Infraestrutura e comércio internacional: impactos da hard infraestrutura nos países da América Latina

Abstract

Infrastructure matters. Its effects propagate in international trade through different channels. Day by day we face them in all spectrums of our life, as in education, sanitation, health access and mobility of people and goods, they all are directly related to economic growth and development. And it is on the mobility of goods, as known as transport infrastructure, that this research focuses. In this sense, the general aim of this research is to analyze the influence of hard infrastructure on trade in Latin American countries. Furthermore, the gravitational model in panel data have been chosen as a methodology for the period between 2007 and 2017. The sample of countries included the main trading partners, in a total of 68 countries. In essence the results showed that the general infrastructure of Latin America affected trade positively, due to the combination of different types of infrastructure provides a very solid explanatory power on trade flows. The countries of the region were quite sensitive to the infrastructure of the exporting country, in the event of the general infrastructure of the exporting countries had negative effects on Latin American trade. Improvements in the trade partners' roads indicated that they did not contribute to the increase in trade flows with Latin America. And the ports of trading partners were positive and significant for Latin American trade. under those circumstances, the potential for expanding trade was detected, based on an improvement in the quality of road and port infrastructure, which is important for the internal cohesion of the territories of these countries. In summary it was identified that the region has a gap in the efficient provision of infrastructure, limiting countries in terms of accessing greater gains from trade while in this condition the main results already were positive for Latin America.