Although A. Gerschenkron some decades ago argued very convincingly that the preconditions for a country's industrialization are not rigid, nevertheless it still makes sense to try and identify the preconditions that should be approximately fulfilled in order that a country may industrialize....

Several authors have been referring these last decades to the absence in Celso Furtado's historical works of any more elaborate explanations on the origins and initial evolution of the Brazilian economy's manufacturing sector. In an attempt to test empirically the validity of these assertions,...