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ESTUDO DA COMPETITIVIDADE DA INDÚSTRIA BRASILEIRA
IE/UNICAMP-IEI/UFRJ-FDC-FUNCEX
plans for future action in this regard. A total of 1,500 questionnaires were sent to firms all over
the country, and firms were selected on the basis of their contribution to sectoral production,
according to the 1985 Census.
The results reported here correspond to a partial processing of data from 350 firms that
have answered the questionnaire. It was assumed that in order to evaluate the peculiarities of the
export sector one should have a sample of firms built in such a way that could allow for isolating
the effects of exports (i.e., sectoral comparability of exporters and non-exporters), firm size as
well as sectoral specificities. A subsample of 199 firms comprising 11 sectors1 was then identified
and forms the basis for the present analysis.
This study is part of a broad set of papers dealing with a wide range of subjects directly
and indirectly related to the basic issue of competitiveness of the Brazilian industry2. More
specifically, the present paper aims at: a) identifying the basic action undertaken in the last five
years with regard to improving competitiveness, as reflected in the answers to the questionnaire
and b) trying to relate whatever differences might be found in the behaviour of the firms to the
differences in their involvement with the export activity.
This should be seen as only a first approach to the subject, since shortage of time did not
allow to: a) take into account all the information3 available from the research and b) process the
data isolating the specific effects due to firm size, sectoral specificities and the involvement with
exports.
Furthermore, one should not expect to find here a comprehensive testing of the effects
stemming from the involvement with the external market. That would require further work, taking
into consideration the characteristics of the period of analysis -above all the domestic recession
and exchange-rate overvaluation that have affected the export sector - and controlling for firm size
and sectoral specificities, among other atributes.
Instead, what this first approximation aims at is a picturing of what efforts have been made
by the firms surveyed in order to foster competitiveness, and try to identify indications that the
involvement with the exporting activity might lead to a differentiated approach. As a by-product,
we tried to check whether these sample results confirmed in broad terms some specific procedures
that characterize exporting firms elsewhere.
1 Steel products, Power Generating Machinery, Automobile Industry, Cotton Textiles, Pulp, Paper, Cement,
Producers of TV, Radio & Sound Receivers, Fertilizers, Furniture and Apparel & Clothing.
2 A parallel piece of work dealing with broad issues based on the same primary data is Bielschowsky (1993)
3 A number of aspects, such as a detailed account of manpower training, the entrepreneurs' view of the limitations
imposed by the physical and technological infrastructure and others have not been considered here.