Crescimento econômico secular no Brasil, modelo de thirlwall e termos de troca

Abstract

Explaining the Brazilian economic growth performance during the 20th is achallenging task to academics. As shown, Brazil had already experienced faster growthand recently it is far from such belle époque. Most explanation lies on conventionalframeworks. This paper assesses the Thirlwall’s balance-of-payments constraint modelto Brazilian economic growth in the period 1900-2005, highlighting the importance ofthe terms of trade. The results show, first, that the terms of trade are significant in theestimation of import demand function and change the income elasticity, especially inthe first period of the sample (1900-1970), and, second, when the simplest Thirlwall’smodel is controlled by terms of trade, it seems that such variable is important throughexport growth, which cause changes in economic performance.