As in other federalist political systems, tax income distribution among the federal units is a long standing political issue in Brazil. From the nineties onwards, the political debate centered on tax reform has occupied the forefront of the national political agenda. This paper summarizes the...

This paper investigates incentive effects of fiscal equalization on local tax rates. I propose three refinements to current empirical estimations of these incentive effects. I show that local policy makers may conceive of changes in equalization transfers as stemming from discrete rather than...

This project examines fiscal reforms in Brazil since the 1990s, particularly in taxation, budgeting, and fiscal federalism. While recentralizing fiscal authority and massively expanding the extractive capacity of the state, policymakers chose not to revamp an inefficient tax system that has...