A fuga de capital no Brasil: 1975/88

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study the subject of capital flight in the Brazilian case. First we discuss the several conceptual and methodological problems related to the definition and measurement of capital flight. Then we present and examine some of the most commonly used measures of capital flight, and propose a more appropriate one for the Brazilian case. Based on these measures we estimate the capital flight that occured during the 1975/88 period, and arrive to an approximate number for the stock of capital flight at the end of 1988. At last, we develop a model to explain the demand for foreign assets, in order to identify the main causes of capital flight from Brazil and to forecast the flaw of capital flight in 1989.