Três ensaios sobre crescimento econômico na América Latina e no Brasil

Abstract

The Thesis entitled “Three Essays on Economic Growth in Latin America and Brazil” is composed of three articles. The first article deals with the Total Productivity of Factors and decomposition of TPF in Latin America in the period of 1960 the 2000. It uses the model of Stochastic Frontier including macroeconomic variables of technique inefficiency for the countries of Latin America during the period of forty years. It can be evidenced that those variables in general have a significant impact on the behavior of the inefficiency technique of the region, what it is assured by the statistic test. Among those variables, the ones that have bigger effect in the explanation of the inefficiency technique of the countries are the ones that present a positive relation with the inefficiency, those are the expenses of the government and the inflation tax, that is, how much bigger these taxes, greater will be the correspondence of the inefficiency technique. Already, variables that present an inverse relation with the inefficiency technique had been identified by the degree of opening and shunting lines of the local prices in relation to the parity of the purchase power. The second article makes an analysis of causality between trade opening and economic growth for the Brazilian states during the period of 1986 the 2005. In this chapter is made a test of causality of Granger to verify the possible influence of the trade opening in the economic growth and vice it turns. The results of the test indicate a bicausality, that is, even the trade opening can cause some impact in the economic growth as the economic growth can come to cause influence in the trade opening in the sense of causality of Granger for the Brazilian states during the period of twenty years analyzed. In the third chapter, it aims to analyze the serious problem of income concentration, poverty and social inequality, particularly in the northeast of Brazil. Specifically, the equation of incomes of workers in the agriculture of the Northeast region will be esteem. Once esteemed the equation of incomes of workers in the agriculture of the Northeast region, it gives the information that can decompose the determinative ones of the income inequality. Of this way, it can be said the percentile participation of each determinative one in the explanation of the inequality. It was applied decomposition in level and difference. In the determination of the equation of incomes for the agricultural area of northeast, it verifies that discrimination of color exists. Referring to the decomposition in level, the education showed to be the variable most important in the explanation of the inequality for period 1995, followed by age, sex and medium brown color. In 2001, the changeable education also was the most important, followed for union, medium brown color and sex. For the year of 2005, the education continues as main the determinative one of the inequality of incomes in the northeast agricultural area of Brazil.