External financial fragility and the real plan

Abstract

The article assesses Brazil’s external financial fragility in the context of the Real Plan. In order to do so, we have developed an external financial fragility index, based on Minsky’s concept of financial fragility. So, the index is applied to a time series of foreign sector variables from 1992 to 1997. The evidences show that - contrary the government discourse - the trends towards increasing fragility during the Real Plan has left the country quite vulnerable to changes at the international level, as shown by the crisis of October 1997.