Estimativas para o volume de comércio dos países BRICs com o uso da equação gravitacional

Abstract

The main purpose of this research is to estimate international trade flows for all the existent bilateral relations between the BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India and China – in the future time. This process starts by considering the estimations made by the investment bank Goldman Sachs (2001), which released a study that not only estimated amounts for the GDP and GDP per capita for the BRICs until the year 2050, but also revealed that these countries will position themselves, no exception, between the six biggest economies of the world by around the year 2040. This study adopts a gravity model based on a sample of 57 countries. Trade flows and a variety of other data were collected from 2000 to 2007 to enable the estimation of gravity equations that explain the international trade in the world in current days. By using two different estimation methods – OLS and Tobit – a wide set of possible parameters was generated, which were all tested on a technical and on a qualitative basis, with the aim to choose the two most adequate equations for the estimations wanted. Finally, these two best parameter sets were arranged and applied on gravity equations, combined with the Goldman Sachs predictions, in order to obtain future estimations of bilateral trade flows between them in three time-scenarios: short term (2010), midterm (2020) and long term (2030). In this way, the gravity model is here a pure forecasting model, validating this bound of utilization for the instrument. The results are showing that the ‘intra-BRICs’ trade flows will grow even more intense than the GDP of these countries itself, meaning an unprecedented internationalization process featured by the construction of a web of high interdependence between these economies. Trade between the BRICs could rise 10 times within 2010 and 2020, and 50 times within 2010 and 2050. International trade among the BRICs will definitely be necessary for them to sustain economic growth.