Brazil’s Own Goals

Brazil’s connectedness agenda should also include efforts to attract more foreign talent. Skilled migrants have been essential to the growth of some of the world’s leading hubs of technology and innovation – from Silicon Valley to Ireland, India, and Taiwan. Today, only 0.5% of Brazil’s workforce is foreign-born, compared to more than 5% in the early 1900s.

Brazil also lags in terms of data and communication flows, partly because a large share of the population . With improved digital links, Brazil would gain new opportunities to improve productivity and innovation. What better place than Brazil, with its large and growing consumer market, to incubate the next Facebook? If that sounds farfetched, consider this: Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger is a Brazilian who left home to find his fortune in San Francisco.

This month, the World Cup is bringing the world to Brazil. It is up to Brazil to invite it to stay.

Matt Slaughter, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, is Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where he directs the Center for Global Business and Government. Jaana Remes is a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2014.