Profit margins, exchange rates and structural change: empirical evidences for the period 1996-2017¹

Margens de lucro, taxas de câmbio e mudança estrutural: evidências empíricas para o período 1996-2017

ABSTRACT

This research seeks to understand the relationship between the rate of profit and the exchange rate and how this relationship can impact the productive structure. We construct a theoretical model in which the exchange rate influences the rate of profit, and we argue that although an overvalued exchange rate could benefit sectors with high imported input coefficients in the short term because it reduces costs, it negatively impacts the demand for their products and also reduces the aggregatedemand; hence, an overvalued exchange rate could shrink the profit rate of these sectors in the medium term. In the Brazilian case, these sectors are the high technological-content manufacturing sectors.

KEYWORDS:
Profit-Margins, Exchange Rate; Investment; New Developmentalism; Deindustrialization; Manufacturing; Structural Change