Desempenho do comércio exterior em Minas Gerais: estrutura, vantagem comparativa e comércio intraindústria

The globalization, an international process evidenced in the 80's decade, has requested the government and economic agents an orientation to reach international levels of competitiveness by the various sectors of the economy. Besides this fact, Minas Gerais state is the second state exporter in Brazil. It emphasizes the importance of the analysis of the structure and behavior of the export sector, as well as their effects on different economic sectors in the period 1996 to 2008. The objective of this paper is to identify and analyze groups of products that Minas Gerais state has revealed comparative advantages, degree of concentration of products and destinations of exports, and intra-industry or inter-industry trade. The theoretical model is based on the Theory of International Trade and Competitiveness. The analysis procedure utilizes indexes of revealed comparative advantages, contribution to trade balance ratio, Gini-Hischaman and trade intra-industry indexes. The data were generated by the Brazilian Department of Commerce. The results showed high concentration in a few products, such as (09) Coffee, tea, and spices, etc. (26) mining industry, (71) natural or cultured pearls, and (72) iron and steel, and destination markets, such as EU, NAFTA and Asia. Finally, the paper indicates that international trade in Minas Gerais state is basically inter-industrial, therefore a trade type Herckscher - Olhin.