Discretionary fiscal policy in Brazil, 1995-2017: Decomposition and evolution

This article aims to evaluate the general (expansionist or contractionist) orientation of the discretionary component of Brazilian fiscal policy in the period 1995-2017, as well as to verify its position in relation to the economic cycle (procyclical or anticyclical). To this end, it proposes and applies a new methodology to separate the discretionary fiscal impulse from the part of the fiscal result arising from the operation of automatic fiscal stabilizers. It concludes that fiscal policy: 1) generated a mostly procyclical (destabilizing) position of its discretionary component, leading it to amplify rather than dampen economic cycles; 2) failed to prevent the public debt gdp ratio from entering the unsustainable path at the end of the period. Suggestions are made to improve its performance.