Casa das Garças Podcast turns into a book – 03/03/2023 – Market

The podcast “The Art of Economic Policy”, about the Brazilian economy since redemocratization, won a book with the same name.

Produced by the Institute of Economic Policy Studies (Iepe) of Casa das Garças, the program was notable for gathering testimonials from economists who participated in almost all governments since the 1980s.

The book was published by Intrínseca in ebook format, under the label História Real and has a preface by Edmar Bacha, founding partner and director of Casa das Garças.

The chapters bring the reports of 29 interviewees. Pedro Malan, Minister of Finance in the FHC government (1995-2002), chose to participate in the publication by writing an afterword, which contains part of the material from his interview.

Instead of transcribing the chats in full, it was decided to organize the content of the reports in the format of topics by subject.

The project was organized by José Augusto Coelho Fernandes, a researcher at Iepe/Casa das Garças who was responsible for conducting the interviews. For him, the written format helps to take the material to a wider audience and reinforce the historical record character of the initiative.

According to Fernandes, the podcast was attended by public administration, financial market, government relations and law professionals, among other people interested in understanding the process of policy formulation and understanding the noise in this debate.

“When we imagined this job, I had an image of someone leaving a company, the academy or NGO, going to the government, and what would be the material for that person not to waste so much time in their learning, so that they reflect on it previously taking advantage of these experiences”, says Fernandes.

The podcast is available on the main audio platforms and on the institution’s website (ipecdg.com.br/podcast), where the episodes are accompanied by summaries and bibliographical suggestions from the participants —the original idea was to hold a series of meetings between economics students and public policy makers, which became impossible at the time because of the pandemic.

“The Art of Economic Politics” begins with the country’s re-democratization, with the initial episode starring former Minister of Finance Mailson da Nóbrega (Sarney government), and ends with the testimony of Pedro Malan. The series aired from May to November 2021.

The episodes also pass through the first Lula government, with interviews with former secretaries of the Ministry of Finance Murilo Portugal and Marcos Lisboa, and through the Michel Temer administration, with former Treasury Secretary Ana Paula Vescovi, former BNDES president Maria Silvia Bastos Marques and former Minister of Finance Eduardo Guardia (In memoriam).

Episodes are grouped by themes, such as the formulation of the Real Plan, crisis management, monetary and fiscal regimes, and unfinished reforms.

To talk about the Real Plan, for example, Edmar Bacha and former Central Bank presidents Persio Arida and Gustavo Franco were selected.

Elena Landau, Ricardo Paes de Barros and Paulo Tafner participate in the sequence on microeconomic reforms. Ana Carla Abrão, Bernard Appy and Claudia Costin, on unfinished renovations. Ilan Goldfajn, president of the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) and former president of the BC, comments on monetary and fiscal regimes.