Gastos do governo e ciclos econômicos: uma análise da política fiscal brasileira pós-plano real

Abstract

Understanding the real effectiveness of government spending in increasing aggregate demand is a matter of fundamental importance for economic policy makers. Studies indicate that the impact of fiscal policy depends on the econometric strategy used and the time period analyzed. The objective of this work is to verify whether the impact of government spending has a different magnitude depending on the phase of the economic cycles of the Brazilian economy. We sought to observe the effect caused by government spending using monthly data from the Brazilian economy between 1995 and 2019 based on the Generalized Moments Method (GMM) to understand whether an increase in spending causes different results in the phases of economic cycles. The results found show that the impact of an expansionary fiscal policy is different depending on the phase of the economic cycle and has the ability to increase GDP in times of recession, for the context and period analyzed. When using an alternative economic activity variable, the result changes, but the economic relevance of this second analysis is small.