The brazilian economy at the end of the 20th century

Abstract

Brazil at the end of the 20th century was at a very delicate moment. The failure to address the debt crisis subjected the country to strong external constraints that required the generation of high trade surpluses. The adjustment resulted in a fiscal and monetary crisis and a major social regression. In this chapter, I discuss the evolution of the Brazilian economy during the 1980s and 1990s. In the first part, the 1980s and the first years of the 1990s are debated. Until the advent of the Real Plan, there is a continuum of external problems, inflation and stagnation. In the second part, the chapter deals with the Real Plan and its effects on industry, external accounts, the labor market, and public finances.