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Purpose Frugal innovation has gained prominence based on its potential contribution to sustainable development and the new opportunities that it offers to low-income customers. This paper aims to analyse the strategic knowledge transfer practices implemented by an entrepreneurial university for fostering frugal innovations within an emerging economy. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a case study methodological approach. The selected case was the University of Campinas (Unicamp), one of the leading universities in Brazil in terms of research quality and technology transfer. The study built upon 14 interviews with key informants and secondary sources of data (official and public documents). Findings The findings highlight the multidimensional dynamics of frugal innovations arising from university–industry relationships. Key dimensions considered include the internal capabilities of universities to foster frugal innovations and connect them to markets, the surrounding innovation ecosystems in which the university is embedded and the overarching institutional framework. Research limitations/implications The analysis of strategic management practices for frugal innovation requires an evolutionary perspective, but the findings lacked sufficient longitudinal information for a formal evaluation. Also, as our empirical analysis is based on an in-depth case study of one university, further validation in other contexts would be necessary. Practical implications This study offers new insights regarding the effectiveness of university-business collaboration partnerships for developing frugal innovations in emerging economies. Policymakers should promote societal programs enhancing the active participation of all agents involved in the entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem. University managers should understand the challenges and the opportunities behind the adoption of an inclusive and societal orientation. Social implications By adopting frugal innovation practices, universities can enhance their contribution of meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Originality/value The literature on frugal innovation has emphasized the importance of networking between different types of firms, NGOs and governments, but the role of universities in frugal innovation remains mostly unexplored. This study addresses this gap by exploring how entrepreneurial universities participate in frugal innovations to meet societal challenges.

Can research findings change political leaders’ beliefs and policies? We use experiments with 2,150 Brazilian municipalities to measure mayors’ demand for and response to research information. In one experiment, we find that mayors are willing to pay to learn the results of evaluation studies, and update their beliefs when informed of the findings. They value larger-sample studies more, while not distinguishing between studies in rich and poor countries. In a second experiment, we find that informing mayors about research on a simple and effective policy, taxpayer reminder letters, increases the probability the policy is implemented by 10 percentage points.

Research on productive structures has shown that economic complexity conditions economic growth. However, little is known about which type of complexity, e.g., export or industrial complexity, matters more for regional economic growth in a large emerging country like Brazil. Brazil exports natural resources and agricultural goods, but a large share of the employment derives from services, non-tradables, and within-country manufacturing trade. Here, we use a large dataset on Brazil’s formal labor market, including approximately 100 million workers and 581 industries, to reveal the patterns of export complexity, industrial complexity, and economic growth of 558 micro-regions between 2003 and 2019. Our results show that export complexity is more evenly spread than industrial complexity. Only a few—mainly developed urban places—have comparative advantages in sophisticated services. Regressions show that a region’s industrial complexity is a significant predictor for 3-year growth prospects, but export complexity is not. Moreover, economic complexity in neighboring regions is significantly associated with economic growth. The results show export complexity does not appropriately depict Brazil’s knowledge base and growth opportunities. Instead, promoting the sophistication of the heterogeneous regional industrial structures and development spillovers is a key to growth. This study demonstrates that industrial complexity, which accounts for all employment sectors, provides a more accurate basis for designing effective and inclusive industrial policies in emerging economies like Brazil, compared to export-based complexity.

Introduction The collection of Bertholletia excelsa Bonpl. (castanha-da-Amazônia; Brazil nuts) seeds make up part of the everyday activities of the traditional populations that have inhabited all of the Amazon basin since remote times. Nonetheless, knowledge about these harvesting activities in native forest areas has not been well documented. The present study was designed to better understand the significance of this harvesting activity as well as the traditional ecological knowledge of the harvesters. Methods Utilizamos entrevistas semiestruturadas para a coleta de dados com extrativistas de castanha, moradores de Caroebe, Roraima ( n  = 18) durante o período de março de 2021 a março de 2022. The data analysis was based on the frequency of responses to socio-economic questions and their knowledge about that plant species as well as why those interviewees chose that line of work. We also adopted the Spearman and Mann–Whitney non-parametric tests to correlate variables identified in the study, and selected sections of their depositions to highlight the traditional knowledge of the interviewees and their experiences as harvesters. Results Constatamos que as razões para a escolha do trabalho com o extrativismo para todos os entrevistados é a necessidade de renda complementar, tradição familiar (55%), the sense of well-being provided by contact with the natural environment (25%), and a favorable disposition toward that type of work (11%). Harvesting involves collective work, and many of the interviewees had engaged in those efforts to help their families since their childhood or adolescence. The older harvesters cited more animal species that consumed the Brazil nuts ( ρ  = 0.60; p  = 0.009) and perceived more and greater changes in the environment that were prejudicial to the Brazil nut trees ( U  = 9.50; p  = 0.022). The interviewees who reported lower incomes cited more significant cultural changes and more suggestions concerning conservation activities. According to their statements, deforestation, and the burning and illegal cutting of native trees, including Brazil nut trees, have contributed to environmental change in the region and raised significant concerns about the future of harvesting activities. Conclusion The activities of the “nut-crackers” represent to them more than just a simple source of income, as harvesting provides them with a connection to nature that promotes their well-being and cultural heritage. The nut harvesters have gained specific knowledge concerning both environmental and cultural changes. Those changes have mainly come about through the expansion of agricultural activities and the felling of native forests—which are the main threats to the future of Brazil nut extraction. Attributing value to the folk knowledge of those harvesters would strengthen the local economy, promote forest conservation, and help to better understand the impacts of anthropic activities on the forest and the harvesting of natural products.

This paper presents a hypothesis stating that at the initial stage of growth by a latecomer, increased participation in the global value chain (GVC) is necessary to learn foreign knowledge and production skills, that functional upgrading at middle-income stage requires effort to seek separation and independence from existing foreign-dominated GVCs, and that latecomer firms and economies might have to seek reintegration back into the GVC after establishing their own local value chains. This paper aims to verify this “in–out-in-again” hypothesis by looking into firm cases of upgrading in Korea and Brazil. Trends in the share of foreign value-added in gross exports (FVA) in successful catching-up economies of Korea and Taiwan, including China recently, are consistent with this pattern. Regression results also confirm a negative correlation between the degree of local creation and diffusion of knowledge and FVA values, such that gaining increased local knowledge is a basis for increasing (reducing) domestic value-added (foreign value-added). Given that this variable of local creation and diffusion of knowledge is a key innovation system variable, this finding implies that building local innovation systems is the key in making a possible upgrade while being integrated into the GVC.

A knowledge-based economy adds innovation as another dynamic to a political economy. Whereas a political economy is institutionalized -for example, in a nation state- the knowledge base is volatile although it leaves footprints behind by transforming the institutional layers. This transformation into new options can be measured as redundancy using the Triple-Helix indicator. The balance between historical entropy generation and the knowledge-based generation of options can be measured in terms of positive and negative contributions to the prevailing uncertainty. At what scale and in which sectors is synergy among geographical, technological, and organizational distributions of firms evident? Using mutual information in the three dimensions as an indicator, we analyse a dataset of more than 16 million firms in Brazil and compute synergy within and across states and sectors in this country in terms of bits of information. The results suggest that no synergy is generated at the national level. The political economy of the country has not (yet) been transformed into a national innovation system. At state level, synergies vary according to geographical levels and sectors due to the specifics of the states. Above-average values were found for some states in the South and Southeast Regions. Also, the political capital, Brasilia, has resulted to have no impact in the innovation system of Brazil.

During the last several decades, the diversification of economic activities has become a paramount policy for nations and cities with heavy dependence on a single economic driver. Particularly island economies, relying mainly on tourism income, are among the most vulnerable ones to the shocks of global financial crises. In the recent years, some of these tourist islands had attempts to diversify their economic activities by moving towards a knowledge and innovation economy. This paper places one of these islands—Florianópolis, the capital city of the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina—under the microscope to address the question of ‘what it takes to transform a tourist island into an innovation capital’. In order to tackle this question, the study examines economic, social, spatial, and governance conditions and performances, along with the plans and processes of Florianópolis in moving towards an internationally recognized smart innovation island. The methodologic approach includes systematic review of the literature and qualitative analysis of the key development domains of Florianópolis through the lens of knowledge-based urban development. The results of this study provide insights into how to transform a resource-based economy into a knowledge-based one—by disclosing the transition journey of Florianópolis, including progress, challenges, and the new path creation processes. The findings are particularly useful for tourist islands that are aiming for an aspiring knowledge-based urban development and smart city transformation.

Fiscal decentralization is a growing area of research, particularly for reducing carbon emissions and promoting environmental sustainability. However, its contribution to decreasing consumption-based carbon emissions remains relatively unexplored. Unlike previous studies, the current study explores the effect of expenditure and revenue decentralization on consumption-based carbon emission along with control variables such as exports, imports, human capital, globalization, renewable energy, and economic growth for BRICS economies from 1990 to 2020. The quantile regressions via method of moments test is employed to investigate the long-run relationship among the study variables. To enhance the robustness of the analysis this study also utilizes bootstrapped quantile regression and simple quantile regression tests. The results of quantile regressions via method of moments reveal that revenue decentralization increases consumption-based carbon emissions while expenditure decentralization reduces it. Moreover, it is worth noting that exports reduce while imports increases consumption-based carbon emissions in BRICS nations. Remarkably human capital, globalization, and renewable energy consumption have played pivotal roles in promoting environmental sustainability. However, the rapid pace of economic growth hurts the environment. This study holds substantial policy implications as it underscores the potential effectiveness of government measures aimed at improving environmental quality when these responsibilities are decentralized to the local population of the given state.

While many scholars expect people's ideological orientations to drive their beliefs regarding the legitimacy of international organizations (IOs), research has found surprisingly limited support for this common assumption. In this article we resolve this puzzle by introducing the perceived ideological profile of IOs as a critical factor shaping the relationship between ideological orientation and such beliefs. Theoretically, we argue that citizens accord IOs greater legitimacy when they perceive these organizations as ideologically more congruent with their own orientations. Empirically, we evaluate this expectation by combining observational and experimental analyses of new survey evidence from four countries: Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, and the United States. We find that citizens indeed perceive IOs as having particular ideological profiles and that those perceptions systematically moderate the relationship between people's ideological orientations and their sense of IOs’ legitimacy. These findings suggest that political ideology is a more powerful driver of legitimacy beliefs in global governance than previously understood.