ABSTRACT
Brazil's success in petrochemicals is not only impressive from an international perspective, it has also been extremely important in terms of the internal dynamics of capital accumulation. The Complexo Petroquimico de Camacari is reputed to be the largest one-time investment in a fully integrated petrochemical complex ever made anywhere in the world. The "Petrochemical Pole," as Camacari is called, is a worldscale facility which rivals those of Western Europe, Japan, and the United States. The obstacles to construction of any petrochemical industry in Brazil are obvious but worth reiterating. Reliable estimates of the increases in the costs of building petrochemical plants between 1973 and 1978, when Camacari came on stream, are not readily available, but informal guesses run between a tripling and quintupling of prices. The explanation for Camacari and for the Brazilian petrochemical industry in general is essentially a story of institutional and organizational innovation.
