Title:
Persistence and structural change in the technological specialization of Brazil
Persistence and structural change in the technological specialization of Brazil
Author(s)
Urraca-Ruiz, Ana
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Abstract
Since the beginning of the nineties, Brazil has been going through a process of trade
liberalization. The effects of this process have not been fully under analysis. Most of
the literature that deals with this issue has a macroeconomic approach, especially those
that concern the trade balance and its fiscal and monetary consequences and the impacts
these features have on the growth process. The assessment of the microeconomic
consequences of the growth process, apart from being scarce, are limited to studies on
the competitiveness of industrial structures, on the productive re-structuring and on
consequences over the structure of domestic markets.
Trade liberalization may however have deeper consequences on structural
transformation than those that have been under investigation and may have effects on
the productive specialization of the country (Myro and Alvarez 2003) and particularly
on technological competences. A country's technological competences are closely
related to its productive and commercial base. Productive transformations may
therefore affect the technological structure of a country.
This paper aims to investigate changes in the technological specialization of Brazil and
to draw a profile of its technological competences before and after the trade
liberalization. The paper is organized in four sections apart this introduction and the
final conclusions. In the first section, the paper presents a survey of the literature on the
determinants of a country's technological specialization and the consequences trade
liberalization may have on the allocation of technological efforts across technical fields.
The second section describes the database. The third section is dedicated to the analysis
of the Brazilian technological specialization through the undertaking of three analyses: (1) the changes in the revealed technological advantages (RTA) as indicator of the
technological opportunity; (2) the relative position of Brazil with respect to three
groups of countries (leaders, Asian followers and Latin-American followers); and (3) a
shift-share analysis of the components of the technological structural change.
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Date Issued
2008-09
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Proceedings