Last updated 24 December, 2001

Jorge Braga de Macedo © 7 August, 1996 Return to my homepage

OECD Development Center President Go to the transition homepage Go to the luso homepage

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The paper I presented at the Vatican on 25 April, 2001 took inspiration in a commentary on Centesimus Annus held at the Catholic University of Portugal on May 1, 1993, in Bem Comum dos Portugueses, 2nd edition 1999 (written with Mendo Castro Henriques and José Adelino Maltez, entries #233 and 235 in the publication list) and in a contribution to my father's Festschrift, titled as  this page "Economics, Ethics and its Policy Implications", available here , published in Estudos em Homenagem a Jorge Borges de Macedo, Lisboa: Instituto Nacional de Investigação Cientifica, 1992, pp. 612-622 (entry #180 in the publication list).
There I quote an article he wrote in a book published in 1980 by Intervenção, Portugal Ano 2000, edited by Jaime Nogueira Pinto.
Economia, Ética e suas Implicações de Política is organized as follows:
Plan and Poverty
The Questionnaire of the Vatican
Schools and Results
Against the Poliarchy of the State
Citizenship and Wealth
Putting the House in Order

On 28 August, 2000 I attended the Summer Camp at Universidad Torcuato di Tella, presented a paper at a panel on the future of Mercosul at the Central Bank of Argentina and pursued the Development Centre´s work on corruption. Note from Clarin from interview with Pablo Kandel reproduced here. Supertango moment here.
 

On 6 October the OECD Council appointed me President of the Development Center, effective October 25, until 31 December, 2001. One of the priorities of the program of work for 2000 is corporate governance in developing countries, a topic of great personal and professional interest. I was reappointed until 31 December, 2002.

At the 5th Conference of the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies to be held in Varna, Bulgaria on 10-14 September, 1998, I presented a keynote address on "Converging European Transitions" featuring a section on corruption. It can be read here.

Ethics and lusophone communities

At the opening session of the first congress of entrepreneurs from Portuguese speaking communities, held at Hotel Ritz in Lisbon on 27 July, in the presence of the Minister of Economy, Joaquim Pina Moura, I gave a keynote address drawing on the conclusions of the 1st Congress of Lusophone Communities organised by the Committee of Lusophone Communities of the Lisbon Geographical Society and held in Porto on 18 and 19 June, 1998.
On both occasions, I suggested an inverse  relationship between corruption indices and financial stability. The creation of a code of conduct for Portuguese speaking companies is one of the conclusions of the panel on Economics and Corporate Ethics, which was ratified by  the Congress in its own conclusions.
This code of conduct of Portuguese speaking entrepreneurs in their relations with governments, shareholders, workers, customers and communities was enthusiastically echoed by the Minister of Economy in his intervention, where he also stressed the importance of globalization for Portuguese business.

Corporate ethics and financial reputation: the same struggle?

Title of the presentation opening the international conference on Ethics and Transparency sponsored by the Federation of Portuguese Culture held in Porto from 22 to 25 April 1998, where I suggested a relationship between corruption indices and sovereign ratings and compared Portugal with Japan, Greece and Brazil combining

• diagrams from Daniel Kaufmann, Corruption: Myths, Biases and Realities, World Bank, presented at the EBRD in February 1998,
• the Corruption Perception Index from.Transparency International and
• Sovereign ratings score tables from the three main agencies as published by Merill Lynch.

Click here to see press reports on the presentation

The relevance of the business climate for policy credibility and economic development  was established with the help of diagrams in the EBRDTransition Report 1997 and of the booklet Sound business standards and corporate practices: A set of guidelines published under EBRD auspices in September 1997. Other useful references are:

• Good Governance: the IMF's role, July 1997;
• OECD and UNDP, Workshop on Corruption and Integrity Improvement Initiatives in the Context of Developing Economies, Paris, October 1997;
• The World Bank, Helping Countries Combat Corruption, September 1997.