Ensaios sobre serviços e crescimento econômico no Brasil

Abstract

The advancement of globalization and the development of information and communication technologies have modified the nature of service activities, considerably increasing the sector's role in the world economy in recent decades. However, this sector presents high heterogeneity, covering both low productivity and more dynamic activities. Changes in the services characteristics, their growing importance in economies and high heterogeneity awakened the interest of several studies in investigate to their effects on economic results. In this context, the general objective of this Thesis is to analyze the impacts of the services sector (aggregated and disaggregated) on economic growth in Brazil by three investigative approaches involving: i) the effects of the expansion sector, the heterogeneity services, and the diversification or specialization activities; ii) the relative short and long run effects of industrial and service sectors production (and their composition); iii) the service exports and their different activities role and the causality of such variables with long run Brazilian GDP performance. To this end, the first Essay investigates the effects of the services sector and of its several activities on Brazilian economic growth, and it also evaluates the activities diversification or specialization contribution to GDP growth. Econometric estimations with annual panel data for Brazil federative units from 2002 to 2019 show that the aggregate services stimulate economic growth, but with different effects between the activities that comprise it. Furthermore, the evidence indicate that services specialization has positive effects on GPD growth. However, such effects lose magnitude over time. The second Essay evaluates industrial and service sectors impacts in long run Brazilian economic growth. The investigation is also carried out for industry and services specific segments. The evidence of Autoregressive Distributed Lag Method (ARDL) models with quarterly data from 1996 to 2022 signal that both manufacturing industry and services sector, mainly traditional ones, contribute to long run Brazilian GPD performance, but the increased services share effects are more sensitive comparatively to industry. The third Essay analyzes service exports and Brazil economic growth relationship, and their causality, using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) models with quarterly data from 1996 to 2023 and Granger causality test by Toda-Yamamoto approach. The results reveal a positive but low contribution of aggregate service exports on the long run Brazilian GDP performance, leveraged mainly by transport, travel, financial, government and other business service exports. Evidence of Toda-Yamamoto causality corroborates the Growth-Led Export (GLE) hypothesis for aggregate services exports; maintenance and repair; transports; financial; culturals, personal and recreational; and other business services. In general, the Thesis results present important contributions to policymakers. Given the industry loss relevance on economy in recent years and the high traditional services share in production and exports, possible alternatives to boost the Brazilian economic growth require long run planning that direct resources and innovative efforts to stimulate more dynamic service activities which have greater potential to contribute to increased productivity in other sectors.