FISCAL POLICY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: AN ANALYSIS FOR BRAZIL IN THE PERIOD 1995-2017
Fiscal policy; Structural budget balance; Structural fiscal result; Fiscal shocks; Function impulse response.
The present work aims to investigate the behavior of the discretionary fiscal policy practiced in Brazil between 1995 and 2017 and its impact on the long term economic growth of the Brazilian economy in the period. Initially, an analysis will be made of the overall performance of the economy and the main macroeconomic indicators. Then, a review of the main orthodox and heterodox theories on fiscal policy and economic growth is carried out, as well as a literature review on the evolution of fiscal policy in Brazil. In order to verify the behavior of the discretionary fiscal policy (discretionary fiscal impulse), the structural fiscal result will be calculated, that is, the fiscal result without considering the fiscal impact of the automatic stabilizers, which vary automatically due to cyclical fluctuations in GDP. Thus, the orientation of discretionary fiscal policy in relation to the direction of the impulse (expansionist or contractionary) and the cycle (anticyclical or procyclical) can be analyzed. Furthermore, from the calculated structural fiscal indicators, we will perform an evaluation of the impact of structural fiscal shocks on Brazilian economic growth in the period, through the estimation of impulse response functions, based on the methodology of Autoregressive Vectors (VAR).