A lei Kaldor-Verdoorn na economia brasileira. / Kaldor-Verdoorn s law in brazilian economy.

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2002

RESUMO

The purpose of this work was to test the theoretical proposition so-called Kaldor-Verdoorn s Law, and to show its relevance for the determination of the degree of dynamism of economic sectors of a country. Empirical tests of such theoretical model are performed for the Brazilian economy, using industry data taken from the period 1970-1997 and agriculture data from the period 1975-1995. It was analyzed the relationship between production, economy of scale and labor s productivity, both for industry and agriculture. Studies related to factor’s supply, the conquest of new markets, learning by doing, the division of labour and the role of demand in promoting technical progress, provide the bases for the hypothesis of Kardor-Verdoorn s Law. The hypothesis is that the production rising, induced by increasing demand or by unconstrained of factors, lead to economies of scale and, as consequence, to labor productivity improvement. The literature regarding the mentioned law presents some controversy about model specification that can allow the evaluation of the relationship between production and factor’s productivity. The main discussions are related to the implicit presuppositions of the different proposed model specifications, more specifically regarding to the definition of endogenous and exogenous variables. In order to avoid these controversies, it is applied the Vector Autoregression model (VAR) using the dependence way between variables the one defined by the Kardor-Verdoorn s Law. Two model specifications were tested, both for the industry and agriculture data. The first specification deals with the relationship between total production value (output) and labor productivity, considering the effect of the first variable on the last one. The second specification deals with the relationship between the total production value (output) and employment, also considering, in this case, the effect of the first variable on the last one. The results obtained for the Brazilian s industry are consistent with the existence of increasing returns for scale regarding labor factor. Such results allow attribute some dynamism for the sector, but not so marked as in other countries. In the case of agriculture the relationship showed to be overestimated, possibly due to the significant changes on the Brazilian agriculture activity composition. In despite of this, one can conclude that there are economies of scale in this sector.

ASSUNTO(S)

agricultural economy - brazil economia agrícola-brasil lei de kaldor-verdoorn kaldor-verdoorn s law

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