Economic complexity and the Brazilian production structure: export pattern and national economic development in the 21st century

Abstract

This study highlights some of the aspects of Brazilian economic development in the 21st century, relating its productive structure to the economic complexity of exports. It seeks to understand how the profile of Brazilian exports reflects its internal productive structure based on the way in which Brazil has reinserted itself into international trade in a scenario of greater trade openness since the 1990s based on two complementary and integrated approaches: the economic complexity of exports, aiming to identify the competitiveness of exported products that are produced in the national territory; and the linkage indexes of the input-output matrix, which aim to identify the linkage effects as a way of understanding the organization of its internal productive structure, highlighting the classification proposed by Kupfer (1998). It is identified that the internal productive structure of the Brazilian economy tends toward the expansion of chains of more competitive products in international trade even if less complex. The growing relevance of the chaining effects of less complex products, allied to the increase in their competitiveness and participation in the export basket, despite contributing to GDP growth in some periods, shows the structural limitations of national economic development.