Trade patterns in a globalized world: the case of Brazil (original) (raw)
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Trade Patterns in a Globalised World: The Case of Brazil
2018
Globalisation can be defined as the extent and intensity with which a country's production, trade and capital flows are integrated in the world economy. Our focus is on the globalisation through international trade flows. After analyzing the main theoretical predictions about the effects of global trade integration on trade patterns between countries of different levels of income and technology, this paper investigates the case of Brazil, focusing on its trade integration over the last 26 years (1990-2016). Particularly, we are interested in investigating whether or not (and if so, to what extent) Brazil's recent trajectory has been directed to a regressive pattern of specialisation. By regressive specialisation we refer to that in which both production and export structures are strongly oriented to goods of low technological sophistication and low incomeelasticity of demand. The recent theoretical literature on technological gaps and longterm growth suggests that when a country enters into a quick and sustained regressive pattern of specialisation, its capacity of showing growth rates aligned with its balanceof-payment equilibrium is reduced and, therefore, a falling behind trajectory is observed. Our main empirical findings are (i) the technological gap significantly widened for all groups of manufactured goods classified by factor content and technological sophistication; (ii) the income elasticity of demand for Brazilian exports is greater than for Brazilian imports, suggesting a regressive specialisation concentrated in low-tech goods and implying that growth has been constrained by long-term balance-ofpayments equilibrium (Thirlwall's law); and (iii) a very marked trend of high concentration of Brazilian exports in primary goods, but a more diversified basket of imports composed of high technologically sophisticated manufactured goods, reinforcing the regressive specialisation of Brazil's trade pattern in the last decades.
2020
Exports, and which exports, are the key to alleviate the balance-of-payments constraint to growth. This article thus investigates the sources of growth in both total and sectoral Brazilian exports between 1995 and 2014, using a new decomposition methodology suited to identify changes in international competitiveness. The results highlight the limitations of Brazil’s international insertion. When the country did experience rapid export growth, competitiveness gains contributed but marginally. As a rising tide of growing international trade lifted Brazil’s position during the boom years, the country did not gain enough competitiveness to weather the subsequent storm. Therefore, since the 2008 crisis, the country’s international insertion has been deteriorating: amongst other factors detrimental to long-term development, its manufactures have been continually outcompeted and global demand has shifted from the goods it produces at a comparative advantage. As such, should growth accelera...
Divergences Between New Patterns of Global Trade and Brazil/Mercosur
Brazilian Political Science Review, 2017
Although integration has been a part of South American discourse for decades, the level at which it is actually promoted remains far from that which is observed in dynamic production and trading centers. Given transformations in global trade, the phenomenon of global value chains is, in fact, very regionalized. We ask whether the trading pattern of Mercosur countries is aligned with approaches based on regional value chain, and if not, how it differs and why. In our evidence and analysis, we primarily use traditional gross trade data and Trade in Value Added (TiVA) indicators, and we look more at countries' profiles. We show that there has been a decrease in Brazilian trade with Mercosur, with manufactured exports being the main reason for the decline. We indicate that, in addition to the effect of China in the 2000s, there has been a structural movement of Mercosur economies, mainly regarding Brazil, which supports a hypothesis of primarization or deindustrialization. Our results show that Brazil and Argentina are both relatively closed to foreign trade, as well as global and regional value chains, which makes them even more poorly integrated with one another. This reinforces what we call Mercosur's 'introspective' model of integration, making it less outward-oriented, which is divergent with what is observed when regional value chains are encouraged.
SPECIALIZATION AND COMPETITIVENESS IN BRAZILIAN FOREIGN TRADE
This paper approaches the effects of patterns of specialization on Brazilian foreign trade. By applying a Constant-Market-Share Analysis to the Brazilian export and import bills between early-80s and mid-90s, we attempt to assess the quantitative weights of structural effects, allocation effects and competitiveness effects along that period. Our results point out to a substantial negative role played by prevailing patterns of specialization with respect to the attainment of trade balances compatible with domestic high growth.
Divergences Between New Patterns of Global Trade and
Brazilian Political Science Review, 2017
Although integration has been a part of South American discourse for decades, the level at which it is actually promoted remains far from that which is observed in dynamic production and trading centers. Given transformations in global trade, the phenomenon of global value chains is, in fact, very regionalized. We ask whether the trading pattern of Mercosur countries is aligned with approaches based on regional value chain, and if not, how it differs and why. In our evidence and analysis, we primarily use traditional gross trade data and Trade in Value Added (TiVA) indicators, and we look more at countries' profiles. We show that there has been a decrease in Brazilian trade with Mercosur, with manufactured exports being the main reason for the decline. We indicate that, in addition to the effect of China in the 2000s, there has been a structural movement of Mercosur economies, mainly regarding Brazil, which supports a hypothesis of primarization or deindustrialization. Our results show that Brazil and Argentina are both relatively closed to foreign trade, as well as global and regional value chains, which makes them even more poorly integrated with one another. This reinforces what we call Mercosur's 'introspective' model of integration, making it less outward-oriented, which is divergent with what is observed when regional value chains are encouraged.
The Impact of the Emergence of China on Brazilian International Trade
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
with a dissertation proposing new methodologies to assess global and regional market access. Her research has also been oriented towards specialization, competitiveness and export performance issues, with a special focus on the quality and prices of international flows. More recently, she has been working on supply-chain fragmentation and the role of intermediate products on recent trends in world trade. In doing so, she has developed international trade databases largely used and available online. Previously, she was Principal Economist at BBVA Research in Madrid and research economist at the CEPII.
Structural change and economic development: is Brazil catching up or falling behind?
Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2014
We present a Kaldor-Thirlwall theoretical and empirical framework on the basic driving forces of the behaviour of productivity and economic development in the long-run. From the Kaldorian view, we anchor on the hypothesis that, by operating under static and dynamic economies of scale, the main sources of the growth of productivity of the economy as a whole come from the manufacturing sector. Yet, according to the so-called Thirlwall's Law, for a country to prevent from facing balance of payments contraints to growth in the long run and successfully catch up with the levels of income per capita and well-being of developed countries, it must maintain an income elasticity of demand for exports above the income elasticity of demand for imports. Based on these main hypotheses and some stylised facts observed and pioneered by Kaldor, we show some empirical evidence based on both descriptive statistics and econometric regressions for Brazil between 1970 and 2010. There are at least four clear indicators to suggest that Brazil has entered into a process of early de-industrialisation: i) the sharp drop in participation of the Brazilian manufacturing industry in total value added in the last decades; ii) its declining average yearly growth rate of labour productivity since the end of the 1990s; iii), the dramatic augmentation of the technological gap in all subsectors of the manufacturing industry, classified by technological intensity, since the end of the 1990s and; iv) the significant trade deficits in the manufacturing subsector of more technological intensity between 2006 and 2008. In addition, since our econometric estimates also show that there was a dramatic increase in the income elasticity of demand for imports (from 1.97 to 3.36) and a decrease in the income elasticity for exports between 1999 and 2010, compared with the 1980-1998 period (from 1.36 to 1.33), we can conclude that Brazil has already embarked on a trajectory of falling-behind and has been facing balance of payments constraints to growth in the long run. However, since our econometric estimation of the Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficient revealed that the Brazilian manufacturing industry operates under dynamic economies of scale, this result means that the Brazilian manufacturing industry has, in principle, potential to sustain economic growth in the long run. All these results have important economic policy implications. The most important is that there is still time to revert both the early de-industrialisation and falling behind path in favour of a catching up trajectory in the Brazilian economy, since there is a fine coordination between the long-term policies (industrial and technological policies, infrastructure and education policies, among others) and the short-term macroeconomic policies (monetary, fiscal and, especially, exchange rate policies) oriented to boost the technological content of both Brazilian manufacturing goods and exports.
Technology, trade and skills in Brazil: Some evidence from microdata
2011
Brazil was characterised by a marked process of trade liberalisation in the ‘90s, resulting in a dramatic increase in the volumes of exports and imports since the year 2000. Over the same period, the relative demand for skilled labour has increased substantially. To investigate whether these two simultaneous phenomena are linked is the purpose of this paper. More in particular, this study focuses on the possible impact of domestic technology, capital complementarity and trade openness on the relative demand for skilled labour in Brazilian manufacturing firms, using a unique panel database (resulting from merging three different statistical sources) of Brazilian manufacturing firms over the period 1997-2005. Descriptive statistics show that the increase in the relative demand for skilled labour was mainly driven by the within-industry variation, supporting the hypothesis that technology (and in particular technological transfer from richer countries) may have played a role in determi...