Os efeitos macroeconômicos das transferências sociais: uma abordagem de matriz de contabilidade social

Government transfers to individuals and families play a central role in the Brazilian social protection system, accounting for almost 14 per cent of GDP in 2009. While their fiscal and redistributive impacts have been widely studied, the macroeconomic effects of transfers are harder to ascertain. We constructed a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for 2009 and estimated short-term multipliers for seven different government monetary transfers . The SAM is a double-entry square matrix depicting all income flows in the economy. The data were compiled from the 2009 Brazilian National Accounts and the 2008/2009 POF, a household budget survey. Our SAM was disaggregated into 56 sectors, 110 commodities, 200 household groups and seven factors of production (capital plus six types of labor, according to schooling). Finally, we ran a set of regressions to separate household consumption into ‘autonomous’ (or ‘exogenous’) and ‘endogenous’ components. More specifically, we are interested in the effects of an exogenous injection into each of the seven government transfers outlined above. All the other accounts are thus endogenous. The so-called demand ‘leaks’ are income flows from the endogenous to exogenous accounts. Leaks—such as savings, taxes and imports—are crucial to determine the multiplier effect of an exogenous injection, as they allow the system to go back to equilibrium. The model assumes that supply is perfectly elastic to demand shocks. It assumes that the families’ propensity to save and consumption profile are fixed—that is, rising incomes do not provoke changes in behaviour. The multiplier effects of the on GDP corresponds to the growth in GDP resulting from each additional dollar injected into each transfer seven government transfers. If the government increased Bolsa Família expenditures by 1 per cent of GDP, overall economic activity would grow by 1.78 per cent, the highest effect. The Continuous Cash Benefit, comes second. Only three transfers— the private-sector and public servants’ pensions and FGTS withdrawals—had multipliers lower than unity. The multipliers for other relevant macroeconomic aggregates—household and total consumption, disposable income etc. —reveal a similar pattern. Thus, under the stringent assumptions of our model, we cannot reject the hypothesis that government transfers targeting poor households, such as the Bolsa Família, help foster economic expansion. Naturally, it should be stressed that the multipliers relate marginal injections into government transfers to short-term economic performance either real growth, or inflation if there is no idle capacity which is also useful to analyze. In the long term, there is no doubt that what truly matters is the growth of the country’s productive capacity.

Influência da matriz elétrica na adaptação de inventários de ciclo de vida para o cenário brasileiro

A ausência de um banco de dados nacional é frequentemente apontada pelos profissionais da área como um dos maiores gargalos à realização de estudos de ciclo de vida no Brasil. Dessa forma, a utilização de bancos de dados internacionais torna-se a única alternativa para viabilizar a elaboração de tais estudos. Um dos bancos mais utilizados é o suíço ecoinvent, que se encontra na versão 3. Como os processos existentes no ecoinvent não retratam a realidade brasileira, a adaptação mais básica que costuma ser realizada é alterar a matriz elétrica. No presente estudo, foram escolhidos 20 elementos desse banco de dados e foi feita a alteração da matriz elétrica, com o objetivo de compreender os impactos de tal alteração. O software SimaPro foi utilizado e o método de avaliação de impacto IPCC 2007 GWP 100a foi o escolhido para avaliar o desvio entre o elemento original do ecoinvent e o elemento adaptado. Os resultados demonstram que o desvio chega a 214% dentro da amostra escolhida. O estudo conclui que a utilização de bancos de dados internacionais sem as devidas adaptações ao cenário brasileiro pode levar a resultados não condizentes com a realidade. A alteração da matriz elétrica é a adaptação mais básica, mas isso não garante o alinhamento com o material produzido no Brasil.