Univ., Diss.--Budapest, 2007. / Literaturangaben.

A presente dissertação tem o objetivo de analisar os papéis do direito para a política fiscal no Brasil, a partir de um estudo sobre o que esta pesquisa chama de regime jurídico da política fiscal. Interpreta-se esse regime jurídico como o conjunto de princípios e regras que regulam a gestão do gasto e do endividamento públicos. A pesquisa busca combinar uma análise das funções do regime jurídico para objetivos de política fiscal com um estudo sobre o papel do direito para a própria legitimação social desses objetivos. Assim, argumenta-se que o regime jurídico da política fiscal no Brasil foi reformado na década de 1990 com o propósito de promover a agenda do ajuste fiscal e da sustentabilidade da dívida pública na gestão da política fiscal. Essa reforma implicou mudanças significativas em quatro âmbitos: prerrogativas fiscais foram centralizadas na União, em detrimento de estados e municípios; houve centralização do poder fiscal no Executivo, em relação ao Legislativo; foram instituídos limites legais à gestão da política fiscal, incluindo limitações com despesas com pessoal e com endividamento público; e foram criados novos mecanismos de transparência e prestação de contas da política fiscal. Ao contrário do que normalmente se argumenta na literatura, que enfatiza os fatores domésticos que resultaram na reforma do regime, esta pesquisa propõe uma interpretação que combina fatores domésticos com influências internacionais na explicação das determinantes da reforma. O último capítulo analisa os efeitos da implantação do novo regime jurídico para a política fiscal até o ano de 2014, os quais permitem perceber que, embora as regras e os princípios jurídicos tenham efetivamente reduzido a margem de manobra fiscal de estados e municípios, centralizado competências fiscais no Executivo e criado novos mecanismos de transparência e prestação de contas da política fiscal, é possível defender que ainda existe um considerável espaço de discricionariedade na definição e na gestão da política fiscal no âmbito do Poder Executivo federal. / This dissertation aims at analyzing the roles of law in fiscal policy in Brazil, from the study of what this research calls legal regime of fiscal policy. The legal regime of fiscal policy comprehends legal principles and rules that regulate the management of public expenditure and public debt. The research tries to combine an analysis of the functions of the legal regime for fiscal policy goals with a perspective on the role of law to their democratic legitimacy. It argues that the legal regime of fiscal policy in Brazil was reformed in the 1990s aiming at promoting the fiscal adjustment and public debt sustainability agenda. This reform provoked substantive changes in four different domains: fiscal policy decisions were concentrated in the Union, in comparison with states and municipalities; fiscal power was centralized in the Executive vis a vis the Legislative; fiscal rules establishing legal limits to fiscal policy management were implemented, including limits to public indebtedness and expenditures with payroll; new mechanisms of transparency and accountability were created. This research also advances an interpretation about the relationship between domestic elements and international influences that resulted in the legal reform, while the literature usually focuses on the narrative about the domestic elements. The last part of the dissertation analyzes the implementation of the new legal regime for fiscal policy up to 2014. The research claims that, although legal principles and rules reduced the room for maneuver for fiscal decisions by states and municipalities, centralized fiscal power in the Executive and created new mechanisms of transparency and accountability, it is possible to argue that there is still some discretion for the management of the fiscal policy in the federal Executive.

published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Master / Master of Economics

There appears to be a vacillation from the original intent of the Employment Act of 1946. It was originally intended to serve as a tool whereby the smoothing and the easing of cyclical fluctuations of the business cycle could be facilitated. It now seems as though this tool has become one which is being used to correct those structural weaknesses which exist in the economy.

During recessions, fiscal, monetary and other credit provision policies are used together to combat falling consumption levels and stabilize output. Most such counter-cyclical stabilization policies are deemed effective when households use provided credit or cash towards raising consumption. Hence, a deep understanding of consumer finance is central to understanding how and when such counter-cyclical stabilization policies work, and when they do not. In my dissertation, I focus primarily on one set of stabilization policies; namely fiscal stimulus. I provide particular empirical and theoretical insight into how consumers manage their finances and in particular liquidity levels, and how this behavior is connected to the effectiveness of fiscal policy during balance sheet recessions. I also discuss how the definition of effectiveness itself may need to undergo some revisions as applied to a balance sheet recession. Chapter 1 ``Heterogeneity in effectiveness of fiscal stimulus: The Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008" empirically investigates regional heterogeneity in the effectiveness of fiscal rebates during recessions characterized by housing crises. While general estimates of the effectiveness have been measured in previous literature, the state dependence of such effectiveness to the particular type of business cycle state (for example depth of regional housing crisis) is unknown. I first provide a description of the 2008 recession, and the history of recent fiscal policies along with the institutional arrangement of the fiscal stimulus policies enacted during the time. I next review the relevant empirical literature on fiscal policy effectiveness. I then describe the empirical methodology to estimate the effectiveness of fiscal rebate policies in 2008 and their regional heterogeneity. Using a special module of the Nielsen Consumer Panel which surveys households about their 2008 Economic Stimulus Payments, I show that households' marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of these rebates was significantly lower in zipcodes with larger declines in housing prices. This pattern holds for both households with liquid assets and for those without. This highlights a novel finding compared to the previous literature; fiscal policy effectiveness is not explained solely by the behavior of households without liquid assets. These findings are not caused by differences in socio-economic and other observable characteristics and are robust to the use of a topology based instrument for housing price changes. Finally, I show that the results are driven by the difference in reported vs. revealed preference for reported savers and deleveragers in the hardest hit areas. Chapter 2 ``Policy and Theoretical Implications of Regional Heterogeneity in Fiscal Stimulus Effectiveness" investigates how the findings in Chapter 1 square with policy implications and consumption theory. On the policy side, I discuss how this result creates a policy dilemma, where fiscal stimulus may have been least effective in stimulating nondurable consumption in precisely the regions experiencing the worst recession. This underscores potential tradeoffs between the utilitarian and aggregate demand stabilization motives for rebate provision and the need to add nuance to the definition of fiscal policy effectiveness. On the theory side, I revisit the theoretical consumption literature and describe its predictions for MPC in a time of lower incomes and wealth. In particular, I look at how the negative relation between MPC and house price decline is at odds with the predictions of canonical buffer-stock models, which predict a higher MPC in worse affected regions. Next, I build a state of the art heterogeneous agent life cycle model, which features adjustment costs, long term debt and a default option, and calibrate it to regional variation in housing price declines, unemployment risk and income declines. I discuss newer mechanisms which could potentially match the empirical results. In reality, I show that even such a model substantially overestimates the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus in the worst affected regions. I explore the reasons behind such a mismatch, including the lack of marginal deleveraging in the model. Finally, I use data from the Michigan Survey of Consumers to rule out regional variation in permanent expectations as a key variable which could reconcile the findings in the data. Overall, the findings remain unreconciled with standard consumption theory, even after the augmentation of modern and realistic elements. Chapter 3 ``Evolution of Hand to Mouth Households (2007-09) and Lessons" continues on the theme of household liquidity which has been analyzed significantly to understand fiscal policy. A key parameter in the previous literature has been the proportion of illiquid households with housing wealth (also called wealthy hand to mouth households) who are important in understanding fiscal policy effectiveness. Two separate strands of the literature have emphasized either the role of permanent characteristics or income and wealth shocks (circumstance) in determining such status. In light of this, I document three new and robust findings. First, the overall proportion of such wealthy hand to mouth households stayed constant during the early years of the Great Recession. Second, there was massive underlying movement between various groups underneath the overall numbers. Third, households who built liquidity buffers had significantly larger losses to housing wealth and smaller losses to permanent income expectations. They also achieved this improvement in liquidity through methods other than the extraction of illiquid assets. This implies households who build liquidity buffers during housing crisis recessions do so through cutting consumption sharply. Taken together, these findings imply a) that both circumstantial and characteristics views on household liquidity are important, and b) that consumption models with net illiquid assets cannot match central facts for balance sheet recessions. This is because they predict households building liquidity buffers through extraction of illiquid wealth, which is unavailable during such recessions. In contrast, models with asset valuation effects do a better job of matching the liquidity management decisions of households. The goal of my research is to inform debates on fiscal policy effectiveness and the linkages to household liquidity. Future recessions with limitations on conventional monetary policy will especially be important times when these debates will play out. I hope this research provides useful information in the design and analysis of future counter-cyclical fiscal policies.

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This interdisciplinary thesis combines economics and law disciplines in examining the current fiscal regime applicable to upstream petroleum activities in the UK with an overarching objective of developing a policy framework for a new fiscal regime that is not only stable enough to avoid future alterations but also sufficiently fair to balance the unaligned imperatives of the investors and the government. Since the initial days of hydrocarbon exploitation in the UK Continental Shelf the fiscal regime was subject to numerous changes in reaction to the dynamics of the time. Most of these changes were brought about in order to incentivise the investors to explore for and get petroleum while attempting to ensure an appropriate share, or fair return, were accruing to the UK economy. The frequency of these changes however increased fiscal instability, making investment into the UK's upstream sector a riskier proposition. In order to develop a stable regime that can also ensure a fair return, therefore, this thesis begins with a brief overview of the fiscal instability and the government's most recent attempt at ensuring an appropriate share. This most recent attempt, the Treasury's Fiscal Review, is a consequence of the review of the entire upstream industry in the UK by Sir Ian Wood. The resultant report of the review, the Wood Report, provides the government's rationale for reform. Using the government position as a guidance, the work then analyses the conditions under which investors are incentivised and ascertains what exactly is meant by an appropriate share, or fair return, for the state. This analysis is carried out using the relevant investment and fiscal theories which, in turn, yields a set of criteria to evaluate the fiscal instruments. Once the criteria are established they are utilised against the fiscal regime that was in place prior to the government's most recent attempt at receiving a fair return. This is not only to assess the extent of the need for reforming the then existing regime but also to understand what was being reformed. The criteria are then employed subsequently in assessing the same for the most recent reforms of the government.

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