El crecimiento reciente de Uruguay y desacople de la región: ¿adiós a la semisuma?

The performance of the Uruguayan economy over the last decade, in contrast to that of its neighbouring economies, encouraged the decoupling hypothesis. Thus, Uruguay’s GDP growth seems to have moved away from the evidence of previous studies (Lanzilotta et al., 2003) that showed that Uruguay’s growth was in the long run the result of the semi-sum of the growth rates of Argentina and Brazil. This research attempts to answer these questions by applying, for different samples included in the period 1980 to 2018, analysis of cyclical comovements, cointegration analysis, estimation VEC models and impulse response simulations. The results obtained allow us to discard that the long-term relationship expressed as a semi-sum is sustained, when the information is extended until 2018. It is necessary to include relative prices indicators linked to the Brazilian economy within the determinants of Uruguay's GDP trajectory in order to recompose the dynamic long-term relationship that links it to that of its neighbours. This is an indication that Uruguay is stills exposed to regional shocks, but in a somewhat different way than in the past, since the relationship with international prices is also relevant to the long-term relationship.