Texto para discussão 18/2007

The economics of demand-led growth: theory and evidence for Brazil
José Luís Oreiro*, Luciano Nakabashi**

Abstract
The objective of the present article is to present the theory of demand-led growth and some econometric evidence of the existence of a demand-led growth regime for the Brazilian economy. Initially, we will do a brief review of the theory of demand-led growth, based on Kaldor’s (1988) contribution for the theme. According to Kaldor, longrun growth is determined by the sum of the growth rate of government consumption spending and the growth rate of exports. Based on the methodology developed by Atesoglu (2002), we run some econometric tests for the hypothesis of a demand-led growth regime for the Brazilian economy. The results of the tests show that almost 95% of the growth rate of real GDP in the period 1990-2005 is explained by variables at the demand side of the economy. The econometric tests also show that natural growth rate of the Brazilian economy is endogenous, being determined by the growth rate of aggregate demand.

Keywords: economic growth; aggregate demand; exports.

JEL: C13, C23, O11, O41

* Professor of economics at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), and researcher at Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq).
** Professor of economics at Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR).

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