gets to sit next to Russian, Indian, and Chinese leaders at much-publicized “BRIC” summits. The economy weathered the crisis triggered by Lehman Brothers’ collapse in 2008, and mounted a vigorous recovery in 2010. Brazil not only remains a top football power, but it will host the World Cup in 2014 – and the Summer Olympics two years after that.

For a while, financial markets were engrossed in a torrid love affair with Brazil. In the aftermath of the crisis, capital poured into the country, bidding up asset prices. Oil giant Petrobras raised $67 billion in its IPO, which until then was the world’s largest.

But dig a little deeper and a more complex picture emerges. An apartment in a fashionable São Paulo neighborhood may cost as much as it wouldin London or New York, but, when it comes to competitiveness, Brazil ranks 53rd on the most recent World Economic Forum index – just ahead of Mauritius and Azerbaijan, and behind Malta and Sri Lanka.

Of course, Brazil’s macroeconomic situation is vastly better than it was a decade ago, when capital fled the country and the exchange rate collapsed in the months before Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected President. Years of primary fiscal surpluses, which began under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and continued after 2002 under Lula, have brought public debt under control and earned Brazil an investment-grade credit rating.

But how fast Brazil can grow, and for how long, remains in question. After the 2010 boom, economic growth slowed precipitously. Indeed, by the third quarter of 2011,