Dedico este trabalho aos meus pais, Ivanete e Luiz, ao meu irmão Cesar, aos meus sobrinhos Matheus e Arthur, à minha cunhada Adriana e a todas as pessoas a quem ele for útil de alguma maneira. Palavras-chave: Análise de custo-benefício; Água virtual; Valor da água; Parceiros importadores; Cobrança pelo uso dos recursos hídricos ABSTRACT Cost-benefit analysis of virtual water exports in the Brazilian agricultural sector Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a policy evaluation tool that assists in decisionmaking, used primarily by public managers. CBA was used in order to reach the main objective of this study: to verify if the export of virtual waterwater contained in a product during its production processembedded in 10 products of the Brazilian agricultural sector, from 2002 to 2016, is being beneficial to Brazil. The products studied were grouped into 5 groups: Sugar, Coffee, Corn, Soybean and Bovine, which, since the year of 2012, represented more than 20% of total Brazilian exports, in monetary terms, US$. For any cost-benefit analysis it is necessary that all impacts (costs and benefits) are monetized to determine the net benefit (), which is achieved by decreasing the costs () of the benefits (), (= −). The study admitted as cost the costs of production, of the products studied; the port storage tariff; and, the value of virtual water exported by Brazil. As a benefit is being considered the value received with the export of these products, converted into national currency. Thus, to reach the main objective of the study, it was necessary to value the virtual water, one of the main objectives of the study. In addition, the study also analyses the main importing partners of Brazil, in relation to the products studied; the importance of Brazil as a leading agricultural exporting country for these importing partners; the difference in the volume of water used for production, both in Brazil and in the importing partners; and, the volume and total value of the virtual water exported in the analyzed period. The central hypothesis that guided this work is that Brazil obtained more benefits than costs when exporting virtual water embedded in the chosen basket of agricultural products. This hypothesis could even be confirmed, since the CBA identified positive total net benefits from 2002 to 2016, i.e., benefits (value of exports) exceeded costs (production cost, tariff port value and virtual water value). Regarding the net benefits per product group studied, they presented negative results in some years of the analyzed period, for example, for the Corn group, in the years 2005, 2006 and 2009 the net benefits were negative. As for the total net benefits, they were R$ 216,342,482,411.98 in the period from 2002 to 2016. In relation to the total volume of virtual exported water, incorporated in the products addressed by the study, during the analyzed period, it was 2,514,850,651 million m³ of water. In terms of monetary value, the total amount for this volume of water was R$ 27,166,366,824.47.