An Analysis of Fortune 500 Companies in Brazil

 India and Brazil are like, the biggest democratic EMs in the world, which is super interesting. Plus, people have already done studies comparing these two nations, you know? Check out Armijo 2013, Chibber 2004, Kohli 2004, Sridharan 1996, and Evans 1995 for more deets. gr8 The vibes between these two markets are like totally the same, which is the base for a most similar case design (Hancké 2009; George and Bennet 2005; Mill 1843). Both countries have like legacies of state centred economic planning including state directed complement structures; both like liberalised at approximately the same time after balance of payments/external debt crises; both are like large, emerging democracies; both are regional powers with a strong population base; and both have developed sophisticated businesses (many of which compete globally). 

Country Level Case Selection, fam

OMG, like, the most important thing, from a VoC perspective, is that the developmental states of each country were like trying to create tri-partite bargaining systems as, like, the foundation for political economic interaction (Frankel 2005; French 2004). The centralised coordination in both countries was like, super lit and stuff. They made political decisions that allocated mad fiscal resources to domestic industries to boost domestic manufacturing, ya know? (Panagariya 2009; Baer 2008; Sridharan 1996). Despite these similarities, each country flexes differentiation in leading sectors which, as we'll discuss, suggests divergence of country-level factors. India's top sectors are like, Information Technology (IT), pharma, and sectors that are, like, totally associated with Liberal Market Economies (LMEs). Brazil, on the flip side, slays in natural resources and financial services. Just like, hear me out, in South Korea, the whole VoC thing explains how the top companies there are all about manufacturing. But, on the flip side, I'm thinking that India and Brazil didn't have those cool CME complement structures, which is why they couldn't reach the same level of manufacturing awesomeness. The flop of India and Brazil to get their export game on, even though they have a decent amount of workers and the government has put a lot of money into manufacturing (Baer 2008; Amann et al 2006; Frankel 2005), would explain why these markets can't get their act together and work together. Yet cuz of under- developed institutions, VoC categorisation of Brazil and India are hella challenging (see for example Schneider 2014; Schneider 2009a) - a challenge I believe the thesis helps to overcome. To keep tabs on how things are changing in EMs, I came up with this idea called a typological trajectory.

An inability to properly account for processes of institutional change is, like, a major drag on VoC theory (Crouch 2005; Blyth 2003). 

The like, basic vibe of the foundational VoC analysis, I'm like, arguing, is partially 'cause of the nature of the complement equilibria achieved in advanced economies (i.e. why advanced economies have mad advantages that make their firms globally competitive). The importance of institutional change is like, super crucial in the VoC literature that's all about "non-conforming" economies, you know? Non-conforming, or mixed market economies, are sometimes "advanced" (e.g. France and Italy) but are sometimes "emerging" (e.g. Central and Eastern Europe) (Hancké et al 2006). Flexin' economies that don't play by the rules, like France and Italy, can be considered "advanced," while countries in Central and Eastern Europe are still on the come up. (Hancké et al 2006). Yo, telling apart emerging and advanced economies is all about how we peep that institutional change, ya feel me? Since economies be flexin' their change game when institutions be contemplated over time (Thelen 2014), a temporal approach in VoC can provide new insights about the relative "emergence" of non-conforming economies. The thesis, like, totally vibes with the whole institutional change thing in VoC literature, and it's all about how important it is to have mad institutional maturity in EM VoC analysis. After figuring out the vibes of India and Brazil, I put the conclusions to the test at the firm level to get a better grasp on how country-level factors and firm-level factors vibe together. VoC lit is like all about the firm, but it doesn't really do deep case studies at the firm level that often. The politics of stakeholder bargaining and corporate governance will provide mad evidence of the influence of country-level factors, fam. In India and Brazil, I pick three dope companies from top sectors with different corporate governance vibes (that reflect different flavors of capitalism or flavors of corporate governance)7 to peep the factors that make a company competitive af. 

I lowkey think that the top sectors and companies in each market totally vibe with the incentives set by the structure of complements in the domestic economy.

The flop of Indian and Brazilian firms to stick to the export vibes expected by firm-specific theories on firm competitiveness means that we gotta take into account country-specific factors too, ya know? To like, think about the role of country-specific factors, I'm all about that VoC vibe. Yo, so like, I did this lit case study on India and Brazil, and then I analyzed the top sectors in those countries. And guess what? I found that companies just do what the domestic capitalism vibes tell 'em to do. It's all about them incentives, you know? The empirical tea suggests that India's typological vibe is like an LME while Brazil's typological vibe is like an MME. And like, in the top sectors of each market, we see that the corporate governance vibes of each company align with the incentives set by the VoC patterns in the domestic economy. This ain't to say that firms don't flex their influence on institution building as a bargaining stakeholder but they gotta also juggle being competitive while dealing with the market's limitations. The finding like totally stresses the importance of institutions and how, like by understanding typological trajectories, we can like better understand processes of economic development. The implications are like, three-fold: institutional structures in EMs don't necessarily converge despite the pressures of globalisation; VoC in an EM context should, like, take into account the relative stages of development; and firms, like, react to incentive sets defined by the domestic economy.