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This essay studies the cultural consequences that the spread of paper money had in late nineteenth-century Brazil. First, I examine how these tensions are called into question through the analysis of a political scandal that took place in Rio de Janeiro, in 1900, concerning a two thousand reales banknote. Second, I offer a close reading of Machado de Assis' "Anedota pecuniária", a short-story included in Histórias sem data (1884). My goal is to interrogate the relation between paper money and the economy of credit work, and the narrative devices of literary fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to present the dramas experienced by Brazilian artists during the COVID-19 pandemic. This investigation is nested in one of the axes of broader research on the social impacts of the pandemic in Brazil. Initially, we argue that a pandemic is a critical event with multiple scales, which affects populations unevenly, as is the case of art world professionals, an unorthodox field in terms of specialties and remuneration, which was already suffering from the impacts of reduced investments in public policies in the cultural sector since the mid-2010s. Given the measures to face the pandemic, among which are restrictions on gatherings, artistic events were prohibited, and professionals could not act conventionally, generating economic problems and psychological distress. This paper explores the dramatic report of some of these professionals, highlighting the strategies adopted to cope with the crisis due to the impossibility of performing, the scarcity of public policies for the sector, and the national political and economic elite disdain for the arts and culture. In-depth interviews were conducted with scenic artists, musicians, and DJs from August to December 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore a discontinuity in the incentives created by the Brazilian Tourism Regionalization Program. We employ a research discontinuity design, focussing on municipalities in the transitions between two classes. We observe significant effects of the Program in tourist cities, including an increase in the value-added of services and per capita GDP. Additionally, we find that the value-added in industrial activities increases, implying a spillover effect from the improvement in local tourism conditions for other economic activities. Our article documents how tourism strategies can have a beneficial effect on a city's entire economic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]