Produtividade Total dos Fatores no Brasil no Período Pós-Reformas

Este trabalho discute o comportamento da produtividadetotal dos fatores (PTF) no Brasil no período de implementação das reformas dosanos 90 e no período que segue as reformas. O exercício mostrou que,considerado todo o período de análise, a produtividade do trabalho foi maisimportante do que a produtividade do capital para explicar a PTF. A conclusãogeral é que, mesmo sem corrigir por mudanças de preços relativos dasconstruções, no período pós-reformas houve uma reversão da trajetóriadeclinante da PTF observada na década de 1980. Também foi possível mostrar queo maior dos ganhos de produtividade veio da melhora da mão de obra, viacapital humano, e do aumento da produtividade na produção de máquinas eequipamentos

PRODUTIVIDADE AGREGADA BRASILEIRA (1970-2000): DECLÍNIO ROBUSTO E FRACA RECUPERAÇÃO

This study explores the productivity performance of the Brazilian economy between 1970 and 1998. We assess how much of the TFP downfall can be explained by some departures from the standard procedure. We incorporate to the standard measure utilization of capacity, changes in the workweek of capital, services of capital from electricity consumption, relative prices distortions, human capital, and investment in specific technology. We conclude that the downfall in productivity is quite robust to those specifications. The only case that presents a marked difference from the standard TFP measure occurs when relative prices of capital are corrected. The implications of this finding are a topic for future research.

Política Fiscal, Choques de Oferta e a Expansão Econômica de 2003-2007

This article has two objectives. The first is to show the impact of distortionary taxes during a period of the economic cycle in Brazil. The second is to show that an explanation for output to grow slower than productivity is the increase in taxes on productive factors: capital and labor. To attain these two objectives, we carried out a study comparing the Brazilian economy with simulated data from the neoclassical model of economic growth with and without distortionary taxes. The empirical results show that the model without taxes predicts stronger growth than observed between 2003 and 2007. This point was addressed using the neoclassical growth model with distortionary taxes. However, this model produces a lower output path than observed. Besides this, both models fail to appropriately account for the behavior of the labor market. Este artigo possui dois objetivos. O primeiro é mostrar o impacto de impostos distorcivos sobre um período do ciclo econômico no Brasil. O segundo é mostrar que uma explicação para o crescimento do produto abaixo do crescimento da produtividade seria o aumento dos impostos sobre os fatores produtivos, capital e trabalho. Para atingir estes dois objetivos realizamos um estudo da comparação da economia brasileira com os dados simulados do modelo neoclássico de crescimento econômico com impostos distorcivos. Os resultados empíricos mostraram que o modelo sem impostos prevê crescimento maior do que o observado entre 2003 e 2007. Este ponto foi atacado utilizando o modelo neoclássico de crescimento com impostos distorcivos. Entretanto, este último modelo produz uma trajetória de produto mais baixa do que a observada. Além disso, ambos os modelos falham em contabilizar apropriadamente pelo comportamento do mercado de trabalho

Steady State Analysis of an Open Economy General Equilibrium Model for Brazil

The aim of the present research is to build an open economy recursive general equilibrium model for the Brazilian economy in order to numerically assess the corresponding steady state equilibrium. This characterization allows us to numerically compute the endogenously determined steady state key relationship, namely the primary surplus aggregate output as well as the debt-product ratio among other variables, as functions of the monetary and fiscal policy parameters chosen by the government of the model economy. The adopted model introduces a transaction technology, which allows us to obtain a monetary equilibrium at steady state. This economy differs from the one used by Ljungqvist and Sargent (2000) for it considers an open economy with accumulation and production. The main result has shown that under the adopted parameterization the steady state of the model economy can numerically characterized by a debt output ratio of 0.3387. The numerical simulations show alternative steady states attainable by the government of the model economy. In order to finance higher expenses the government is bounded to trade-off higher interest rate (low inflation or high return on real money balances) with low operational surpluses due to the higher debt output ratio at the long run equilibrium.

Learning-by-Doing and Schooling

The paper aims to analyze the optimal level of schooling in the presence of learning-by-doing. To achieve this objective the paper introduces the learning-by-doing hypothesis on the Lucas model of economic growth induced by human capital accumulation. With the new setup, it is possible to show that the optimal time at school's will decrease while the human capital' growth rate remains the same. Moreover, the paper provides a theoretical foundation to the claims that government should concentrate education's subsides at the basic school rather than at college education.learning-by-doing, education, human capital and growth

Business cycle fluctuations in Brazil

This paper documents the empirical relationship in postwar Brazil between the GNP and other key variables such as consumption, investment, productivity and hours worked. Since many of those series were not available to Brazil we also had to build a data-set, which includes consumption of non-durables, capital and hours worked. We use two filters to extract the cycles (the usual Hodrick-Prescott filter and a band-pass filter); this procedure was taken to avoid conclusions that depend too much on the filter in use. The paper also provides simulations of two dynamic general equilibrium models (the standard RBC model and the indivisible labor model) and tries to match the facts of the artificial economy with those of the actual economy. We show that the basic models fail to replicate some of the observed facts.Este artigo documenta as relações entre o PNB e outras variáveis macroeconômicas, tais como: consumo, investimento, produtividade e horas trabalhadas, observadas no Brasil. Desde que muitas destas séries não estavam disponíveis construímos uma base de dados que inclui consumo de não-duráveis, capital e horas trabalhadas. Para extrair o ciclo utilizamos dois filtros (o filtro Hodrick-Prescott e um filtro do tipo band-pass); este procediment foi tomado para evitar conclusões que dependessem do filtro utilizado. O artigo também apresenta simulações de dois modelos de equilíbrio geral dinâmico (o modelo básico de ciclos reais e o modelo com trabalho indiviível) e compara os fatos gerado pelos modelos com os observados para a economia brasileira. Este exercício mostra que os modelos utilizados não são capazes de reproduzir alguns dos fatos observados

The Brazilian Depression in the 1980s and 1990s

Abstract After being one of the fastest growing countries from the end of World War II to the beginning of the 80s, the Brazilian GNP per working-age person dropped 30% below trend during the 80s and 90s. The present study investigates how much of this performance can be explained by the neoclassical growth model. We found that the basic growth model, with exogenous productivity shocks, can account for as much as two-thirds of the actual decline in the Brazilian real GNP per working-age person for the period 1981-1998. The remaining one third could be mostly explained as responses to fiscal policy shocks. The main question that remains to be answer is why the TFP growth rate declined so much, pushing down the growth rate of the Brazilian GNP per working-age person. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Code: E3