Financialisation, growth and investment in Brazil

There is an extensive literature relating the process of financialisation with investment decisions. In general, there are two main channels in which financialisation affect negatively productive investment: (i) firms applying available domestic funds in financial assets when they offer larger short-term returns instead of productive investments; (ii) pressure exerted by the shareholders on the companies’ managers in obtaining greater short-term returns and dividends payments. However, there are few studies related to financialisation and investment in Brazil, although some studies show that the Brazilian economy has characteristics of a financialised economy (Bruno et al., 2015). During the last years, the Brazilian economy has been characterized by having a low rate of accumulation about 15% to 21.5% of GDP in the period 1995-2017. Its behaviour followed the economic cycle, either by increasing the growth of some components of demand (such as household consumption), or contributing to the economic slowdown as of 2014. This abrupt reversal of the investment can be related somehow to the process of financialisation of the Brazilian economy, since firms may be adopting strategies based on the shareholder value orientation, in the meaning that they are accumulating fewer profits to reinvest in their real productive activities and obtaining more profitability derived from financial income. According to Miranda (2013), there are strong evidences that the Brazilian companies can be considered financialised, due to a type of governance closer to the Anglo-Saxon model that seeks short-term results and convergence to the maximization of shareholder value. This chapter aims to analyse the relationship between financialisation and investment in Brazil since the implementation of the Real Plan, i.e. in 1995-2017 period,