Crescimento Econômico com Restrição no Balanço de Pagamentos: Uma Revisão da Literatura e uma Aplicação Empírica da Abordagem Multissetorial ao Caso Brasileiro de 1996-2013

This study aims to make a systematic investigation of the relevant literature on balance of payments constrained growth. The study begins with a brief introduction of the origins of economic growth constraint models. The second section covered the key elements of this approach, stressing the canonical model developed by Thirlwall and a number of extensions that incorporated capital flows and the sustainable debt. The second section finishes with the recent approach that postulates that income elasticities are endogenous to the level of the real exchange rate and that a depreciation in this rate exerts positive effects on the reduction of the external constraint. The third section proposes a review of the multisectoral approach based on Pasinetti’s work. It was shown that the multisectoral approach is more complete than that one developed by Thirlwall. It was shown that there are signs of convergence in the recent developments of the literature since the multisectoral approach begins to incorporate the fact that a depreciation on the level of the real exchange rate exerts positive effects on the relaxation of the external constraint. The study ends with a simple empirical application of the multisectoral approach to the Brazilian case from 1996 to 2013, where the VAR models showed the existence of evidence that the sectoral share of imports and exports has not changed significantly over the period. The empirical section suggests that, in order to relax the external constraint, Brazil should focus on industrial sectors such as high and medium-low technology since these sectors have high income elasticities of exports and small income elasticities of imports.