The Agricultural Machinery and Implement Industry in Brazil: Its historical development and inventive activity

The analysis of the Agricultural Machinery and Implement Industry (A.M.I.I.) in Brazil is developed in three levels. The historical approach focuses on the socio-economical and institutional factors in the economy that influenced the A.M.I.I. development from its beginnings in the colonial period until the 1980s.;The analyses of the industry and firms' levels were based on a sample of 49 firms surveyed in 1981. The industry analysis (Chapter 3) describes the profile of producers in the tractor, harvester/combine industries and focuses on the industry structure characterized by the heterogeneity of firms sizes and organizational systems.;The firm analysis centers first on the several factors that explain inter-firm organizational systems and specifically on the different ways they develop the R&D activity (Chapter 4).;R&D as a competitive tool is analyzed in each "niche" of the A.M.I.I. The idyosincratic nature of the firm R&D activity and the responses of rivals within each "niche" structure exemplifies the richness of approaching R&D as a strategy followed by firms, given specific environmental constraints (Chapter 5).;Chapter 1 reconstructs the A.M.I.I. gradual complexification from a craft production of simple implements to the Government planning and multinational firms' entry in the modern sector of the industry in the 1960s. Chapter 2 explains the factors that led domestic producers to perform the transition from an import substitute to an export promoting industry in about one decade.;Finally, inquiries into the factors influencing the firm decision to invest on in-house R&D, purchase technology from others, and patent their innovations is developed through Ordinary Least Square (OLSQ) analysis (Chapter 6).