Conflitos e convergências na ALCA numa perspectiva de vantagens comparativas reveladas de países das Américas

Abstract

In this paper the industry sectors' revealed comparative advantages for 12 Americas' countries were calculated from 1981 to 1999. The countries' revealed comparative advantage patterns are then used to establish the similarity degree among these 12 countries. This similarity degree gives us both an indication of the economic costs in a commercial integration and also some insights about incentives that sub-groups of countries have to act as a group in a negotiation for commercial integration. The results show that these 12 countries can be grouped in three subsets of countries distinct to each other subset, that the economic costs of commercial integration among these 12 countries (ALCA) is relatively high, and that there is a sub-group of South American countries that are similar among them, which therefore have a natural incentive to negotiate as a group in a commercial integration process like ALCA.