Determinantes do crescimento do gasto público no Brasil para o período 2012-2022

Abstract

Understanding the determinants of its growth is a central issue for the formulation and analysis of fiscal policy. During the period of March 2012 to December 2022, per capita public spending increased by about 28.52% while taxpayers' income increased by only 8.02%. From this context, the objective of the work was to understand the reasons why government expenditures had a greater growth than taxpayers' income in the period. To this end, a median voter model was used to estimate a demand function for public goods, which was conceived using the Two-Stage Least Squares method. The results point to a demand for government services with an income-elasticity of 7.99%, indicating the validity of Wagner's Law, with the goods offered by the government being characterized as luxury goods. A price-elasticity of demand of -0.90% can be observed, which indicates the presence of fiscal illusion, with consumer-taxpayers having a distorted perception of the real cost of the public service. Furthermore, a strong influence of past spending on the formation of present spending was found, caused by the high level of mandatory expenditure.