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The purpose of this paper is to look at the interplay of technology and social preferences in different stages of economic development.

The authors use a set of input-output tables for 32 different countries, published by OECD. The tables refer to the period 1996-2001 and were consolidated in 48 sectors so that structural comparisons were possible through the use of techniques of decomposition used for comparing different economic structures in the context of partitioned input-output systems.

The authors confirm that, for different levels of per capita GDP, technological change is an important element to drive growth. However, as an economy evolves, the data set also confirm that the composition of final demand, which reveals social preferences in a static way, moves away from agricultural and manufacturing to services activities. Such structural changes favor sectors with stronger value added multipliers, and stronger complexity found in higher income countries generates a force that helps driving income divergence.

Given the chosen methodological approach, the structural features revealed in this study remain to be empirically tested in growth models.

The paper includes implications for the testing of growth models, suggesting there may be an association between movement into service sectors and higher growth, as modern service sectors have important spillovers on and from the manufacturing. Moreover, the way countries engage in global value changes may affect growth.

Using a unique data set, this paper adds to the empirical literature on economic growth that looks closer at the distinction between the role of structural change and changes in composition ode demand.

This paper aims to present a critical analysis of special safeguards (SSGs) and a simulation of their effects on Brazilian sugar exports to countries such as the US and the European Union (EU) bloc.

The first stage involved the identification of tariff lines for the EU and the US sugar imports from Brazil between 1995 and 2013. Next, notifications of World Trade Organization about SSGs were examined to identify the years when the measure was applied on the sugar trade by these countries. For the years when SSGs were applied, the values of these additional tariffs were calculated. This information was used, along with price elasticities, to obtain the effects of an increase in Brazilian sugar exports in the absence of SSG and also the overall impact on the Brazilian economy, using its input-output matrix.

Results indicated that the estimated value of the direct, indirect and income effects of SSG tariffs on Brazilian sugar exports to the EU and the US markets through the period 1995 to 2013 could amount to BRL 22 billion in terms of the exporting country GDP. This suggests that this policy can be highly perverse, as it translates into lower domestic production for both, the exporting and the importing countries. This issue is relevant for discussions on the global sugar market, given the facts that it is one of the markets which have been most distorted by protectionism.

This issue is relevant for discussions on the global sugar market, given the facts that it is one of the markets which have been most distorted by protectionism.