Milagre exportador, preços relativos e o Mal Brasileiro

Abstract

The paper has made an attempt to contribute to two issues concerned with the present interpretations of the Brazilian economy: the role of protectionism and the so called reprimarization of the exports profile. Our exercise consisted of performing two simulations, the first dealing with the consequences of the exclusion of all indirect taxes from the economy, while the other appraised what would happen if exports received an important exogenous expansion, particularly as regards the price dimension of the working of the system. The withdrawal of indirect taxes from the economy — although, by simple arithmetic reasons reducing gross domestic product — would be relatively less harmful to the poor families and exporting firms. We interpret these results as indicating that, in the open economy, some allocative questions will be solved for the benefit of these two sub-economies. The second simulation allowed us to find some evidence pointing to the vital role of exports in the process of growth of the country, as far as the linkages derived from the exporting sectors do not allow us to dub them as backward, even though, of course, some of them — directly or indirectly — export primary products.