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Title: Trade patterns in a globalized world: the case of Brazil
BNDES Authors: Nassif, André
Authors: Castilho, Marta Reis
Keywords: Globalização - Brasil
Globalization - Brazil
Comércio internacional
International trade
Especialização comercial - Brasil - 1990-2016
Specialisation of trade - Brazil - 1990-2016
Diversificação na indústria - Brasil
Diversification in industry - Brazil
Exportação - Brasil
Exports - Brazil
Reforma econômica - Brasil - 1990-2017
Economic reform - Brazil - 1990-2017
Importação - Brasil
Imports - Brazil
Issue Date: Nov-2018
Place: Rio de Janeiro
Publisher: Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social
Abstract: Globalization 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 globalization 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 specialization. By regressive specialization we refer to that in which both production and export structures are strongly oriented to goods of low technological sophistication and low income-elasticity of demand. The recent theoretical literature on technological gaps and long-term growth suggests that, when a country enters into a quick and sustained regressive pattern of specialization, its capacity of showing growth rates aligned with its balance-of-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 specialization concentrated in low-tech goods and implying that growth has been constrained by long-term balance-of-payments 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 specialization of Brazil’s trade pattern in the last decades.
Description: Bibliografia: p. 54-61
"Paper prepared for the 21st FMM (Forum for Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policies) Conference: “The Crisis of Globalization” in Berlin, Germany, 9-11 November, 2017, and also presented at the 3rd Iberoamerican Socioeconomic Meeting of Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics (Sase) in Cartagenas de Indias, Colombia, 16-18 November, 2017, and at the 5th Global Conference on Economic Geography 2018 in Cologne, Germany, 24-28 July, 2018. The first draft of this paper was prepared when one of its authors (André Nassif) still worked at BNDES as a professional economist. He retired from BNDES in December, 2016. The authors thank Filipe Lage de Souza for helpful comments and suggestions."
Inclui apêndices: 1. Classification of Brazilian industries according to factor content and technological sophistication (correspondence between STIC revision 2 and Pavitt’s taxonomy) -- 2. Trade indicators
1. Introduction -- 2. Trade patterns in a globalized world: a survey of the theoretical literature -- 3. Empirical evidence: the case of Brazil -- 4. Concluding remarks -- References -- Appendix 1 -- Appendix 2
Citation: NASSIF, André; CASTILHO, Marta dos Reis. Trade patterns in a globalized world: the case of Brazil. Rio de Janeiro: Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social, 2018.
Series/Report no.: Discussion papers (Brazilian Development Bank);126
Textos para discussão (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social);126
Type: Livro
Genre: Textual
URI: http://web.bndes.gov.br/bib/jspui/handle/1408/16100
Date Available: 2019-01-14T15:51:28Z
Appears in Collections:Produção BNDES - Livros
Produção BNDES - Textos para Discussão BNDES

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://web.bndes.gov.br/bib/jspui/handle/1408/16100
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