Jobs and Growth: Brazil's Productivity Agenda

Abstract

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Global Productivity: Trends, Drivers, and Policies

“…The subregion was deeply affected by the commodity price slump and country-specific constraints in large economies. TFP growth in South America was continually negative during 2013-18, in part reflecting growing directed credit in Brazil (Calice, Ribiero, and Byskov 2018;Dutz 2018). It also reflected intensifying economic distortions (such as trade restrictions and price controls) in Argentina during the early part of the period, which allowed unproductive firms to survive.…”

“…Apprenticeship programs also hold potential. For many countries, including Brazil, adapting labor markets to shifting economic opportunities in the strongly integrated global economy requires revision of dated labor market regulation (Dutz 2018). This could include reducing restrictions on use of term contracts, not allowing minimum wages above market equilibrium, and reducing penalties for redundancy.…”

Improving skills to harness the benefits of a more open economy in Brazil

“…To simplify the argumentation, results presented here interpret log point differences as percentage point differences as done in related literature (Dix-Carneiro and Kovak, 2017 [42]). This is an approximation which is valid only for small values, which is why in this technical background paper percentage point changes corresponding to the estimated log point changes are presented (Dix-Carneiro, Soares and Ulyssea, 2018 [81]).…”

“…Consistent with the previous literature, data on tariff reductions from 1990 until 1995 are obtained from Kume et al (2003), who collected tariff data from 1987 until 1999 at the "Nivel 80" level, a former national accounts classification used by the Brazilian National Statistics Institute (IBGE) comprising 53 industry classes (Dix-Carneiro, Soares and Ulyssea, 2018 [81]; Kovak, 2013[85]; Menezes-Filho and Muendler, 2011 [87]; Kume, Piani and Braz de Sousa, 2003 [88]; Dix-Carneiro and Kovak, 2017 [42]). As employment data from RAIS contains varying economic sector classifications across years, compatibility between years for the whole sample period from 1985 until 2015 is only possible at the two-digit IBGE subsector level, which comprises 25 economic sectors.…”

“…Our definition of local labour markets follows the one from the Brazilian national statistics institute (IBGE) which aggregates municipalities that are well connected by transport infrastructure, have common production relations as well as similar socio-economic and geographic characteristics into micro regions, which defined for the period 1989 until 2017. This definition of micro regions has been extensively used as a proxy for local labour markets in Brazil (Dix-Carneiro and Kovak, 2017 [42]; Dix-Carneiro, Soares and Ulyssea, 2018 [81]; Hirata and Soares, 2016 [82]; Costa, Garred and Pessoa, 2016 [83]). As RAIS data already starts in 1985 and municipality definitions have changed until 1989, we use available geo-location data to aggregate IBGE micro regions that shared one or more municipal areas before 1989.…”