Economic Development: the Brazilian Experience

The Brazilian economy has experienced remarkable economic growth for most of this century, albeit at high cost in terms of social equity. From the beginning of the 1980s the economy entered a period of stagflation, which can be explained by two factors. Firstly, the growth strategy based on import-substitution industrialization had been exhausted. Secondly, the deep fiscal crisis that unfolded following the onset of the external debt problem at first was not perceived as such, nor afterwards was it met by an adequate institutional and political environment for solving it.