Agricultural Technological Progress and the Regional Dimension of Potential Multimarket Effects: a General Equilibrium Analysis for Mercosur.
Joaquim Bento de Souza Ferreira F
Abstract
This paper analyses the potential multimarket effects arising from the technological progress (TP) in agriculture in Mercosur integration process. The study is carried out with the aid of an Applied General Equilibrium Model designed for trade analysis, the GT AP model, in a I O-region/10commodities aggregation. The major focus of the analysis is in the agricultural and agroindustrial sectors. Several hypotheses about the Hicks-neutral type technological progress are analyzed, for Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Results show that Brazil would take in a greater percentage of the surplus generated by TP than Argentina and Chile. In the same way, being technologically behind appears to have a significant cost for Brazil, especially in the GRAINS production sector. This situation would also generate a relatively smaller decrease in sectoral employment level, when compared to the other hypothesis, but this would happen at the expense of reducing wages in the whole economy. The study concludes that the inevitable release of labor out of agriculture in the presence of Hicks-neutral TP is associated to an increase in wages and welfare improvement to the society
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