Ensaios em modelos vetoriais dinâmicos sob restrições aplicados em economia regional

Abstract

Certain economic changes caused by shocks in input prices, climate, technological standards, public policy, among others, may occur in a given region and affect only that specific region, or reach all regions of the country simultaneously, or even occur in a given region and gradually be transferred to one or more regions. Therefore, this thesis proposes to examine the behavior of Brazilian regional economic activity and its inter/intra-regional and external spillovers. Or, in other words, the aim is to answer questions such as, what impact does a shock in economic activity in the Southeast region cause in the Northeast and South regions? Which region of Brazil presents the largest spillovers to the other regions, with the most lasting effects? Is there a regional transmission of inflationary processes? How does the external sector interfere in Brazilian regional dynamics? With that in mind, this thesis presents three essays in Dynamic Vector Models with Parameter Constraints applied to Regional Economics, namely, A Dynamic Model for the Brazilian Industrial Activity and its Regional and External Interdependencies; The Intra-Regional Dynamics of Brazil: Who directs growth of Brazilian regions? and, lastly, The Industrial Dynamics of the state of Ceará and its inter/intra-regional and international impacts. These essays innovate by using a technique which has not yet been applied in studies of this nature; namely, by considering the external sector in a model with regional perspectives, while making use of regional aggregation techniques which reflect monthly the relative importance of each state in the industrial dynamics of the region in which that state is in and, thus, aggregating the external sector using a criterion of relative importance of trading countries with each specific region. The first essay showed, among other results, that the Brazilian regions present significant interdependency in terms of industrial activity with the Southeast region, which stood out for presenting the largest and most persistent spillover effects on the other regions, and it is also apparent that the external sector has a positive influence on Brazilian regional dynamics as well, confirming the important of taking into account the external sector in studies which analyze inter-regional dynamic behavior. The second application shows that the state of Bahia had the largest and most permanent effects on the other states in the Northeast region, while in the Southeast region, the same holds true for the state of São Paulo. In the South region, one can observe a larger regional integration with the state of Paraná, which stood out in terms of intra-regional spillovers. The last exercise shows that the industrial center of the Brazilian Northeast region still seems quite disconnected, presenting low levels of agglomeration economies and, also, that the present industry in the state of Ceará seems to be closer in terms of spillovers to the Southeast and South regions of Brazil.