China's role growth of the brazilian economy: a counterfactual analysis of the export-led growth hypothesis

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to test if the export-led growth hypothesis is valid for Brazil and if the result found is related to the growth of Brazilian exports to China. A counterfactual analysis was performed by the synthetic control methods to comparative case studies and the Johansen cointegration method and the Granger causality test were applied. The results suggest that the evolution of domestic exports in recent years is closely related to China’s imports of Brazilian products and that Brazil’s economic growth was already led by exports even before China became its main foreign market.