Vol. 39 No. 3 (2019): Jul-Sep / 2019


Vol. 39 No. 3 (2019)

Jul-Sep / 2019
Published July 1, 2019

Article


USA’s trade policy in the context of global crisis and the decline of North American hegemony
Arturo Guillén
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-31572019-3046

The global crisis of 2007 reinforced the deflationary tendencies, as well as the withdrawal of the central countries inwards. After the Great Recession 2008-2009, most economies have experienced semi-stagnation and deglobalization processes. The crisis accelerated the decline of the hegemony of the United States. While they retain an overwhelming military advantage and maintain financial hegemony, they have lost ground in production, in international trade and in direct foreign investment. Trump’s trade policy will accelerate deglobalization. And while its tax cut has had a short-term positive effect on growth, it will be difficult to overcome “secular stagnation”.

JEL Classification: F4.


Economics and economic methodology in a core-periphery economic world
John B. Davis
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy

This paper uses a core-periphery distinction to characterize contemporary economics, economic methodology, and also today’s world economy. First, it applies the distinction to the organization of contemporary economics through an examination of the problem of explaining economics’ relations to and boundaries with other disciplines. Second, it argues that economics’ core-periphery organization is replicated in a similar organization of the use and practice of contemporary economic methodology in economics. Third, it draws on the use of the core-periphery thinking in economics itself regarding the uneven development of the world economy to provide possible foundations for economics and economic methodology being organized in core-periphery terms. Fourth, the paper briefly discusses three potential countervailing forces operating on the development of contemporary economics that might work against its core-periphery organization.

JEL classification: A12; B41; B50; O20.


Commodity prices shocks and the Brazilian economy in the 2000s
Marcos Tadeu Caputi Lélis, André Moreira Cunha, Priscila Linck
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-35172019-2968

 This paper evaluates how falling commodity prices affected the Brazilian economy during the 2000s. In order to fulfill this objective two different statistical methods were used, the Markov Switching Dynamic Regression model with structural component and the Vector Autoregression (VAR) model. With respect to the level of activities, it was found that about 1/3 of the economic slowdown post 2014 could be attributed to the change in the commodities prices regime.

JEL Classification: O11; F44; E32; F63.


Inequalities and capital accumulation in China
Isabela Nogueira, João Victor Guimarães, João Pedro Braga
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-35172019-2929

This article contributes to the debate on income and wealth distribution in China by analyzing the main characteristics of the Chinese accumulation pattern that determine its distributive dynamics in a comparative perspective. After a period of rapid growth of inequalities, coupled with improved living conditions for all distribution deciles, inequalities have stabilized in China since the mid-2000s. Globally, China is today in a distributive pattern worse than Western Europe or Japan, but it is more egalitarian than the United States and far from theworld inequality frontier defined by Brazil, India, South Africa and the Middle East. In this article, we scrutinize three characteristics of the regime of accumulation in China that mitigate the capital-concentrating tendency: 1. the financialization process with Chinese characteristics, 2. the strategic share of State ownership in the economy, 3. its trajectory overthe agrarian question.

JEL Classification: O10; O53; D30; P16.


Economic globalization in the global post-crisis of 2008: limits and deadlocks
Rafael Henrique Dias Manzi
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-35172019-2922

Economic globalization has entered a new phase of relative stagnation and cooling since the beginning of the global crisis of 2008. The main objective of this article is to examine the dynamics that explain the stagnation of the economic globalization process from the beginning of the global crisis of 2008. The initial results indicate that the process of stagnation of global forces is not only related to a scenario of lower economic growth of the global economy after 2008, but also reflects mainly political dynamics within national states and the international system itself that have a direct impact on the phenomenon of economic globalization.

JEL Classification: F02; F06; F68.


Cambridge Equation and the Neo-Pasinetti Theorem in post-Keynesian models of growth and distribution
José Luis Oreiro, Luís Carlos G. de Magalhães
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-35172019-2991

Throughout this article we try to evaluate the theoretical robustness of the so-called New Theorem of Pasinetti, according to which in an economy in which the differentiation between the propensities to save from the profits and the salaries is due to the nature of the business income, not the affiliation to a specific social class; the rate of profit along the Golden Age growth path is independent of workers 'propensity to save, being determined by the firms' profit retention coefficient, by the fraction of the investment firms wish to finance with third-party resources and by the natural rate growth.

JEL Classification: E11; E12; G11; O42.


An attempt to integrate Keynes and Kalecki: investment and dynamics
Maria Isabel Busato, Ana Cristina Reif, Mario Luiz Possas
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-35172019-2909

Keynes and Kalecki were the forerunners of the models of economic dynamics based on the Principle of Effective Demand (PDE) and assigned central role to investment for understanding dynamics. Kalecki’smodel describes a regular cyclical dynamics - with well-marked standard - associated with dual and lagged investment effect. Keynes’s modelin turn describes a potentially unstable dynamics, a result of the decisions of agents whose expectations are formed under conditions of uncertainty. This article aims to build an integrated interpretation of Keynes and Kalecki’s views, enabling a better understanding of the stylized facts that show that the capitalist dynamic is marked by phases of cyclical regularity that are eventually and suddenly broken, leading to instability.

JEL Classification: E12; E11; E22.


Is it still possible for the developing countries to do their catching up in the 21st century?
Ligia Zagato
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-35172019-2849

In this paper we analyze whether developing countries are able to do their catching up in the context of the 21st century. To do sowe review some case studies of countries that are already considered developed - England, United States, Japan and South Korea. We support the argument that all these nations have adopted similar strategies of development, which included emulation, adoption of industrial policies, investment on innovation and the existence of an active State. We believe that if this strategy is adapted to incorporate new national and international contexts, it will remain suitable for the promotion of development.

JEL Clasification: O11; O14; O25; O31; O38; O40; O50.


Historical performance of BNDES: what can data tell us?
Ricardo de Menezes Barboza, Mauricio Furtado, Humberto Gabrielli
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-35172019-2910

This paper has three objectives. First, to investigate the sectoral composition of Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) loans since 1952, based on the institution’s financing track record throughout its history. BNDES was created to be the bank of national infrastructure and did, in fact, played this role in its first decade of existence. However, from the 1960’s onwards, the major part of the bank’s loans was directed towards the industrial sector, even if in a decreasing manner along the course of time. Only in the 2010 decade did infrastructure return to be the focus of the bank’s loans. The second objective consists in analyzing the size of the Bank relative to Brazilian aggregate investment and to GDP. The data shows that the institution significantly increasedits size in the first decade of the 2000’s, especially between 2009 and 2014, when it surpassed the size observed in the seventies, a period marked by the II PND. The third objective is to decompose BNDES loans by the size of the companies since 1990. Data reveals that big companies have been less and less - and not more, as common sense indicates- benefited by BNDES credit. This means that small and medium companies (SMEs) have gained an increasing share of BNDES loans in the last thirty years.

JEL Classification: N00; N2; N25; N40.

 

Document


"I support my propositions in the concept of monetary production economy" "Apoio minhas proposições no conceito de economia monetária de produção"
José Luís Oreiro
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-35172019-2964

Fernando Cardim de Carvalho (1953-2018) was the most important post-Keynesian Brazilian economist. The Council of the Brazilian Journal of Political Economy honors Cardim with the publication of this interview granted to José Luis Oreiro on July 19, 2011. It is an important document about his method solidly supported in reality, his broad economic culture, and his theoretical thinking centered on the concept monetary economy of production.

JEL Classification: E00; B25.