André Gaino Bittencourt Brando

 

According to Post-Keynesian theories of growth and economic development, the capability of economic growth of a country is determined by its productive structure as well as its external insertion. Manufacturing would be the main inductor of economic growth due to increasing returns to scale. In structuralism theories foreign trade ends up being less favorable for commodities exporting economies, due to the deterioration of terms of trade. Thirlwall´s Lay says that the long run capability of growth of a nation’s economy is determined by the relation between exports growth rate and the income-elasticity of imports. Given the great increase in the participation of commodities in Brazilian exports for the last decade, as well as the slowing down of economic growth in recent years and difficulties in keeping relatively high growth rates for long periods of time, this dissertation seeks to investigate of there is a relation between those two phenomenon. To do so, the income and price elasticity of Brazilian economy are estimated through a VEC model, both for the aggregate of exports and imports as well as for the exports and imports by the different intensity of technologic factor of it. Results indicate that the terms of trade are significant at the period at the period and the the income elasticity of imports are greater than the one of exports. Both price and income elasticity by technology factor doesn’t seems to vary according to the variation of the technology factor.