On March 15, the FGV’s Sao Paulo School of Economics (EESP) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be launching the book “Brazil Boom, Bust, and the Road to Recovery.” The work will be presented to the public starting at 2:00 pm, in an event at the EESP auditorium (Rua Itapeva, 474, 6º andar – Bela Visa, São Paulo, SP, Brazil).

The book, which will be launched in the presence of editors Antonio Spilimbergo and Krishna Srinivasan (IMF), addresses a recent scenario of the Brazilian economy. After years of strong growth followed by an unprecedented historic crisis, the country is undergoing a slow recovery.

The authors address the political mistakes made, such as the search for a countercyclical model to handle the global financial crisis beyond what was necessary. They further explain that the current crisis reflects historical structural weaknesses, which also accounts for growth rates below expectations in the past four decades.

One of the papers, which addresses the obstacles to the country’s growth, is by Armando Castelar, coordinator of Applied Economics at FGV’s Brazilian Institute of Economics (IBRE), and was co-authored by Paulo Lins, then researcher at the unit. According to Castelar, the text highlights three major problems that led Brazil to little development in recent decades, such as deficiencies in market reforms, which then influenced Brazilians’ low productivity.

“The gist of the article is that workers are not very productive. Brazilians’ schooling has greatly improved in recent years, but had little effect on productivity. One reason is that most of the jobs in the country are created in companies that do not have scale, technology, capital and management, therefore also having low productivity, creating lower quality jobs,” said the economist.