Saldo comercial, transferências governamentais e movimento de capitais inter-regional

Abstract

This study presents an interpretative scheme on interregional flows in Brazil, based on avaiable statistics on trade balance, government revenues and expenses, investments by the public sector, and savings. The study focuses on the year 1985, since it the only one for which complete and reliable information was avaiable. The main argument deriving from this analysis concerns the economic relations on which Brazilian Federalism is based. From the point of view of private capital, it reinforces the idea that the Southeast is the region that benefits the most from interregional exchange, to the detriment of poorer regions like the North and Northeast. Government investments, by compesating for existing imbalances in exchange of private capital, end up maintaining the process of accumulation at the center, since public resources, by guaranteeing the poorer regions's purchasing power, return to the more developed regions in the form of consumption.