Economic growth and foreign liquidity in Brazil after 1970. This paper assesses the relationship between the capital account and the Brazilian economic growth according to balance-of-payments constraint approach. The Thirlwall (1979)'s simple rule is extended to take into consideration capital account and several empirical evidence using time series analysis are shown. Conversely to the simple rule when fitted rates of balance-of-payment equilibrium economic growth average bellow the observed ones, fitted rates of growth using the rule extended to international liquidity are consistently greater than the observed ones. It is fair to conclude that, first, the Brazilian economy grows better during abundant international liquidity and, second, the economy sub utilizes such advantage growing far less than it could grow.

Explicar o crescimento econômico brasileiro no século XX é realmente desafiador. Como mostrado no trabalho, o Brasil já experimentou melhores taxas de crescimento e atualmente o país se encontra distante da belle époque. Este trabalho analisa o modelo de Thirlwall de restrição no balanço de pagamentos para o crescimento econômico brasileiro no período 1900-2005, destacando a importância dos termos de troca. Os resultados mostraram que os termos de troca são significativos na função de demanda por importações, alterando a elasticidade-renda, especialmente no subperíodo 1900-1970, e, segundo, que quando o modelo mais simples de Thirlwall é controlado pelos termos de troca, parece que tal variável afeta a performance econômica do país através das taxas de crescimento das importações.

Explaining the Brazilian economic growth performance during the 20th is a challenging task to academics. As shown, Brazil had already experienced faster growth and recently it is far from such belle époque. Most explanations are based on conventional frameworks. This paper assesses the Balance-of-Payments constraint model to Brazilian economic growth in the period 1900-2005, highlighting the importance of the terms of trade. The results show, first, that the terms of trade are significant in the estimation of import demand function and change the income elasticity, especially in the first period of the sample (1900-1970), and, second, when the simplest Thirlwall's model is controlled by terms of trade, it seems that such variable is important through import growth, which cause changes in economic performance.