Deterioração dos termos de troca: uma análise comparativa entre Brasil e Coreia do Sul (1995 – 2017)

Abstract

In 2015 Brazil suffered a big economic recession. With several conjectural factors that contributed to reinforce the cyclical slowdown in the Brazilian economy. In addition, the current Brazilian crisis followed the global crisis in 2008 that still has effects on global economy today. The objective of this work is to verify if the deterioration of the terms of trade is still one of the main causes for these unfavorable conditions, which also appear in other peripheral countries. The study is exploratory of a qualitative nature. A literature review was carried out through bibliographic research, seeking to contextualize the original formulation of the Prebisch-Singer thesis and its functioning; to identify what studies exist on the debate about the subject; to collect relevant historical information for the comparative study between Brazil and South Korea through the historical review of the industrialization processes of both countries. Finally, a comparative analysis of the cited countries was performed using descriptive statistics with data obtained from international institutional websites. Observing the impacts and results of the respective late industrialization processes studied, we found asymmetric effects between the two countries after their insertion in international trade through their Import Substitution Process (ISP). This would prove that the negative effects of deteriorating terms of trade remain. However, there is no general deterioration in terms of trade in recent decades.