Ciência dos BRICs

O gráfico mostra a evolução da produção científica de diferentes países. Os países do BRICs estão reduzindo a diferença em relação aos países desenvolvidos. Em 1973, segundo um relatório da Thomson Reuters, divulgado na The Economist, dois terços dos artigos científicos indexados eram dos países ricos (G7). Em 2011 caiu pela metade. Os trabalhos científicos brasileiros estão centrados nas ciências vegetais, agricultura e animal, segundo a revista.

Orçamento das universidades brasileiras

Apenas 8% dos R$ 28,7 bilhões previstos no orçamento de 2013 das universidades federais serão destinados a investimentos como reformas e compra de equipamentos. A Andifes, entidade que representa os reitores das instituições, diz que o valor (R$ 2,3 bilhões) "não atende às necessidades".

Para o secretário executivo da Andifes, Gustavo Balduíno, o próprio valor total do orçamento é "insuficiente". Ele afirma que, para sustentar a expansão de vagas, as 59 federais precisariam de um fluxo anual adicional de R$ 1,5 bilhão em investimentos nos próximos quatro anos.

Algumas das novas instituições - criadas num programa de expansão do governo federal - ainda não têm prédio próprio, laboratórios, salas de aula adequadas e em números suficientes. Por outro lado, 40% dos recursos estão concentrados em 10 universidades.

Enquanto as instituições reclamam da limitação de recursos para investimento, o Ministério da Educação (MEC) afirma que o valor repassado às universidade é "muito razoável". A pasta chega a ressaltar como "significativo" o aumento de 9% no orçamento em relação ao de 2012. “É praticamente o dobro da projeção de inflação no ano passado, ou seja, houve um ganho real. E somente com o programa de expansão das universidades, o Reuni, já foram investidos R$ 10 bilhões desde 2008", afirma Amaro Lins - ele concedeu entrevista quando ainda era secretário de Educação Superior do MEC, cargo que deixou ontem (leia mais abaixo).

A busca por mais recursos para as federais é alvo de crítica do economista Cláudio Moura e Castro, especialista em educação. "Elas já são muito caras e pouco eficientes. Mesmo com muitos professores em tempo integral dedicados à pesquisa ainda se produz pouco. É só ver as universidades que foram implantadas a grito pelo governo no interior do País."

Para o consultor educacional Celso Frauches, as federais sofrem de um mal: o “de um certo relaxamento com os custos”. “Na realidade, nas universidades públicas, não há a busca por resultados financeiros nem educacionais bem estabelecidos”, diz Frauches.

Fonte: aqui

Rir é o melhor remédio

O Fisco, ganhando sempre

02 de março de 2013 | 2h 06

Editorial O Estado de S.Paulo

 

O necessário ajuste de contas do contribuinte com o Fisco, que deverá ser feito em março e abril, poderia ser apenas uma tarefa extra dos brasileiros com renda regular se, ao seu final, muitos que se dessem ao trabalho de fazer algumas contas não constatassem que pagarão proporcionalmente mais Imposto de Renda (IR) do que pagaram no ano anterior. Tem sido assim pelo menos desde 1996. É verdade que, hoje, o contribuinte perde para o Fisco menos do que perdia na década passada. Mas, de maneira imperceptível para muitos, a carga tributária sobe sempre.

É conhecido o mecanismo pelo qual - por omissão deliberada ou por correção insuficiente - o governo aumenta a tributação sobre a renda. Trata-se da não correção, como ocorreu entre 1996 e 2001, ou da correção insuficiente, como ocorre desde 2007, da tabela do Imposto de Renda, que define o enquadramento dos contribuintes nas diferentes alíquotas e fixa o limite de isenção.

Estudo divulgado pelo Sindicato Nacional dos Auditores Fiscais da Receita Federal (Sindifisco) constatou que, em 16 anos, a defasagem da tabela do Imposto de Renda Pessoa Física (IRPF) alcançou 66,4%. Ou seja, se tivesse acompanhado a inflação do período 1996-2012, descontos e isenções teriam de ser dois terços maiores.

Para a declaração a ser feita em 2013, essa tabela teve correção de 4,5% em relação à do ano anterior. Esse porcentual, que vem sendo aplicado desde 2007, é igual ao centro da meta de inflação definida pelo Conselho Monetário Nacional para balizar a política monetária conduzida pelo Banco Central.
A correção anual, mesmo que por um porcentual prefixado, é menos danosa para o contribuinte do que a inexistência de qualquer correção, como já ocorreu. Mas não é suficiente. Para ter uma ideia das perdas, basta lembrar que a inflação foi de 5,90% em 2008, 4,31% em 2009, 5,91% em 2010, 6,50% em 2011 e 5,85% em 2012. Nesse período, apenas em um ano ficou abaixo do centro da meta; nos demais, ficou bem acima.

Com o reajuste, a faixa de isenção para o recolhimento do IR passou de R$ 1.637,11 em 2012 para R$ 1.710,78 em 2013. Se, desde 1996, a tabela tivesse sido corrigida de acordo com a inflação, a faixa de isenção seria de R$ 2.784,81. A defasagem se repete, na mesma proporção, na definição das faixas das alíquotas.

Isso significa que mais pessoas são obrigadas a recolher Imposto de Renda, pois seu rendimento, mesmo tendo sido corrigido somente de acordo com os porcentuais definidos em negociações trabalhistas, ultrapassou o limite de isenção. Das que já recolhiam, muitas recolhem parcelas cada vez maiores de seus rendimentos com base em alíquotas mais altas. Em resumo, a carga tributária aumentou para todas essas pessoas.

Proporcionalmente, o efeito negativo da correção insuficiente da tabela é mais perverso para quem ganha menos. Num exemplo apresentado ao jornal O Globo (24/2) pelo diretor de Estudos Técnicos do Sindifisco, Luiz Antonio Benedito, um contribuinte com renda mensal de R$ 3 mil pagaria R$ 29,44 de imposto se a tabela tivesse sido corrigida integralmente de acordo com a inflação. Com a correção insuficiente, o mesmo contribuinte terá de recolher R$ 129,39, ou quase 340% mais. Já quem ganha R$ 100 mil pagará R$ 26.709; se a tabela tivesse tido correção integral, pagaria R$ 26.295. No último exemplo, a variação se reduz para 1,6%.

Além da correção insuficiente da tabela, as regras do IRPF impõem outras perdas aos contribuintes. Alguns limites de deduções são irrealmente baixos, como os permitidos para despesas com educação do declarante ou de seus dependentes.

Não é de estranhar que, desse modo, seja cada vez maior, proporcionalmente, o número de declarantes que, concluída a declaração de ajuste anual com o Fisco, constatam que ainda terão de recolher mais imposto. Até o início da década passada, cerca de um terço dos declarantes constatava que ainda tinha imposto a recolher depois de concluída a declaração. Hoje, mais da metade precisa recolher imposto adicional ao que recolheu ao longo do exercício.

Remuneração de Executivos

A cólera do povo contra os grandes patrões da indústria diante da crise ganhou ontem um capítulo inédito. Numa medida considerada como revolucionária num país conhecido por seu liberalismo econômico, eleitores suíços aprovaram nas urnas uma lei que irá limitar salários de executivos de empresas e proibir compensações milionárias para CEOs que estejam deixando multinacionais.

A medida considerada como uma democratização do controle de empresas privadas é interpretada como uma reação popular aos abusos de banqueiros e executivos durante a crise financeira que destruiu milhões de postos de trabalho pela Europa.

O referendo realizado ontem terminou com 68% dos suíços votando a favor das medidas limitando salários ou incentivos financeiros a executivos que possam encorajar a venda ou compra de empresas. O executivo que violar a regra será preso por três anos ou terá de pagar seis anos de seu salário. O sistema de democracia direta do país obriga agora a aprovação do projeto pelo governo, ainda que o Executivo tenha sido contra a lei por meses e alertado sobre os riscos da medida.

Em Zurique, um dos centros financeiros do mundo, 71% da população apoiaria a ideia. "O povo decidiu mandar um recado forte", comemorava o senador suíço Thomas Minder, autor do projeto que obrigará toda a empresa suíça cotada em bolsas a seguir a nova lei.

A Suíça conseguiu evitar a recessão que tem atingido seus vizinhos europeus. Mas, nem por isso, ficou à margem das controvérsias da crise. Algumas das maiores empresas do país alpino têm anunciado a demissão de milhares de funcionários, enquanto seus executivos - chamados no país de "gatos gordos" - continuam recebendo milhões de dólares em salários e bônus.

Entre os pontos da proposta está a proibição do pagamento de "paraquedas de ouro" a executivos que sejam demitidos ou aposentados. Há apenas duas semanas, a Novartis anunciou que seu ex-CEO Daniel Vasella receberia US$ 72 milhões nos próximos seis anos, com a condição de que não trabalhe para nenhuma outra empresa farmacêutica. Depois de uma forte reação popular, Vasella, que recebia mais de US$ 15 milhões por ano, optou por abrir mão do dinheiro.

Para Minder, ficou claro que conselhos de administração de empresas estavam mais preocupados em dividir entre eles os lucros das companhias que em recompensar acionistas. "Com essa decisão, o poder está de volta aos acionistas", disse.

A partir de agora, qualquer compensação ou bônus a membros dos conselhos das empresas terá de ter o apoio da maioria dos acionistas. Além disso, diretores serão eleitos pela assembleia de acionistas.

Tanto o governo como parte das empresas fizeram uma ampla campanha contra a ideia. "A aprovação marcará uma deterioração do que era um ambiente liberal para as empresas", indicou Ursula Fraefel, líder da campanha do "Não". O governo suíço havia deixando claro que era contrário à lei, diante do risco de que multinacionais simplesmente abandonem o país.

Para analistas, a decisão dos suíços deve ter uma repercussão europeia. Hoje, os ministros da zona do euro se reúnem para debater a imposição de um limite para bônus pago por bancos a seus executivos. O primeiro-ministro britânico, David Cameron, é radicalmente contra.

Assim como na Suíça, a medida é uma reação à ira popular de milhões de pessoas que estão sofrendo com a crise, enquanto os executivos das entidades acusadas de terem sido as responsáveis pelo problema continuam recebendo salários cada vez maiores e prêmios, mesmo depois de terem sido resgatados com dinheiro público. Os banqueiros europeus alertam que a medida poderá fazer com que instituições de peso migrem para a Ásia ou Nova York.

Suíça limita remuneração de executivos - 4 de março de 2013 - JAMIL CHADE , CORRESPONDENTE/ GENEBRA - O Estado de S.Paulo

Palavra

Em 1984 o bilionário Warren Buffett adquiriu uma empresa chamada Nebraska Furniture Mart. Na sua carta anual aos investidores, Buffett relata a compra da empresa. Ao final ele afirma:

Nossa avaliação da integridade da Sra. B e sua família [os proprietários da empresa] foi demonstrada quando compramos 90% do negócio: a NFM nunca teve uma auditoria e não solicitamos uma, não verificamos os estoques nem os valores a receber, não verificamos os títulos de propriedade. Demos a Sra. B um cheque de 55 milhões de dólares e ela nos deu sua palavra. 

Entrevista com Michael Mauboussin

Michael Mauboussin seems perfectly suited to a career in Hollywood — he’s tall, fair and drop-dead good looking. Instead, the 48-year-old chose to teach at Columbia Business School, write bestselling behavioural finance tomes and make apparently intelligent people swoon, not necessarily in that order. Mauboussin started his career as a packaged food sector analyst and was until recently the chief investment strategist at Legg Mason, the firm made famous by Bill Miller’s 15-year S&P 500 beating streak. For this interview, he agrees to come down to New York from Connecticut where he lives. And what better quintessentially New York place for a free-wheeling conversation than the 843-acre Central Park? We locate a convenient bench overlooking a baseball diamond and Mauboussin shares his thoughts about the stock market. He also expounds on the role of skill and luck in sports, investing and life — the subject matter of his latest book, The Success Equation.

A little crystal-ball gazing into the future: how do you think investing is going to evolve over the next few years? After all, it is increasingly becoming difficult for active fund managers to beat the market…
There are two parts to investing. One part doesn’t change at all over time and that is the essential objective of buying assets at much less than they are worth. The value of assets are dictated by the present value of their cash flows. So there are certain principles that are going to be immutable and consistent over time.

We have data now for 90 years that shows value investing tends to work quite well

But coming to your point that active managers find it difficult to deliver excess returns, I talk about this in The Success Equation and it is an idea I call “the paradox of skill”. It says that as skill increases in an activity, luck actually becomes more important. We see this in sports. As training methods and coaching techniques become uniform, the performance of athletes becomes uniform too.
From an investing point of view, it means a couple of things. One is that there should be recognition of that basic reality. We have seen the standard deviation of excess returns in the US mutual fund industry decline fairly steadily since 1960. So this has been borne out. The second thing is that where you can really get an edge as an active manager is in asset classes where there is more diversity of skill. There are certain pockets where that is true. So there are areas where active managers will continue to do well. So there is an immutable part to investing, and a changing part.
You mentioned there could be pockets where active investing could do well. What pockets would that be?
There have been some classic studies. One case that continues to be true in the US is spinoffs. Large corporations have multiple businesses and when they decide to spin off a troublesome business, it becomes almost an orphan that no one wants to own. It turns out, buying those spinoffs has been a very lucrative strategy. Buying stocks where expectations are quite low is a good strategy because that is when valuations are cheap. We have data now for 90 years that shows value investing tends to work quite well. So the simplest way to say it is to repeat a Warren Buffett quote: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

Active fund managers don’t deliver but they keep getting assets to manage. Why? Is it simply greed, or that the fund sales guys are doing a great job of lying?

In the aggregate if you say active fund managers roughly approximate the market and they charge fees, just by definition they can’t deliver excess returns. According to the US mutual fund data, over the last 50 years active fund managers have outperformed by an average of 40%. To state it differently, 40% of active fund managers have beaten the benchmark in an average year. But that has a standard deviation of 17%, which is a very wide range. In some years only very few do it; in other years a majority will do it. So the key is it is difficult to beat the market. But there are a couple of factors why index investing is not sustainable. One is that while indexing and passive fund management makes a lot of sense for people, there is a logical limit to doing this because passive managers are piggybacking on the research and trading of active managers. They are leveraging the information that has been reflected in prices. There is a very famous paper by Joseph Stiglitz and Sanford Grossman that says you need active fund managers who go out, seek information and reflect that in prices, and they will be compensated by way of excess returns in order to do that. Markets aren’t miraculously informationally efficient without somebody doing the work. That is the first point.

Second, there is no way to outperform the market without active management; otherwise you have to reconcile to market returns. Third, most individuals don’t have the time or capability to delve directly in stocks so, for them, it’s about “can we pick managers who have a better chance of making a greater return over time?”. Certainly, hope springs eternal. That is why people do this.

Conventional wisdom tells us that less is more in investing, so churn less. But hedge fund managers like Jim Simons of Renaissance have been able to produce consistent results with a trading-oriented strategy. How?

Yes, I wrote a piece saying that too much turnover was bad. Specifically, the strategy of moving from one manager to another manager within an asset class or firing a poor performing manager and hiring a good performing manager while moving from one asset class to another has proven to be mostly ineffectual. It eats into returns. But when you look at an asset class in particular, there are many ways to fail but there are many ways to succeed too, from trading strategies that are very short-term oriented to the Buffett approach of buy and hold it forever. The key is to have your process in line with your trading behaviour. When I look at Renaissance, they do trade an enormous amount, but the key to their success is that they have geared their process towards doing that specifically. So there is nothing inconsistent about those two things. Where I think we run into problems is when people claim to be long-term oriented but behave as if they are short-term oriented. That disconnect can be very costly.

Over the last 50 years, active fund managers have outperformed by an average of 40% but with a standard deviation of 17%

Particularly to pick up your point about why less is more, there is a very natural tendency for investors to buy what has done well and to avoid what has done poorly. A very powerful influence in the markets is reversion to the mean, whether it is asset class return or anything else. Let me give you the most depressing statistics in investing, which is that in over 20 years the S&P 500 has returned about 9%, the average mutual fund about 7% or 7.5%. But the average investor has only got returns of 5.5-6%. So they have fared worse in terms of returns than the mutual funds in which they invest. How could that be? The answer is bad timing. They are pouring in money at the top of the market and pulling out money from the bottom. So their dollar-weighted returns are actually quite poor. Sometimes being too active when things are good or bad tend to be to people’s detriment.

You have mentioned the ill effects of the recency bias — how do you stay clear of this?
There is a powerful concept that I opened the book Think Twice with, which was developed by economist Amos Tversky 40 years ago — the inside versus outside view. The idea is that when most of us face problems, the natural way is to gather information about it, combine your own inputs and project into the future. So naturally, what has happened recently often tends to be a large component of that. In contrast, the outside view is viewing your problem as an instance of a larger reference class, which is to ask the question what happened when other people were in this situation. One of the main ways to offset recency bias is to consider a larger sample set and a larger reference class and ask what you should expect. For example, I asked a friend, who is a baseball executive, who his favourite professional team is. His reply: often, if a player is playing particularly well, people start saying that this guy is more valuable than he really is. Whereas, if you step back and say what is right or wrong with his long history, what are other players like and how have they done, that is a far better indicator of his true underlying skill. So the inside-outside view helps meaningfully address the recency bias. But you have to be very explicit about it. It is not easy to do.

Just to stretch that point, would you also say that if you are looking at a stock you would go talk more to the competition than the management itself…

I don’t know if I would necessarily say that. But if I am looking at a stock it goes back to how difficult it is to predict earnings, cash flow, etc. If I am looking at a rapidly growing company that has done very well, the kind of questions I would want to ask is firstly, what is priced in? At today’s price what has to happen to justify that price, in terms of growth rates, returns on capital and all those metrics? The second question I want to ask is that if I look at all those companies that were in that same position, of that same size and that were growing at that same rate, how did they do? I would like to look at that distribution array and say what is priced in versus what the distribution looks like. If that price is very optimistic, then I would be much more cautious about it. If that price looks relatively pessimistic it would be much more interesting. It will not always give you the right answer but it is another way to check your enthusiasm or pessimism.

In general, what is the right way to value a technology company? The pillars that value investing emphasises, which is assets or earnings, these companies either do not have them or have poor visibility. So you have this bunch of companies that give supersize returns, but if you took the traditional route to estimating their value, you may not meet with any success at all.

There are a couple of things to that. One is that value has a fairly immutable definition, which is the present value of cash flows. But technology is challenging for a few reasons. The challenges are that it is very difficult to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. Buffett likes to talk about this economic moat around the business that allows you to generate high and sustainable returns on invested capital. In technology, that is very difficult to achieve, primarily because cycles are very short. What we do in valuation is estimate the value for an explicit forecast period and then the residual value beyond that period.

In a non-linear and unstable environment, it’s very difficult to apply intuition

Now, that’s a fair point; in certain technology companies there is no residual value at all. Think of a great piece of software that becomes popular but once something else comes along, it becomes obsolete. That said, there have been certain software companies that have been able to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. Certainly the easy one to think in retrospect would be a company like Microsoft. Often there are specific drivers behind that and the most prominent probably in technology is network effects: when the value of a good or service increases as more people use that good or service. For example, for Microsoft that was a very powerful driver. I would say businesses like Amazon probably have better competitive advantage where they are able to deliver goods or services profitably. In many technology companies you have to think about option value as well — this is the option to do things that could add on to the business or get into new areas. 

How do you estimate margin of safety for tech firms?

It’s pretty much the same way we do for other company — you forecast the range of possible outcomes for the value of the company using value driver assumptions for sales growth, margins and capital intensity. Now, to me, the margin of safety would say something like I would like the price to be at the very low end of what the value could be or should be. So that is a very good bargain. That is why very few technology companies truly have substantial margins of safety.

You have said in the past that one shouldn’t rely much on intuition. But most successful investors emphasise the role of intuition in their decision making. Does intuition become more useful after are successful?

I do think there is a role for intuition in decision making. But what I have said, and I repeat, is that people rely vastly too much on intuition. People draw on much more than they should. Intuition works very well in environments that are stable and linear where you learn about the environment. Sports is a very good example — so if you are learning to play tennis, it is a stable and linear environment. As you play, you get better and better and then your intuition will be very good. Chess is another great example. The grandmasters of chess have enormous intuition, they are analytical but they also have a lot of intuition. Where intuition tends to fail are situations exactly opposite of that — situations that are non-linear and unstable. There you can’t really train yourself, you can’t get feedback. To the degree that the markets and companies operate in a non-linear and unstable environment, it is very difficult to apply intuition. Now, the point you raised about successful people talking about the role of intuition. The reason is that they forget about their failures. So you always hear the story that Fred Smith was in the shower one day and came up with this brilliant idea of Fedex and he built this multi-billion dollar, wildly successful company. What you don’t hear about is that Smith’s neighbour was also in the shower and also had a brilliant idea, he pursued that and it failed. So there is a massive selection bias. By definition, we only see the successful investors. I do not mean to say intuition does not work, but you need to be thoughtful about when it will work and when it does not.

Do you believe chance plays an equally important role in business as in investing?
I think there is probably more skill in running a business than in investing, in part because there are parts of business that are pure skill. That said, as you move up the organisation and move towards things that are more related to strategy, luck will play a bigger role. Investing again is a paradox of skill, which is that because everybody is so good and all the information is reflected in the markets, luck becomes more important.

***

How You Can Change Your Decision Making

1. Raise your awareness: Incomplete information and lots of uncertainty leads to poor outcomes
2. Put yourself in the shoes of others: Consider the point of view or experience of other people
3. Recognise the role of skill and luck: Sorting skill from luck is essential for evaluating outcomes
4. Get feedback: Maintaining a decision-making journal allows you to audit your decisions
5. Create a checklist: It will alert you to think clearly about what you might advertently overlook
6. Perform a premortem: Assume that the decision has failed; look for reasons why
7. Know what you can’t know: In decisions that involve systems with many interacting parts, causal links are frequently unclear

Source: Think Twice