The marginal cost of funds from public sector borrowing

An expression for the welfare cost of a marginal increase in the public debt is derived using a simple AK endogenous growth model. This measure of the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) can be interpreted as the marginal benefit-cost ratio that a debtfinanced public project needs in order to generate a net social gain. The model predicts an increase in the public debt ratio will have little effect on the optimal public expenditure ratio and that most of the adjustment will occur on the tax side of the budget.

The impact of public capital and public investment on economic growth: an empirical investigation

in this anicle we measure the impact of public sector capital and investment on economic growth. Initially, traditional growth accounting regressions are run for a cross-country data set. A simple endogenous growth model is then constructed in order to take into account the determinants of labor, private capital and public capital. In both cases, public capital is a separate argument of the production function. An additional data-set constructed with quarterly American data was used in the estimations of the growth mode!. The results indicate lhat public capital and public investment play a significant role in determining growth rates and have a significant impact on capital and labor returns. Furthermore, the impact of public investment on productivity growth was found to be positive and always significant for bolh samples. Hence. in a fully optimizing modelo we confmn previous results in the literature that lhe failure of public investment to keep pace with output growlh during the Seventies and Eighties may have played a major role in the slowdown of lhe productivity growth in the period. Anolher main outcome concems the output elasticity wilh respect to public capital. The coefficiem estimates are always positive and significant but magnitudes depend on each of lhe two data set used.

Impactos dos processos de mudanças na cultura organizacional: um estudo na secretaria municipal de economia e finanças da prefeitura de Manaus

A mudança organizacional caracteriza-se por transformações cada vez mais rápidas, profundas e amplas que exercem um impacto direto nos trabalhadores seja do setor público ou do setor privado. Seus efeitos, positivos ou negativos, geram instabilidade e estresse, ou seja, implicam em renúncias, perdas e adaptações. Ao se observar a mudança organizacional como ciclo de existência em que se pode examinar determinados momentos organizacionais, considerados estratégicos, como forma de pensamento e forma de decisão dos dirigentes. As mudanças tecnológicas, mais facilmente visualizadas e implementadas na Secretaria Municipal de Economia e Finanças da Prefeitura Municipal de Manaus, exigem, muitas vezes, uma mudança cultural. O estudo propõe uma vertente teórica que destaca parte dos esforços interpretativos das situações decisórias. A pesquisa empírica tem como objetivo principal verificar a cultura organizacional e a dependência de poder, através da análise de valor e dos interesses compartilhados pelos grupos de servidores da Prefeitura de Manaus. A cultura organizacional será analisada por meio dos seus elementos, ou seja, por meio dos valores compartilhados entre os dirigentes e os demais funcionários dos diversos setores da Secretaria Municipal de Economia e Finanças. Para este estudo, se utilizará uma amostra composta dos representantes dos diversos setores da Secretaria, tais como: Cadastro, Contabilidade, Fiscalização, Finanças, Tributação e Apoio administrativo. Nesse contexto, enfatizar-se-á a importância de se respeitar o ritmo de aprendizado e mudanças individuais estimulando a participação e reduzindo os riscos de ansiedade diante das mudanças organizacionais.

Contabilidade governamental brasileira no contexto da convergência aos padrões internacionais

With the globalization of the economy and the growing participation of several world investors in financial markets, combining the political, economical and social differences of each country, the varying Accounting Statements based on principles, standards, procedures or idiosyncratic accounting patterns become inadequate to provide comprehensible and useful financial information to the users at international level. Considering a country¿s conditions, peculiarities and the stage of development, the need to promote the convergence of the effective accounting practices in the public sector with the emerging international accounting standards is imperative as the public entities endeavor to provide transparent and comparable accounting information that can be understood by financial analysts, investors, auditors and other users, independent of their origin and location. Consequently, the objective of this research was described through the following questions: Which are the main differences between the international and local accounting norms applicable to the public sector in Brazil? Which are the main differences between the applicable international accounting norms and the practices adopted by the Brazilian public sector? And, which are the main differences between the practices adopted by the entities of the Brazilian public sector and the practices adopted by entities of the public sector of countries that formally follow the international accounting norms? The methodology adopted in this research was the one of comparative analysis between standards and practices. To provide a basis for the comparative analysis, the Brazilian standards were used for the public sector and the international standards were identified by consulting with the main international accounting committees. In the comparative analyses of norms adopted in national accounting statements the financial accounting statements of the Municipal districts of Rio de Janeiro and of São Paulo were used, and compared with the international accounting statements of New Zealand. The results of these comparative analyses provide important conclusions about the convergence and harmonization processes in accounting norms and practices for the public sector mainly as they demonstrate some of the conflicts among the recent efforts to base and harmonize accounting practices in the near future, but today significant differences remain between the norms and practices. It was also noticed that, in practice, the divergence in Brazilian accounting practices from the international standards are accentuated by the recognition of the registrations of the budgetary execution in the patrimonial accounting; and, the comparison with the practices adopted by New Zealand demonstrated that the foreign country¿s advances towards harmonizing its standards to the international norms and practices in such an important way that New Zealand independently overcomes the minimum exigencies of harmonization, which in practice, is more complete than the practices currently adopted in Brazil.

From public to private : the performance of former public workers in the Brazilian labor market

This paper analyzes the placement in the private sector of a subset of Brazilian public-sector employees. This group left public employment in the mid-1990’s through a voluntary severance program. This paper contrasts their earnings before and after quitting the public sector, and compares both sets of wages to public and private sector earnings for similar workers. We find that participants in this voluntary severance program suffered a significant reduction in average earnings wage and an increase in earnings dispersion. We test whether the reduction in average earnings and the increase in earnings dispersion is the expected outcome once one controls for observed characteristics, by means of counterfactual simulations. Several methods of controlling for observed characteristics (parametric and non-parametrically) are used for robustness. The results indicate that this group of workers was paid at levels below what would be expected given their embodied observable characteristics.