Investment cycle of the Brazilian economy: a panel cointegration analysis of industrial firms based on Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis—2007–2017

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to argue that one of the impacts of the 2008 international financial crisis and the European crisis in the Brazilian economy was in the investment rate. Our interpretation is that the impact of the international crises made the balance sheet of non-financial firms more fragile, mainly the industrial firms, and the economic measures implemented to sustain profit margins from 2011 onwards were not enough to counterbalance the deceleration in the aggregate demand and the rise in financial costs. To investigate the evolution of the financial fragility of industrial firms , following Minsky’s financial fragility hypothesis , we propose an econometric model using a cointegration panel. We develop the analysis in two stages using instrumental variables to estimate the rate of investment and the share of financial receipts in total receipts. Among the instrumental variables, the share of wages in value-added, the domestic interest rate, the exchange rate, and the world income were statistically significant. We conclude that the deterioration of the capacity of industrial firms to generate enough internal funds to face debt commitments can be explained by the deceleration of the aggregate demand, expressed by investment rate and the deceleration of the world income, and the increase in the weight of the wage share in total value-added.