Public Budgets

An evaluation of the relations between the Central Bank and the commercial banks in Brazil

Although the role of regulatory agencies, in particular the Central Bank, is to submit the ones being regulated to the decisions, some authors  argue that it is reasonable to suppose that the decisions taken by regulatory agents are in fact in the interest of the regulated. This situation is known as regulatory capture. This project assess whether this situation occurs in Brazil, in particular in the case of Central bank participation on the decisions concerning the basic interest rate. The banks, via their funds, are the largest holders of government bonds which are largely remunerated based on the basic interest rate. Thus, the project observes whether it is possible to say that the Central Bank, when deciding about the basic interest rate, favors the position of the commercial bank system. Econometric models will be developed in order to measure the level of capture based on agent-principal theories and the economic models of regulation.

 

From Glauco Peres da Silva and Raquel de Freitas Oliveira.

 

Political Institutions and Public Spending: a study of the Brazilian States

One of the main features of the Brazilian redemocratization was the decentralization of political and administrative power. This process constitutes a historical novelty by changing the Brazilian federalism by increasing the importance of state and municipal governments. This historical change sparked new bibliographical production relating to local power in Brazil. The vast majority of the studies, however, analyzed the municipalities. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that the comparative knowledge about state politics is still insufficient. To this existing gap it is possible to add another one: the effects of the institutions and the political game on the public Budget in Brazil are poorly understood. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to investigate the effects of the institutions and the political modus operandi on the allocation of public funds in state governments. The investigation looks at two groups of variables: the first focus on electoral features and the second on government aspects. A novelty of this research is to search for empirical and comparative knowledge about state-level politics and how it affects the distribution of public funds. Another highlight is the construction of a new database on this issue which will be made available to the academic community counting on a partnership with the Brazilian Political Science Association (ABCP) in order to achieve this.

 

Researchers involved

 

Monitoring legislative production

Since its first edition, the project ‘Patterns of Executive-Legislative Relations’ organizes and updates the ‘Cebrap Legislative database’. The database contains key information about Brazilian legislation dating back to the 1988 Constitution, including, among other information, the identification of origin/author and subsequent proceedings of all bills transformed into law, for all types of authors, and bills introduced exclusively by the Executive, in this case including all types of outcomes. The information gathered in this database is essential for any analysis of Executive-Legislative relations. Besides updating the database, this project is now expanding the universe of collection. The ultimate goal is to gather data on all introduced bills.

From Carla Araujo Voros.

Joyce Hellen Luz

Mini CV:

Luz is an undergraduate student in Social Sciences of the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo. She currently has an undergraduate research scholarship within the project "Political Institutions, Patterns of Executive-Legislative Relations and Government Capacity" and the following research theme: “Coalition Government: roll call votes and budgets”.
 

Lattes Curriculum
Researches

 

Carla Araujo Voros

Mini CV:

Voros is an undergraduate student in Social Sciences of the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo. She has currently an undergraduate research scholarship within the the project "Political Institutions, Patterns of Executive-Legislative Relations and Government Capacity", sponsored by FAPESP and headquartered at CEBRAP.
 

Lattes Curriculum
Researches