A proposta da tese é explorar como a interação entre abertura política, redemocratização e mudança no contrato social contribuíram para o aumento do tamanho do governo e do gasto no Brasil. Dessa forma, a tese sugere a persistência de um padrão de política fiscal que prevaleceu após a Constituição Federal de 1988, encontrado no governo central e nos governos subnacionais, cujo padrão é formado por: i) pressão pelo aumento do tamanho do governo; ii) crescimento da despesa corrente em relação ao investimento; iii) comportamento pró-cíclico do gasto e presença do efeito voracidade. A hipótese explorada na tese é que o padrão de política fiscal possui como origem o equilíbrio que emergiu com a abertura política e a redemocratização na década de 1980, onde foram incorporadas as demandas por bens públicos (educação, saúde, proteção social, por exemplo) e a maior ênfase pelas políticas redistributivas, oriundas do aprofundamento da democracia e da presença do sufrágio universal. Ao mesmo tempo, o equilíbrio sugere a necessidade de acomodar os grupos de interesse (elites empresariais e do funcionalismo público, por exemplo) que aparelham o estado e buscam defender e ampliar seus privilégios, especialmente em relação aos benefícios tributários, acesso aos recursos orçamentários e prioridade no direcionamento do gasto do governo. Assim, a viabilidade do equilíbrio depende do crescimento do tamanho do governo que serve para minimizar os conflitos entre grupos de interesse, também preservar a paz social e a estabilidade política. No entanto, o equilíbrio contribui para fortalecer a percepção de ilusão fiscal sobre as limitações e as restrições de curto e longo prazo que a política fiscal está submetida, eclipsando como são distribuídos os custos e os benefícios das ações do governo. A contribuição da tese é aprofundar a discussão sobre como o funcionamento de uma democracia iliberal (nova democracia ou democracia não consolidada) e a alteração no contrato social em um ambiente de instituições frágeis são capazes de influir sobre o tamanho do governo e o comportamento do gasto no curto e longo prazo. Além disso, a tese busca explorar quais seriam os problemas fiscais, as potenciais fragilidades, os canais e mecanismos de transmissão que relacionam uma democracia não consolidada e os problemas fiscais, tomando como estudo de caso a experiência brasileira. / The main objective of this thesis is to explore the interaction between the democratization process and change of social contract on government size and public spending in Brazil. The hypothesis of the thesis is the persistence of a fiscal policy pattern, present in both central government and subnational governments, composed of the following characteristics: i) increased pressure for increasing government size; ii) growth of current expenditure in relation to investment; and iii) procyclical and voracity effect. This fiscal policy pattern has its origin in the democratization process in the 1980s, with demands of society for public goods (education, health, social security, for example) and redistribution policies, stemming from the deepening of democracy and the presence of universal suffrage. Alongside, the emerging equilibrium suggests the need to accommodate interest groups (business elites and civil servant, for example) that equip the state and seek to defend and expand their privileges, especially in relation to tax benefits, access to budgetary resources and defense of priority in spending. So, the viability of this balance depends on the growth of government size that serves to minimize conflicts between interest groups, also preserving social and politics stability. However, the equilibrium contributes to strengthening the fiscal illusion about the short and long-term limitation of the budget and fiscal policy. The contribution of the thesis is to deepen the discussion about how the functioning of an illiberal democracy (or new democracy) and the change in the social contract in an environment of weak institutions can influence government size and the behavior of spending in the short and long term. In addition, the thesis seeks to explore what the fiscal problems, potential weaknesses and channels of transmission that relate to illiberal democracy and fiscal problems are, taking Brazil as a case study.

This study is a contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the future of South Africa’s macro-economic policy known as the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy. The study attempts to draw parallels between the GEAR macro-economic policy framework and structural adjustment programmes in the South. By making use of this comparison, the study argues that the outcome of the GEAR will be no different from structural adjustment programmes in that it will fail to reduce poverty and cause government to meet the basic needs of the people. These conclusions are drawn from the fact that the GEAR policy is premised on the faith that the market is capable of redistributing income and wealth, and providing people with their basic needs.

This thesis is concerned with inequality, redistribution and taxation, in particular the taxation of labour income and the distribution of wealth. Most of the analysis is focused on Sweden. The thesis consists of four self-contained essays. Essay 1: “Analyzing tax reforms using the Swedish Labour Income Microsimulation Model”. Labour income taxation is a central policy topic because labour income makes up the majority of national income and most taxes are in the end taxes on labour. In order to quantify how behavioural responses of labour income earners affect tax revenue, the Swedish Labour Income Microsimulation Model (SLIMM) is constructed and used to evaluate tax reforms. Elasticities are calibrated to match midpoints of estimates found in the quasiexperimental literature. The simulations indicate that the earned income tax credit has increased employment by 128,000 and has a degree of self-financing of 21 percent. Almost half of the revenue increase from higher municipal tax rates would disappear due to behavioural responses. Tax cuts for the richest fifth of working Swedes are completely self-financing. Essay 2: “The Laffer curve for high incomes”. An expression for the Laffer curve for high incomes is derived, assuming a constant Pareto parameter and elasticity of taxable income. Microsimulations using Swedish population data show that the simulated curve matches the theoretically derived Laffer curve well, suggesting that the analytical expression is not too much of a simplification. A country-level dataset of top effective marginal tax rates and Pareto parameters is assembled. This is used to draw Laffer curves for 27 OECD countries. Revenue-maximizing tax rates and degrees of self-financing for a small tax cut are also computed. The results indicate that degrees of self-financing range between 28 and 195 percent. Five countries have higher tax rates than the peak of the Laffer curve. Essay 3: “Political preferences for redistribution in Sweden” (with Spencer Bastani). We examine preferences for redistribution inherent in Swedish tax policy 1971–2012 using the inverse optimal tax approach. The income distribution is carefully characterized with the help of administrative register data and we employ behavioral elasticities reflecting the perceived distortionary effects of taxation. The revealed social welfare weights are high for non-workers, small for low-income earners, and hump-shaped around the median. At the top, they are always negative, especially so during the high-tax years of the 1970s and ’80s. The weights on non-workers increased sharply in the 1970s, fell drastically in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and have since then increased. Essay 4: “Wealth inequality in Sweden: What can we learn from capitalized income data?” (with Daniel Waldenström). This paper presents new estimates of wealth inequality in Sweden during 2000–2012, linking wealth register data up to 2007 and individually capitalized wealth based on income and property tax registers for the period thereafter when a repeal of the wealth tax stopped the collection of individual wealth statistics. We find that wealth inequality increased after 2007 and that more unequal bank holdings and housing appear to be important drivers. We also evaluate the performance of the capitalization method by contrasting its estimates and their dispersion with observed stocks in register data up to 2007. The goodness-of-fit varies tremendously across assets and we conclude that although capitalized wealth estimates may well approximate overall inequality levels and trends, they are highly sensitive to assumptions and the quality of the underlying data sources.

Why do governments tolerate the violation of their own laws and regulations, and when do they enforce them? Conventional wisdom is that state weakness erodes enforcement, particularly in the developing world. In contrast, I highlight the understudied political costs of enforcement. Governments choose not to enforce state laws and regulations that the poor tend to violate, a behavior that I call forbearance, when it is in their electoral interest. / Government

To many economists the public's support for the minimum wage (MW) institution is puzzling, since the MW is considered a "blunt instrument'' for redistribution. To delve deeper in this issue we build models in which workers are heterogeneous in ability. In the first model, the government does not engage in any type of redistributive policies - except for the payment of unemployment benefits; we find that the MW is preferred by the majority of workers (even when the unemployed receive very generous unemployment benefits). In the second model, the government engages in redistribution through the public provision of private goods. We show that (i) the introduction of a MW can be preferred by a majority of workers only if the unemployed receive benefits which are substantially below the after-tax earnings they would have had in the perfectly competitive case, (ii) for a given generosity of the unemployment benefit scheme, the maximum, politically viable, MW is lower than in the absence of in-kind redistribution, and (iii) the MW institution is politically viable only when there is a limited degree of in-kind redistribution. These findings can possibly explain why a well-developed social safety net in Scandinavia tends to co-exist with the absence of a national MW, whereas in Southern Europe the MW institution "complements'' the absence of a well-developed social safety net.

The purpose of the research was to assess the policy impact of the Land Redistribution and Development (LRAD) Programme, which substituted the Settlement and Land Acquisition Grant (SLAG) programme. Both these policies were meant to make land accessible to previously disadvantaged groups including Africans, Coloureds and Indians, as part of land reform policies of the post 1994 democratic government. Due to some failures of SLAG after its first five years of implementation, which were from 1995 to 1999, the land redistribution policy was revised and the LRAD programme came as an improved policy of SLAG. There has not been much research on the impact of this programme, which has been implemented since August 2001.

This thesis deals with the period of nearly ten years of the first governance period of Juan Domingo Perón. In this era were established bases of peronist movement, whose legacy is presented in Argentine politics till these days. This period represents a fundamental turning point in Argentine history, both from the politic and socio-economic points of view. The thesis is divided into four major chapters. The first one outlines the status of Argentine society and the economy in the context of the international situation before Perón became Argentine president. Another three chapters deal directly with the period of Perón's government. The first one deals with three fundaments of peronist economic policy of initial period, which included economic nationalism and etatism, industrialization and especially massive redistribution policy. The second chapter analyses the socio-economic aspects of peronist constitutional reform of 1949, economic development at the end of Perón's first presidency and development in the agricultural sector during his first presidency. Final chapter examines changes in economic policy during the second Perón's presidency and causes of his deposition.

This thesis is focused on redistribution of wealth in the Czech Republic. It explains the role of public finance and state budget as the main instruments of redistribution. The thesis indicates the factors that affect the degree of redistribution in the Czech society. Key factors for redistribution are the tax system and social and health insurance. The purpose of this work is to confirm or disprove the hypothesis that in the Czech Republic there is no equal redistribution of household income. Verification of this hypothesis is made on the basis of data from household budget statistics that are published on the Czech Statistical Office web site.

The thesis deals with the synthesis of Peltzman and Higgs government growth theory and influence of the prevailing Keynesian ideology on predicative ability of these theories. Based on this theoretical synthesis thesis explains the long-term trend of increasing government power in the U.S. which is showed by all measuring methods regarding the size of governmental power. The second part of the thesis discusses the impact of the redistribution of wealth in the household sector to the size of government in the years 1979 - 2009, with an emphasis on recent crisis during 2007 - 2009. Tested hypothesis is that the redistributive processes during the last crisis were aimed mainly to U.S. residents in the area of median income. Based on a comparison of data from the years 1979 - 2009 and relating them to the crisis moment of 2007 - 2009 thesis confirms this hypothesis.

Orientador: Josué Pereira da Silva / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-24T04:18:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Souza_LuizGustavodaCunhade_D.pdf: 2004206 bytes, checksum: bf15635f4388f43e0dbdd2f716cccf9f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: O presente trabalho tem como tema a discussão sobre reconhecimento, redistribuição e justiça na teoria social contemporânea. Para isto foi tomado como principal elemento de análise o debate entre a filósofa feminista estadunidense Nancy Fraser e o filósofo e sociólogo alemão Axel Honneth, que publicaram um livro em que discutiam qual seria a melhor forma de caracterizar o capitalismo contemporâneo. Na medida em que ambos autores reivindicam filiação à tradição de pesquisa conhecida como Teoria Crítica da sociedade, o parâmetro através do qual foi estudado seu debate foi a capacidade de suas respectivas contribuições para a crítica das relações sociais atualmente existentes, assim como naquela tradição fundada por Max Horkheimer. Da análise do debate conclui-se que entre a análise do capitalismo contemporâneo, a construção de um paradigma da justiça e o potencial de crítica deste paradigma, o modelo do reconhecimento defendido por Honneth possui maior alcance que o paradigma da participação defendido por Fraser. O paradigma do reconhecimento seria mais apto a apreender os motivos de sofrimento social e o potencial de críticas ao mundo atualmente existente, mas o paradigma da redistribuição apreenderia melhor as dinâmicas políticas por trás das lutas sociais. Ambos, no entanto, falham na compreensão da formação e reprodução de contextos de exclusão, o que levou, ao final do trabalho, a que se fizesse a tentativa de complementar o paradigma do reconhecimento com a formulação de uma categoria analítica, o desreconhecimento, capaz de analisar e explicitar estes processos e contextos / Abstract: The subject matter of this dissertation is the discussion about the concepts of recognition, redistribution and justice in contemporary social theory, particularly as it was framed by the debate between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth in their social, political and philosophical exchange. As far as both authors share the idea of renewing the tradition of critical social theory, it was exactly the critical potential of their respective models for the task of analysing present-day capitalism that was taken as a guideline for this study. From this study emerged the conclusion that the recognition paradigm advocated for Honneth is better suited to explain the suffering experience of subjects and, therefore, the critical motifs of an contemporary critical social theory. Nevertheless, it was also clear that the responses provided by Honneth do not suffice to fully accomplish an analysis of the political processes that lead to the formation of contexts of social life in which no recognition at all is at disposal of the subjects. Thus, as a contribution to the theories of recognition that aim to deal with issues of justice and injustice, it was developed an analytical category to deal with such processes and contextes of disrecognition (Aberkennung) / Doutorado / Sociologia / Doutor em Sociologia