O Mercosul e a integração econômica regional: uma análise insumo-produto

Abstract

The Mercosur was stablished by the presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, in March of 1991, with the goal of increasing regional integration, strengthening the democracy and combining forces to compete in the internacional market (HERZ, 2004; MENEZES; PENNA FILHO, 2006). Under this viewpoint, the motivation of this work was to analyze the regional economic integration that was established through trade within the scope of Mercosur. The methodology utilized for such endeavor was the input-output, as it allows, among other things, to carry out inter and intra-sectoral analyzes between the trade of the countries. Hence, a 2005 inter-regional matrix of input-output with the countries of South America was utilized. The economic flows were separated between the members of Mercosur, other South American countries and the rest of the world. Then, the Rasmussen-Hirschman’s backwards and forwards linkages, the field of influence, the simple import multipliers and the import multipliers for each member of the economic block were calculated. The main results showed that commercial relations and productive structures are dominated by sectors of primary activities. The largest import multipliers belong to the cash flow from the countries of South America. The Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals sector stood out in the evaluation of the effect generated by the increase in demand, contributing with the largest proportion of monetary volume related to the supply necessary to equalize the demand of the demanding sector.