Brazil is a globally vital but troubled economy. This volume offers comprehensive insight into Brazil's economic development, focusing on its most salient characteristics and analyzing its structural features across various dimensions. This innovative Oxford Handbook provides an understanding of the economy's evolution over time and highlights the implications of the past trajectory and decisions for current challenges and opportunities. The opening section covers the country's economic history, beginning with the colonial economy, through import-substitution, to the era of neoliberalism. Second, it analyses Brazil's broader place in the global economy, and considers the ways in which this role has changed, and is likely to change, over coming years. Particular attention is given to the productive sectors of Brazil's economy, for example manufacturing, agriculture, services, energy, and infrastructure. In addition to discussions of regional differences within Brazil, socio-economic dimensions are examined. These include income distribution, human capital, environmental issues, and health. Also included is a discussion of Brazil in the world economy, such as the increase in "South-South" cooperation and trade as well as foreign direct investment. Last but not least is a discussion of the role of the Brazilian state in the economy, whether through state enterprises, competition policy, or corruption.

The Brazilian economy has long been defined by its enormous potential. Over the past 30 years, some of this has at last been realised. Latin America’s largest economy has rapidly risen in global importance while poverty at home has declined. Yet, despite periods of progress, Brazil remains prone to economic crisis. It is also beset with stubborn inefficiencies and income disparities. This book considers the structural challenges which will need to be overcome if Brazil is to break with the past and finally embark on a path of sustained, inclusive growth. This book aims to give the reader a clear knowledge of the nature of these structural challenges, why they exist and the effectiveness of attempts to overcome them. Through this, readers will gain a deep understanding of the contemporary Brazilian economy. The challenges discussed fall into three areas: those centring on competitiveness and the supply side, those arising from critical macroeconomic issues and those connected with environmental sustainability and social inclusion. This volume systematically examines each of these domains, highlighting such vital topics as export competitiveness, human capital formation, environmental policy and the role of financial market reform. Where appropriate, this book sets Brazil’s experience in an international comparative context. It points out that many of the challenges faced by Brazil are shared by other emerging economies. In this sense, the policy lessons which stem from this volume have broader international relevance. This book will be vital reading for all those seeking in-depth understanding of one of the world’s most important, yet troubled, economies. This readership is likely to include undergraduate and postgraduate students on development economics and Latin American area studies programmes, policymakers wanting an up-to-date and coherent analysis of Latin America’s largest economy, and financial professionals.

In this first English-language edition of a book that has seen thirteen printings in Brazil, Dr. Bresser Pereira analyzes Brazil's economy and politics from 1930, when the Brazilian industrial revolution began, up to July 1983. First addressing the period of strong development in Brazil between 1930 and 1961, he discusses at length the import-substitution model of industrialization; the emergence of new classes—industrialists, industrial workers, and especially the new technobureaucratic middle classes; the conflict between the traditional agrarian ideologies of coffee planters and the nationalistic and industrializing ideologies of the new classes; and the new realities of the 1950s that led to the crisis of the populist alliance between the industrial bourgeoisie and the workers. Next he explores the economic and political crisis of the sixties, centering on the Revolution of 1964, when an industrialized and fully capitalist— but still underdeveloped—Brazil experienced the cyclical movements of capitalism. The final chapters of the book examine the Brazilian "miracle" of 1967-1973, the economic slowdown of the 1970s that culminated in the severe recession of 1981, the dialectics between the process of abertura led by the military regime established in 1964 and the redemocratization process demanded by civil society, and the "total crisis of 1983."