Economic growth and balance-of-payments constraint in Brazil: An analysis of the 1995-2013 period

The purpose of this work is to analyze the balance-of-payments-constrained growth in Brazil considering Thirwall's Law (1979). To this end, we estimate export and import demand functions using two econometric models: vector error correction and structural state space model for the period of 1995-2013. Our results suggest that the balance of payments is a constraint to the Brazilian economic growth, given: (i) the ratio between exports and imports income elasticities; (ii) the low sensitivity of exports to changes in the real exchange rate; and (iii) the evidence that exports are more sensitive to alterations in commodities prices than to changes in the real exchange rate.