O impacto do risco político no sentimento do investidor brasileiro

Abstract

In recent decades, Brazil has faced a series of changes in its political landscape, both from the point of view of macroeconomic policy and from the point of view of governments and their orientations. Given the importance of government choices in defining and changing the environment in which companies operate, the uncertainties generated by the changes in this scenario may be impacting investors' expectations in the domestic markets. The objective of this research is to verify the impact of the political risk on the Brazilian investor's sentiment, from January 2003 to March 2018. After surveying the pertinent literature, we first sought to identify the relationship between the political risk measured through of the political uncertainty index created by Baker, Bloom and Davis, and the economic activity measured by the IBC-Br index created by the Central Bank of Brazil. Next, it was sought to identify the impacts caused by political uncertainty in consumer sentiment, to measure consumer sentiment was used the index of the same name created by the Getúlio Vargas foundation. Finally, the impact of macroeconomic policies on investor optimism or pessimism was verified. An analysis of Brazilian macroeconomic policy was carried out in the post-Real Plan period, seeking to verify optimistic or pessimistic reactions by investors through macroeconomic policies. As a result, the political risk in Brazil has no economic cause, given the negligible relationship that the political risk has with economic growth, as opposed to the strong peaks of political uncertainty, reached in periods of discovery of scandals of corruption involving Brazilian rulers. Still, the climate of insecurity, caused by the lack of confidence of Brazilian consumers in their representatives, created an environment of instability that affects all different types of investors in a negative way. Seeking to identify the impact of political risk on the Brazilian investor sentiment, using Proxy as consumer sentiment, this work showed that the political risk affects negatively, causing investors' pessimism. Such pessimism generates waves of feeling that affect the most diverse markets. It was also verified that, when the economic environment is not favorable, the strength of this impact tends to be higher