Elisangela Luzia Araújo

This dissertation studies the Brazilian manufacturing industry, focusing mainly on the recent period, for which conducts a theoretical and empirical research on the relationship between the performance of industrial production and macroeconomic policies in progress, particularly the exchange rate and interest rates, because the recent issues about changes in the industry and its causes. Initially, this work demonstrated that the industry is a sector much important to the growth and development and it performance in the Brazilian economy from the 1930s until the 1980s, have succeeded a robust growth led by industrial expansion. However, since the 1990s, the industry is going through a phase marked by low growth rates of production, less share in GDP as well as qualitative changes, such as the growth of relative participation in production and export list of non-industrial and industrial lower technological content. Considering the literature about this subject, a question to investigate is whether this situation is caused by the recent economic situation, characterized by high interest rates and the appreciation of the exchange rate. The methodological approach involves three steps. The first seeks to clarify a theoretical foundation for the conceptual analysis intended, from a book review about the close relationship between economic growth and industry, emphasizing the concepts of Kaldor and Cepal, as well as the Simonsen-Gudin’s Controversy. The second stage is devoted to a reflective discussion on the industrialization of Brazil, according to the main authors to understand the historical context within which to explain the issues to be investigated empirically. In the third stage develops an econometric time series analysis, search for evidence of the effects of economic policy adopted in recent years on the configuration of the domestic industry. The empirical results suggested that the industry is being negatively influenced by interest rates, but in relation to exchange rate effects observed occurred differently in the period 1994-2010, and at first (1994-2002) the devaluation was accompanied by the expansion of industrial production and in the second period 2003-2010, a reduction from that. The results suggested yet this is a reflection of the recent configuration of the industry, which is currently based almost entirely in two specific segments: natural resources and large scale production, like as oil and fuel industry, food, metallurgy, etc, that had comparative advantages are not easily canceled by exchange rate changes. In addition, qualitative changes are occurring, like the reflections on the Brazilian foreign trade, in which its possible noted an increase in imports faster than exports, the largest relative share of low tech and non-industrial, as well as reducing the balance of trade in industrial products, particularly higher technological content. This issues emphasizes the needed of new studies and research to capture better the changes, their causes and their effects on medium and long term. They also suggested it is necessary to give greater attention to the Brazilian industrial sector because their importance to the economic growth.