A abertura econômica e os multiplicadores fiscais da economia brasileira

Abstract

This work sought to measure the impact of economic openness on the Brazilian government's spending multipliers. For this, the Keynesian fiscal multiplier theory and the Effective Demand Principle were considered as a reference, according to which the level of income and employment in the economy is determined by aggregate demand. In this way, aggregate spending, especially public spending, triggers multiplier effects on economic activity. However, the literature shows that the magnitude of the multiplier depends on certain conditions. Thus, more open economies tend to exhibit lower spending multipliers than those more closed economies. In view of this, we sought to investigate whether the opening of the Brazilian economy throughout the 1990s and, subsequently, with the exchange rate appreciation, reduced the multiplier of public spending. For this, two spending multipliers were estimated, one for the period before and another for the period after the liberalization of the economy. The first period is comprised by the interval between 1947 and 1989, where the Brazilian economy can be characterized by the predominance of the import substitution model. The second period was comprised by the interval between 1990 and 2019, where the protectionist framework was gradually dismantled. To calculate the multipliers in each period, the time series regression method based on the ordinary least squares estimation technique was adopted. Evidence has shown that the multiplier effectively fell in the second period. However, its decline was minimized by the increase in the marginal propensity to consume in the Brazilian economy. As an explanatory hypothesis, it was assumed that the marginal propensity to consume increased because of social policies based on income transfers and appreciation of the minimum wage.