Revisiting Growth of Brazilian Economy (1980-2012)

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the causes of growth deceleration in the Brazilian economy initiated in the mid-1980s from a Keynesian-Structuralist perspective, according to which long-term growth is associated with structural change and capital accumulation. The article will analyze the period from 1980 to 2012 and will test the hypothesis that growth slowdown was caused by a large reduction in the rate of capital accumulation, due to a substantial reduction of the investment share in real output that begun in the 1980s and increased in the 1990s. The reduction of the investment share was the result of the existing imbalances of macroeconomic prices (mainly overvalued real exchange rate and exchange rate/wage ratio) which caused a premature deindustrialization of the Brazilian economy, with negative effects on investment opportunities. The obtained econometric results demonstrate the theoretical hypothesis regarding growth deceleration of the Brazilian economy.

Keywords

• structural change
• capital accumulation
• semi-stagnation
• Brazil