Germany’s socio-economic model, the “social market economy”, was established in West Germany after World War two and extended to the unified Germany in 1990. During a prolonged recession after the adoption of the Euro in 1998, major reforms (Agenda 2010) were introduced which many consider as the key of Germany’s recent success. The reforms had mixed results: Employment increased but has consisted to a large extent of precarious low-wage jobs. Growth depended on export surpluses based on an internal real devaluation (low unit labour costs) which make Germany vulnerable to global recessions as in 2009. Overall inequality increased substantially.
JEL Classification: J50; N14; O52; P16.
The recent debt crisis in Greece, Ireland and Portugal has exposed the fragility existing in the Euro zone for promoting development and economic convergence between the countries that have adopted the currency. Way beyond the fear of insolvency, what is observed is a growing disparity of the most-developed countries in comparison to the less-developed ones, with perverse consequences for the last ones. Once the nominal exchange rates are fixed, the divergent movements in relative prices and wages between the countries have led to totally distinct paths for the real exchange rates. Worsening the scenario, one can observe the incompleteness of the political union, the monetarist focus of the ECB and the lack of labor mobility between the countries, what distances from the argument stated by the theory and puts in jeopardize the future of the Monetary Union.
JEL Classification: E42; F33.
The debate regarding Brazil’s development model returned again to the public arena in the first decade of 21st Century after two decades of orthodox economic policies which encouraged non-developed countries to adopt liberal economic policies as their preferred growth strategies. As Brazil achieved neither economic stability nor development, the discussion of new development strategies returned as a popular research topic. It is in this context that a new development theory – Neo Developmentalism – emerges. The objective of this article is to review the origins of this debate and the main propositions defended by the group aiming to implement a new development model policy in the country. The main conclusions are that this group has had an important contribution in maintaining the development debate in the public agenda as well as proposing a new theoretical approach called “structuralist macroeconomic development”.
JEL Classification: O10.
This paper investigates a topic of the agenda about growth models, emphasizing the elaboration of an external constrained model with endogenous elasticity, with an emphasis on real exchange rate level as main tool for the economic development. The model is anchored in Kaldor, Thirlwall and Barbosa Filho’s models and it will demonstrate that external constraint changes in the course of time.
JEL Classification: F41; F43.
This paper investigates the hypothesis of Dutch disease in Brazil by the existence of a negative relationship between commodity exports and the real exchange rate, and the effects of export specialization in commodities on the Brazilian economic growth from 1999 to 2010 based on VAR model. The evidences suggested an expressive importance of commodities exports in explaining the real exchange rate changes. Moreover, commodities exports shocks were relevant to explain Brazilian economic growth rate changes, which supports the “curse” of natural resources literature.
JEL Classification: F37; F17; O24.
In some Latin American countries the exporting activity starts at a regional level, with producers only later venturing into more competitive markets. The implicit risk is that a country might never progress from the regional stage to a more global market. This article compares the experiences of Brazil, China and India. It is shown that Brazil relied on the regional market far more intensely than these Asian countries. There were clear gains accruing to China and India for having exploited more sophisticated markets from the very beginning of their export drive.
JEL Classification: F13; F14; F15; F43.
The objective of this work is to compare the performance of the countries of Latin America and South / Southeast Asia in the last three decades in relation to the technological intensity of their exports. The main contribution of this article is to build an indicator of technological intensity that allows to adequately measure the degree of knowledge content of exports from both regions. This indicator was calculated for all countries in the sample for the period 1983-2008, based on COMTRADE / WITS data and clearly show how Asian countries have a technological intensity of their exports that is much higher than that of Latin America.
JEL Classification: F14.
This paper discusses the long-run history of education policies in Brazil. It is suggested that the main reason for the educational backwardness was the existence of strong political interests over education. It is also defended that these interests can be empirically observed in the allocation of public resources between the different levels of education, with political choices favouring specific groups in society. It was not a matter of lack of investment in education, but of inadequate allocation of resources. This pattern of political-based policies created a strong negative path dependence of misallocation of resources in education in Brazil, particularly with significant underinvestment in secondary education.
JEL Classification: N36; O15.
This work investigates the earnings mobility in Brazil, considering the period before and after the observed fall of inequality in the country. We used microdata from Monthly Employment Survey (PME/IBGE), from 1992 to 2009. It is possible to analyze mobility in an intra generational context. The mobility contributes to decrease income inequality. Given the fall of inequality in the country, if mobility persists, Brazil may experience, in the long run, greater income convergence.
JEL Classification: J31; J62.
This paper presents the two major hypotheses explaining the relatively higher GDP growth of Northeast, when compared to the one for the whole country. These hypotheses are that governmental transferences towards the poorest and the rises in minimum wages are responsible for such relative performance. They are formally presented theoretically and a method to test their relative role is developed, relying on county data for the period 2000 to 2006. The results indicate that the Bolsa Familia Program had a higher positive impact in the GDP growth rate of the region than the rises in Minimum wage.
JEL Classification: R11.