Custos e benefícios sociais da política de auto-suficiência em borracha natural no Brasil

Abstract

In Brazil, the rubber policy to expand production has been based principally on price increase and subsidized credit. Social costs and benefits of this policy have not yet been studied. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate net social costs of the rubber production policy in Brazil considering both wild and planted rubber. The modern theory of welfare economics provides the basic conceptual framework used. The social costs of increased production were calculated using the area below the supply curve with factor prices corrected for differences between market and social prices. Social benefits were
considered equal to the reduction in natural rubber imports evaluated at social exchange rate. The results indicated that social costs of native rubber production is about 23% of the national consumption. For planted rubber production, social costs are 31,5%. Among the various alternatives studied, there are situations where social costs rise
to 100%. According to the regional disaggregation
used, the wild rubber production in Amazonia showed the lowest social costs and planted rubber production in the Amazon Region has lower social costs than other production areas of the country. One main conclusion of the study is that even though expanding cultivation of natural rubber to non-traditional areas may be justified on the basis of private production costs, the increased rubber production will be obtained at higher costs for the society as a whole.