Avaliação do comportamento fiscal dos governos estaduais brasileiros no período posterior à Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal (2002-2012)

This paper proposes an empirical evaluation of the Brazilian state governments' fiscal behavior in the period following the publication of Fiscal Responsibility Law (2002-2012). Measurement of fiscal shocks and estimations from dynamic panel data models of the states' main revenues and expenditures provided the following results: i) fiscal adjustments were sustainable in most part of the period and this can be explained by the positive relationship of state primaries revenues to the level of national economic activity; ii) the main components of the state primary spending proved rigid and were mainly described by autoregressive terms in the estimated equations; iii) states' tax revenues were positively impacted by growth in the share of the service sector in the product but did not show a significant relationship with growth in the share of the industrial sector; and iv) revenues and expenditures were not affected by deviations of the yearly primary surplus targets set in the state budget laws, suggesting the moderate character of these goals.