Maria da Conceição Sampaio de Sousa

Demand for locally provided public services within the median voter's framework: the case of the Brazilian municipalities

In this paper we estimated the demand for local public spending for the Brazilian municipalities within a median voters framework. The rationale for applying that framework came from the fact that in federal systems voters’ preferences are more likely to be reflected at the local level as the consumers of public services have a better knowledge of the benefits and costs of the local public expenditures. Results obtained are consistent with the theoretical background thus suggesting that this hypothesis might be useful to describe the demand for local public goods in Brazil. In particular, the use of quantile regression permitted us to investigate the impacts of the conditioning variables on local public expenses across different expenditures classes thus allowing for heterogeneity across municipalities. Our results also suggest that the impact of the city size on the quality of club goods shows crowding effects as γ is between zero and one. However, in the estimated models, marginal congestion slightly decreases with expenditure. This is a rather surprising result as one is tempted to conclude that the congestion effect should be higher on big cities. Yet, a more careful look shows the drawbacks of such an interpretation. The indivisibilities preclude the provision of certain services in small towns, concentrating their provision on larger cities. Hence, the higher expenditures of those big cities reflect not only a crowding cost but also the fact that these towns offer a wide range of services when compared to the small ones.

Estimando a demanda por serviços públicos nos municípios brasileiros

A demanda para a despesa publica nos municipios brasileiros e estimada, utilizando a abordagem do eleitor mediano. Os resultados confirmam essa hipotese como util para descrever a demanda para bens publicos locais no Brasil. Os resultados mostram a presenca de economias de escala na provisao desses servicos. Porem, as indivisibilidades que impossibilitam a provisao de servicos em cidades pequenas, fazem com que as despesas mais elevadas das cidades grandes reflitam nao somente custos de aglomeracao, mas tambem o oferecimento de servicos mais diversificados. No Brasil, contrariamente aos resultados tradicionais, a reducao do efeito congestionamento ao longo das classes da despesa reflete a predominância dos elementos de escala.

Medidas de custo-eficiência dos serviços subnacionais de segurança publica no Brasil, 2001-2006

We calculated the efficiencies with which Brazilian states provide public safety by using a stochastic frontier cost function and panel data from 2001-2006. We estimate a Translog with fixed effects where prices for the production factors are the initial salaries of military police, civil police, and precinct chiefs and the product is the inverse of the homicide rate. To explain inefficiencies we use economic and demographic variables which measure active drug markets and the allocation of judicial, police, and penitentiary expenditures. Our models indicate that inefficiencies are higher when the size of drug markets, the ratio of military to civil police, the rate of high school dropouts, and income inequality increase. On the other hand, increasing judicial expenditures and the number of prison cells reduce inefficiency. Sao Paulo is the most cost efficient state providing public safety, whereas the Federal District is the least cost efficient.

Fronteiras de eficiência estocásticas para as empresas de distribuição de energia elétrica no Brasil: uma análise de dados de painel

This paper analyzes the efficiency of the Brazilian electrical sector distributing companies based on an econometrics study of information and data that directly affect distributing companies´ efficiency, such as operational cost, number of employees, volume of energy supplied, and some qualitative indicators, such as the percentage of energy lost, average duration of the supply interruption per year in hours (DEC) and average frequency of the supply interruption per year (FEC). Besides these, some socio-economic indicators are considered, such as appliances ownership and the demographic density of the area each company is located. The analysis starts with the definition of production and cost frontiers, followed by the production and cost frontier functions, applying the Stochastic Frontier Method.

Residual and Technical Tax Efficiency Scores for Brazilian Municipalities: a Two-Stage Approach

Recurrent fiscal imbalances in terms of tax and expenditure assign-ments among central and local governments are a critical issue in public finance. To equalize tax capacities, cope with spillovers or to achieve national policy objectives, central governments often provide transfers to lower levels of government. These transfers may affect the incentives to improve fiscal performance because they may induce low tax effort in the regions (Litvack, Ahmad and Bird, 1998; Boadway