RESUMO As últimas três décadas testemunharam mudanças importantes nas facilidades de transporte, comunicações e processamento de dados, com efeitos sobre os processos produtivos, os fluxos comerciais e a movimentação internacional de capitais. Do ponto de vista das economias em desenvolvimento a recomendação passou a ser que aderir a esse processo poderia ser instrumento fundamental para estimular o desenvolvimento econômico e social. No caso da economia brasileira, a participação no processo de globalização foi limitada até aqui, exceto no tocante ao movimento de capitais. A participação no comércio de mercadorias permanece baixa, e o número de acordos preferenciais ainda é comparativamente reduzido. Não foi possível reduzir a “distância econômica” em relação às economias de alta renda.

ABSTRACT The last three decades have witnessed important changes in transportation, communication and data processing, with effects over productive processes, trade flows and the international movement of capital. From the viewpoint of developing economies this led to the recommendation of adhering to this process as a tool to foster economic and social development. As for the Brazilian economy, its participation in the process of globalization has been limited so far, except for the movement of capital. Its share in total merchandise trade is low, as is the number of preferential trade agreements. It has not been possible to reduce the “economic distance” towards the high-income economies.

RESUMO A criação de dois novos bancos de desenvolvimento - o NDB e o AIIB - tem motivado um debate sobre se eles afetarão o funcionamento dos bancos de desenvolvimento existentes e se eles contribuirão para estimular o desenvolvimento econômico em países de baixa renda. Este artigo mostra algumas diferenças entre as duas novas instituições, apresenta algumas estimativas do seu crescimento potencial num futuro próximo e argumenta que é muito provável que os dois bancos - por razões técnicas e financeiras - trabalhem em conjunto com os bancos de desenvolvimento existentes, em vez de competir com eles.

ABSTRACT The creation of two new development banks - the NDB and the AIIB - has motivated a debate as to whether they will affect the working of the existing development banks, and to whether they will contribute do foster economic development in low income countries. This article shows some differences between the two new institutions, present some estimate of their potential growth in the near future and argues that it is very likely that the two banks will - for both technical and financial reasons - work together with the existing development banks, rather than compete with them.

In some Latin American countries the exporting activity starts at a regional level, with producers only later venturing into more competitive markets. The implicit risk is that a country might never progress from the regional stage to a more global market. This article compares the experiences of Brazil, China and India. It is shown that Brazil relied on the regional market far more intensely than these Asian countries. There were clear gains accruing to China and India for having exploited more sophisticated markets from the very beginning of their export drive.

Monetary and financial cooperation: what is good to Asian is also good to Latin America?. This article compares the Asian and Latin American experiences with monetary cooperation. It is argued that in the latter such cooperation has hardly progressed, due to low degree of regional integration, the recurrent use of multilateral institutional resources to deal with external shocks and the lack of clear objectives: monetary cooperation is some times seen as a means to foster integration, but also as a means to provide long term funds and as a source of liquidity in foreign currencies. In Asia, differently, cooperation has apparently not been so instrumental to regional integration, but has proven to be quite important as a means to build a regional capital market as well as a mechanism to deal with external shocks.

Apesar de o Brasil ser tradicionalmente caracterizado por ter cultura de fazer políticas voltadas para dentro, a presença de empresas estrangeiras no setor produtivo brasileiros é significativa. A porção de firmas estrangeiras no país é uma das maiores entre os países em desenvolvimento. Este artigo discute as principais características do setor externo da economia brasileira, tendo em perspectiva o fluxo de capital, o investimento externo, a internacionalização de grupos empreendedores e os requerimentos de curto-prazo de moedas estrangeiras

Although Brazil has traditionally been characterized by a culture of inward-looking policy making, the presence of foreign firms in the Brazilian productive sector has always been significant. The share of foreign-owned firms is one of the highest that can be found among developing countries. This article discusses the main features of the external sector of the Brazilian economy, regarding trade flows, foreign investment, the internationalization of Brazilian entrepreneurial groups and the short-term financial requirements in foreign currencies

A redução dos custos de transação é um dos benefícios mais citados na literatura sobre ganhos e perdas de uma moeda única. Este artigo busca estimar quais seriam os custos de transação que poderiam ser economizados pela economia brasileira, caso fosse adotada uma moeda única no Mercosul. Os resultados obtidos apontam uma economia, em termos de valor presente, de pouco mais de 5 bilhões e 500 milhões de dólares norte-americanos. Este montante refere-se aos custos de transação que o setor real da economia deixaria de transferir ao setor financeiro.

The reduction of transaction costs is one of the most cited benefits of a currency union. This paper aims to calculate the amount of transaction costs that could be saved by the Brazilian economy after the adoption of a single currency in Mercosur. The results point to savings, in present value terms, of around five billion and five hundred thousand US dollars. These are the transaction costs that the real sector would not transfer anymore to the financial sector.

This work estimates the import substitution process in Brazilian industrial sectors in a recent period and evaluates whether it is occurring naturally or is in part induced by some kind of external commercial policy. An index to measure import substitution was calculated for forty nine sectors of industry. A regression analysis with this index against effective tariffs and real effective exchange rate, during the period 1995-2000, shows that these variables (effective tariffs and real effective exchange rates) did affect the substitution index. From 1999 on, the influence of the exchange rate over the import substitution index was greater than the influence of the effective tariff, suggesting that the process of import substitution post the Brazilian currency depreciation occurred in 1999 contains elements that characterizes it as a "natural" process.