Econometric Analysis of Brazilian Scientific Production and Comparison with BRICS

Abstract

This article proposes a study that placed Brazilian scientific production at the core of the debate, and Brazil as a member of BRICS framework emphasises its importance. It starts from the argument that scientific production is a key factor considering that it is through knowledge that societies evolve. This issue becomes even more relevant when pointing to the capitalist production model that transforms knowledge into wealth. That was the starting point for leading an econometric study to formulate a model to explain Brazilian scientific production from 1994 to 2014. The least square method was used to estimate the parameters of a production function to identify the variables that most influenced, statistically, the behaviour of Brazilian scientific production. The main variables that strongly explained the number of published articles, proxy of the scientific production, are number of post-graduate programmes, number of masters and doctors, Brazilian population and expenditure on research and development (R&D). The present study showed that postgraduate programmes are the ones that most influenced the behaviour of Brazilian published articles. Therefore, it is necessary to equip Brazilian postgraduate system to create the basis of a structure, which, in the near future, will produce knowledge in large scale and with high competitiveness.