Brazil’s 35 years-old quasi-stagnation: facts and theory

Brazil is growing around 1% per capita a year from 1981; this means for a country that is supposed to catch up, quasi-stagnation. Four historical new facts explain why growth was so low after the Real Plan: the reduction of public savings, and three facts that reduce private investments: the end of the unlimited supply of labor, a very high interest rate, and the 1990 dismantling of the mechanism that neutralized the Dutch disease, which represented a major competitive disadvantage for the manufacturing industry. New-developmental theory offers an explanation and two solutions for the problem, but does not underestimate the political economy problems involved

Why the ‘Rest’ doesn’t need foreign finance

The Rest will be able to catch up and grow faster than the West only if it goes against a “received truth”, namely that capital-rich countries should transfer their capital to capital-poor countries. This intuitive truth is the mantra that the West cites to justify its occupation of the markets of developing countries with its finance and its multinationals. Classical Developmentalism successfully criticized the unequal exchange involved in trade liberalization, but it didn’t succeed in criticizing foreign finance. This task has been recently achieved by New Developmentalism and its developmental macroeconomics, which shows that countries will invest and grow more if they don’t run current account deficits, even when these deficits are financed by foreign direct investment

Vacina contra doença holandesa

O objetivo destas Notas é resenhar o atual debate sobre a inserção da economia brasileira no contexto mundial, particularmente, se o Brasil pode se prevenir do risco de enfrentar a chamada “doença holandesa”. Há debate inconcluso a respeito do seu diagnóstico. Alguns economistas acham que ela já está apresentando seus sintomas através da apreciação excessiva da moeda nacional e redução relativa dos empregos industriais. Outros opinam que ela, de fato, atacará em longo prazo, quando a exportação do petróleo extraído do pré-sal estiver em pleno ritmo. Iniciaremos esboçando o contexto vivenciado e o cenário esperado. Em seguida, exercitaremos a Economia Positiva, ou seja, apresentaremos as posições em debate sobre o que é. Finalizaremos com Economia Normativa, isto é, as propostas sobre o que deve ser.