Revisiting Import-Substituting Industrialisation in Post-War Brazil

Renato Colistete ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This article reassesses the classic period of Import-Substituting Industrialisation (ISI) in Brazil between 1945 and 1979. New data presented here show that Brazilian industry achieved significant labour productivity growth during the post-war years and became more technologically sophisticated, when measured by manufacturing exports and evidence of specific industries and firms. We also found that Brazil’s labour productivity growth lagged behind what was achieved in other industrialising and developed countries from the mid-1970s. Technological advances were slow and uneven, and most firms relatively backward. Overall these results suggest that a highly heterogeneous structure became a major feature of Brazilian industrialisation, rather than widespread inefficiency and technological stagnation as argued by the dominant interpretation of ISI in Latin America.

Keywords: Import-Substituting Industrialisation; Productivity; Technology; Brazil; Latin America (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N1 N6 O1 O3 O4 O54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/24665/1/MPRA_paper_24665.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:24665

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().