This paper examines whether fiscal illusion can help to explain the behavior of federal government expenditures in Brazil during period 1990-2011. The analyses is based on a median voter model that admits that the degree of tax visibility may affect the individual's perception of his tax burden...

The worry with the effects of public expenditures is appeal, mainly for their impacts on economic growth. Many papers suggest that public expenditures should raise the private productivity and the economic growth. On the one hand, an expansion of public expenditures that are financed by...

This paper aims to explain the immediate causes of per capita income growth, the decline in income inequality and poverty reduction in five different geographic regions - Brazil, the Northeastern region, the state of Bahia, the metropolitan area of Salvador and nonmetropolitan areas of Bahia -...

This article analyses the evolution and the composition of gross aggregate tax burden and government transfers in Brazil and their relationships with equity and income distribution for the period 1995-2008. Along this period, gross aggregate tax burden grew considerably motivated by the...

The extraordinary events that occurred in the country between 2001-2007, with a sharp decline in inequality and the levels of poverty and extreme poverty offers a unique opportunity to examine the most relevant factors to explain changes that benefit the poor and in different scenarios ? with...

The following study uses two approaches to judge whether inequality in Brazil is falling fast enough. The first is to compare the variation of the Gini coefficient in Brazil with what was observed in several countries that today belong to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and...

Herein a characterization of the evolution of extreme poverty and income inequality in Bahia is presented. Extreme poverty and income inequality in Bahia fell twice from 1995 to 2009, in roughly the same periods, but at different pace. The first fall begins in 1996. For extreme poverty, it was a...

This discussion paper presents a methodology to visualize the effects of various influences on the income distribution. The methodology, although not new, has become very popular in the past few years. It is the method of counterfactual simulations. In other words, it is the use of "what if...