Ocwen has long emphasized its cost advantages and low operating expenses as a competitive advantage, with at least three-quarters of its 5, 000 employees based in India and Uruguay, where it says its per-employee costs are one-eighth of those of a U.S. worker.

WSJ: Ocwen's Rapid Growth Puts Spotlight on Its Practices

Such efforts notwithstanding, Josef Schmidhuber, an agronomist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, argues that Brazil's competitive advantage lies in churning out huge quantities of low-cost bulk commodities.

ECONOMIST: Brazil