectors and social activities need to continue despite the viruses, and most social distancing policies disregard individual choices, resulting in greater or lesser adherence to isolation. In this paper, we characterize the differentiation of access to essential activities within Brazilian cities during social distancing and the intention to maintain behavior changes concerning these activities in the post-pandemic period. The results showed that the behavior regarding essential activities during the pandemic is not independent of variables associated with pre-pandemic travel patterns, isolation conditions, and socioeconomic factors. Post-pandemic intention proved to be statistically dependent on factors associated with the activities' characteristics and experiences during the pandemic. Accessibility-oriented planning can guide urban and transportation policies more equitably through the identification of the most affected groups by activity disruption. At the same time, the incorporation of new routines less dependent on displacement offers opportunities to review public space. [Display omitted] • Less schooling, self-employed or less frequent commuters changed less work routine. • Young, less schooling or low-income people maintained educational and purchase trips. • Higher schooling people have more chances to keep essential tasks without traveling. • Public transport users had fewer opportunities to switch from routine to purchasing. • Post-pandemic intention is statistically dependent on activities' characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the regulatory responses to Covid-19 from the regulatory authorities of Brazilian states. This paper aims to provide new insights into the operationalization of the human rights to water and sanitation in the Brazilian regulatory authorities' actions during a health emergency. We find that communities located in unserved areas were not mentioned in the regulatory responses, nor were people in vulnerable situations. Equity and non-discrimination principles were correlated more with economic measures. This study has also identified the absence of responses related to access to sanitation facilities, with normative contents related to the issue not appearing in the content analysis. • The presence of HRtWS is unequal in the regulatory responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. • Communities without piped network were ignored in the regulatory responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. • No mentions regarding vulnerable people were identified in the regulatory responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. • No responses were identified regarding access to sanitation facilities. • There is an absence of a plural understanding of the sustainability in the regulatory responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the closure of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, the education available to students depended heavily on home and family conditions and structure. This paper analyses the relationship between access to technology, demographic characteristics, and learning opportunities during the pandemic in Brazil in 2020. It uses logistic and ordinary least squares linear regression models to generate information based on two national household surveys in Brazil. Both demographics and technology access are related to learning during the pandemic, but demographics have a more constant relationship with learning opportunities than technology access throughout the studied period. • Inequalities in access to education during the pandemic in Latin America. • Use of PNAD-COVID19 to study educational access during the pandemic in Brazil. • ICT access is related to differences in educational access during the pandemic. • Gender and race inequalities not addressed by educational policies in the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We analyze the correlation of meteorological and human mobility in Brazilian capitals. • We propose the EEMD-ARIMAX method to predict time series with independent variables. • We introduce an anomaly detection algorithm to adjust the prediction. In 2020, Brazil was the leading country in COVID-19 cases in Latin America, and capital cities were the most severely affected by the outbreak. Climates vary in Brazil due to the territorial extension of the country, its relief, geography, and other factors. Since the most common COVID-19 symptoms are related to the respiratory system, many researchers have studied the correlation between the number of COVID-19 cases with meteorological variables like temperature, humidity, rainfall, etc. Also, due to its high transmission rate, some researchers have analyzed the impact of human mobility on the dynamics of COVID-19 transmission. There is a dearth of literature that considers these two variables when predicting the spread of COVID-19 cases. In this paper, we analyzed the correlation between the number of COVID-19 cases and human mobility, and meteorological data in Brazilian capitals. We found that the correlation between such variables depends on the regions where the cities are located. We employed the variables with a significant correlation with COVID-19 cases to predict the number of COVID-19 infections in all Brazilian capitals and proposed a prediction method combining the Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) method with the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Exogenous inputs (ARIMAX) method, which we called EEMD-ARIMAX. After analyzing the results poor predictions were further investigated using a signal processing-based anomaly detection method. Computational tests showed that EEMD-ARIMAX achieved a forecast 26.73% better than ARIMAX. Moreover, an improvement of 30.69% in the average root mean squared error (RMSE) was noticed when applying the EEMD-ARIMAX method to the data normalized after the anomaly detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Analysis of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Brazilian electricity market. • Application of the Optimization Tariff Model in the context of the pandemic. • Analysis of the efficacy of the public policy designed by the Brazilian government. • Presentation of a new public policy that present advantages over the current one. This paper evaluates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Brazilian distribution electricity market by applying a socioeconomic regulatory model called Optimized Tariff Model. The model quantifies the impact of the pandemic on the consumer's quality of life and also on the economic performance of power distribution companies. Results indicate that both consumers and power distribution companies have been significantly affected in Brazil, especially companies that did not have access to the public policy proposed by the government, as they exhibited economic losses of more than 1 (GR$) in total. After analyzing the impact of the new coronavirus and the actions of the government in this context, an alternative mitigation measure (public policy) is proposed based on the Optimized Tariff Model and its feasibility examined. The alternative mitigation measure is also compared to the public policy proposed by the government and proved to be advantageous in some respects such as making bank loans unnecessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]