Aktion	Zweigstelle	Standorte	Status	Frist	Vorbestellungen
Vorbestellen	Zweigstelle: 07., Urban-Loritz-Pl. 2a	Standorte: GW.TM Furt / College 6x - Magazin: bitte wenden Sie sich an die Infotheke	Status: Verfügbar	Frist:	Vorbestellungen: 0

"[…]

The main feature of the 1959 book is that the economic history of Brazil (and other Latin American countries as well) must be based on an open growth model with international trade treated as an endogenous variable, since these countries' economies evolved as suppliers of raw materials to the world market. Furtado shows that throughout the four centuries from 1530 to 1930 the Brazilian economy depended on external demand to provide stimulus to higher productivity without previous capital accumulation, with three long-period cycles - sugar exports (1530-1650), gold mining (1700-1780) and the expansion of the world market for coffee (1840-1930) - and intervening periods of relative stagnation. That phase came to an end in the economic crisis of 1929, when the collapse of export-commodity prices cut the country's importpurchasing power in half. According to Furtado, the policy adopted by the Brazilian government at the time to maintain coffee price, by buying the unmarketable coffee and burning it, had the effect of an unwitting "Keynesian" anti-cyclical deficit-financing policy. This contributed to keep domestic demand and, together with the diminished capacity to import, pushed up domestic prices of imported goods and stimulated investments in import-substituting industrial consumers' goods.

That process marked the beginning of a new phase in the development of Brazil, based on internal demand and import-substituting industrialization. Brazilian late industrialization - as compared to the United States - is explained in part by the differences between the productive structure of Brazil's export agriculture and the small agricultural properties in the English colonies of North America. Brazilian internal market was much thinner due to the concentration of income and property, which served to maintain its stagnant colonial structure. Moreover, whereas the United States participated in the first wave of the industrial revolution as exporter of a key raw material (cotton), the main cause of the relative backwardness of the Brazilian economy in the first half of the 19th century, according to Furtado, was the damming up of its exports and the increase of the subsistence sector with lower productivity.

Also in contrast with the late industrialization of continental European countries in the second half of the 19th century studied by Gerschenkron, the import-substitution process in Latin America did not lead to an intensive development of producers' goods industries and changes in international trade (exports of manufactured goods and imports of raw materials). The evolution of trade patterns in Latin American countries during their industrialization period after 1930 was quite the opposite: exports were still based on some few commodities and imports concentrated on goods whose production required huge investments and/oradvanced technology.

[…]"

Quelle: Mauro Boianovsky,