A influência do federalismo fiscal sobre o estresse fiscal dos municípios brasileiros

Abstract

The literature alluding to Federalism Theory deals essentially with the territorial division and organization of state power and the articulation of central power with regional and local powers, including from a fiscal perspective. Fiscal Federalism permeates the relations between the tax jurisdiction of each federated entity and the allocation of public resources according to the demands of local communities, with direct consequences on the financial condition and the supply of public goods and services to society. In addition, literature points to economic instabilities as an aggravating factor of fiscal relations between the federated entities, contributing to fiscal stress. Based on these observations, this research aimed to verify the influence of fiscal federalism on the fiscal stress of the Brazilian municipalities. More specifically, it sought to analyze whether the municipalities that were more dependent on federalist relations were more inclined to fiscal stress. In addition, it sought to control the effect of the economic instabilities of the previous year on the fiscal stress of municipalities from the federalist perspective. Fiscal federalism was evaluated directly or indirectly through four perspectives: public revenue and expenditure, entity autonomy and fiscal decentralization, as well as the economic instabilities due to the real quarterly GDP variation. The sample consisted of the Brazilian municipalities throughout the years 2006 to 2016, representing 50,260 observations. For the empirical analysis, the logistic regression technique was used from panel data. The results of the study indicated that fiscally stressed municipalities suffered a statistically significant influence of fiscal federalism and periods of low growth, pointing to the effects of centralization of revenues and decentralization of expenditures preached by fiscal federalism, as well as the accentuation of this relationship in times of economic instability. Thus, in general terms, the research concluded that the greater the fiscal dependence of the analyzed municipalities, the more predisposed these municipalities were to fiscal stress, especially in times of economic instability.