Ensaios sobre desigualdade e comércio exterior na América Latina

Abstract

This doctoral thesis presents aspects of the inequality in the Productive Structure between the nations of Latin America. It is structured in the form of three essays. In the first, an analysis of the productive structure is made, focusing on determining the inefficiency of the production process. Through the Analysis of the Stochastic Frontier of Production, a method for calculating productive inefficiency among countries in the region is proposed. It turns out that recent Latin American growth is strongly impacted by the shocks that mark the region’s economies. The second essay, in turn, proposes a decomposition technique of what the research calls Inequality of the Productive Structure, based on calculations of measures of concentration of the product per capita. Furthermore, it is also proposed to decompose it in terms of components of aggregate demand. Thus, one can analyze how each of these components affects the Inequality of the Productive Structure. The empirical results associated with the research show that the inequality between Latin American notions is still at high levels, even though there had been a reduction in the years considered by the study. On the breakdown by components of aggregate demand, the different consumption patterns and heterogeneous foreign trade relations strongly impact the levels of inequality of the regional productive structure. Finally, in the third and final essay, an extension of the results of the second chapter is developed, exploring the variation in inequality as a measure of convergence or divergence in per capita income. Again, it is proposed to decompose this variation into different selected categories of foreign trade, especially due to technological intensity and intraregional and interregional trade. The first category of selection helps to understand how the different stages of development of foreign trade are associated with the convergence of per capita income between nations. The second perception shows whether regional integration actions have had any effect on the region’s convergence. As a result, the important participation of foreign trade in determining regional asymmetries in Latin America is confirmed and a significant effect of intra-regional trade in the sense of reducing inequality