The present paper argues that the recent Brazilian crisis was related to a cyclical profit squeeze that took place between 2009 and 2014, following the long expansion that started in 2003. To do so, the cyclical trajectories of the output and the profit rate in the Brazilian economy for the period between 1996 and 2016 are examined by resorting to the framework established by Weisskopf (1979). The results indicate that profit squeezes are rare in the Brazilian economy, possibly due to the truncated character of the business cycles’ expansions. However, a profit squeeze did take place in the last cycle, partly as a result of the commodities boom, which attenuated the foreign vulnerability of the economy and allowed for a longer than usual expansion.

JEL classification: B50, B51,E32

本文认为，最近的巴西危机与2003年开始的长期扩张之后，2009年至2014年间出现周期性的利润紧缩有关。为此，巴西的产出和利润率呈周期性轨迹参照Weisskopf（1979）建立的框架，对1996年至2016年期间的经济状况进行了研究。结果表明，利润紧缩在巴西经济中很少见，这可能是由于商业周期扩张的特点所致。但是，在最后一个周期确实出现了利润紧缩，部分原因是商品繁荣，这削弱了外国对经济的脆弱性，并允许比平常更长的扩张时间。

JEL分类： B50，B51，E32