A competitividade das exportações do Brasil e da China para o Mercosul: evidências para o período 1995-2009

The main goal of this paper is to investigate the competitiveness of Brazilian and Chinese exports to MERCOSUL for the period from 1995 to 2009. In order to do this, the Finger and Kreinin (1979) export similarity index (ESI) is calculated for the Brazilian and Chinese exports to MERCOSUL , which is disaggregated according to the similarities of the goods. The main results showed that the similarity between Brazilian and Chinese exports to MERCOSUL has increased over time, possibly due to an increase in the competition between these countries. However, when disaggregated from the Finger and Kreinin (1979) index, it is shown that the similarities between the exports occur, mainly, with vertically differentiated goods, where the quality of the goods exported by Brazil was superior to that of the goods exported by China. The results suggest that the competition between Brazil and China in the MERCOSUL is smooth, since the goods exported by these countries aim at different market segments.