Determinants of Innovation and Productivity in Brazil: An Empirical Analysis of the Period 1996-2018

Abstract

Empirical studies regarding the determinants of innovation and productivity in developing countries, including Brazil, have demonstrated the negative impact of high inflation rates on the industrial capacity. However, the recent Brazilian experience clearly shows that stabilization, in and of itself, is not capable of recovering the investment rates. With this in mind, this study's goal is to answer, with the help of econometric simulation models, the questions: (i) what are the key-drivers to assess the Brazilian economy?; and (ii) what are the key-factors to be considered when investments are made, particularly in innovation and productivity? To answer the questions we evaluated the impacts of macro-economic variables on private investments, using a strategic bias and a long term vision plan. The estimates demonstrate empirical crowding-in evidence of public investments in infrastructure over private investments as a real impact to innovation and productivity. As for public investments (non-infrastructural) we suggest that the crowding-in impact dislocates private investments. All these indicators were obtained as presented in the therory, with the exception of the real interest rates variable (r), in which we observed that the coefficient is positive and insignificant in the estimated equation.