Study title

The last decade in Brazil has seen the emergence of debates about the need of an active industrial policy by the government in order to stimulate the technological upgrading and competitiveness of national industry. However, the Brazilian industrial policy has been characterized by heterogeneous sets of initiatives that vary by sector. Therefore, the aim of this project was to understand: 1) the political and economic factors that affect the process of elaboration and implementation of industrial policy in Brazil; and 2) to what extent these policies affect the ability of domestic firms to upgrade their technological and organizational skills. Empirically, the project focused on a comparative study of Brazil's two most important extractive industries: oil & gas (O&G) and mining. These two sectors are relevant since both oil and iron ore are Brazil's main export products. Despite being extractive industries, both sectors involve complex chains of suppliers that have been recently the target of different policies to stimulate the local production and provision of equipment and services. Additionally, both sectors present considerable differences in the set of policy instruments (e.g. local content requirements) and the intensity of the state intervention. The research design was based on three stages of data collection: 1) document analysis and interview with key-informants in order to map the evolution of the policy-making in each sector and identify relevant policy instruments; 2) case studies with firms within the supply chain of each sector in order to identify whether and how policy instruments affect firms' strategies; 3) collection of data through a survey with a larger sample of firms along the supply chain with the aim to identify general differences in the way policy instruments in each sector affect firm's strategies. The results of the project were expected to raise the knowledge about the economic policy-making in Brazil and the viability of strategies...