The structural inertia in the national productive base: the FDI and the international transference of technology

ABSTRACT What can explain the fact that there was a massive entry of FDI in Brazil and it remains with a structural inertia in the national productive base? There is a series of macroeconomic facts that can help explain this inertia, such as low investment rate and the mismatching of key prices in the economy (such as interest rates and exchange rates), but the proposal made here is that there is a relevant microeconomic structural problem: lack of technological capability of Brazilian industrial firms. To analyze this proposition we separate the types of FDI (greenfield, merger and acquisition and portfolio) and the types of technology transfer channels (horizontal and vertical). From empirical and historical elements we build up the argument that the lack of technological capability is a key element in understanding the dynamism loss of the domestic industry.