El Grupo desarrolla líneas de investigación en torno al diseño, implementación e impactos macroeconómicos de las políticas fiscales. Se combinan abordajes comparados a nivel internacional, otros para Uruguay y a nivel de regiones dentro del país.
Sus análisis comprenden las siguientes temáticas:
Finanzas públicas regionales
Eficiencia del gasto público
Efectos de las herramientas de gastos e ingresos sobre el crecimiento económico y la desigualdad de ingresos.
Tópicos de finanzas públicas en la historia económica de Uruguay
This paper analyses the empirical trade-offs between equity and efficiency of various instruments of welfare state fiscal policies. To this end, we present and estimate different systems of structural equations and their error components through which these fiscal policies affect redistribution and economic growth. The empirical results, obtained by using a panel data of 35 high- and upper-middle-income countries over the period 1980–2014, suggest that not all policies depress economic growth rates. In relation to cash transfer variables, we can observe a significant empirical trade-off of old-age-related transfers. However, we do not find a significant equity–efficiency trade-off for working-age transfers. This variable has only a significant and positive effect in the redistribution equation, but does not affect the economic growth rate. If we consider measures of direct taxes, we find a significant and important trade-off for social contributions, and to a lesser extent for income taxes. We do not find a significant trade-off for capital taxes. These taxes only have a significant and negative unexpected effect on redistribution.
This paper analyses the cyclical fluctuations of public social cash transfers and its components in Uruguay over 1988/Q1 to 2016/Q3. The unobservable cyclical components are extracted from the observable time series using different empirical strategies. The results show that components of public social cash transfers are procyclical and lag the macroeconomics fluctuations. This enables us to say that instead of these cash transfers contributing to stabilizing the Uruguayan economy they have thereby
aggravated the business cycle, and through various expenditure items expose the vulnerable groups of society to more adverse economic conditions
En este artículo se analiza el rol de las transferencias intergubernamentales a partir de un análisis empírico aplicado a un grupo de regiones (departamentos) del Uruguay durante el período 2006-2014.
This paper analyzes the long-term relationship between R&D, innovations and productivity in 400 Uruguayan manufacturing firms during the period 2001 to 2009 based on a modified version of the structural model of Crepon, Duguet and Mairesse (CDM).
This article analyses the redistributive efficiency of social transfers and direct taxation in a panel of 28 developed economies during the period 1995-2010. In order to explore how redistribution is achieved through these fiscal policies, a two-stage approach is applied. First, we evaluate their redistributive efficiency–the degree of redistribution attained for a given level of transfers and taxes–by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We find lower redistributive efficiency in Southern Europe and the United States and higher efficiency levels in the Nordic and Central European countries and Australia. Second, we use panel regression analysis to identify the determinants of efficiency differences and reveal the crucial role of government quality as well as factors affecting the redistributive profile of fiscal policies.
This article argues that existing empirical work has failed to adequately deal with this possibility. In light of this, it applies a simultaneous equation model which accounts for the joint determination of these three variables, to a sample of 23 OECD countries.
The construction sector, whether privately or publicly financed, is characterized by potentially large rents and government intervention making it vulnerable to corruption. Consistent with this, both case-study and survey evidence has been provided highlighting the problem of malfeasance in this sector. In this article, we test the proposition that a bigger construction sector is likely to be inimical to clean government based on a panel of 42 countries over the period 1995–2011.
In this paper we consider how government quality mediates the relationship between fiscal decentralization and regional disparities. Previous work has argued that fiscal decentralization has the potential to reduce income differences across regions but that this potential may not be realized because of governance problems associated with sub-national authorities. Our empirical evidence based on a sample of 24 OECD countries over the period 1984 to 2006 lends a measure of support to this idea. We find that fiscal decentralization promotes regional convergence in high government quality settings but, worryingly, it leads to wider regional disparities in countries with poor governance.
En este artículo analizamos el rol mediador de la calidad de gestión de gobierno en la relación entre descentralización fiscal y disparidades regionales. Trabajos previos han argumentado que la descentralización fiscal cuenta con el potencial para reducir los diferenciales de ingresos entre regiones, aunque este efecto puede verse obstaculizado por la existencia de problemas de gobernabilidad asociados a las autoridades a nivel subnacional. Nuestra evidencia empírica basada en una muestra de departamentos (regiones) de Uruguay, durante el período 1990-2010, brinda cierto respaldo a esta idea. Los resultados obtenidos señalan que la descentralización fiscal promociona la convergencia regional, y que este efecto se ve potenciado en marcos que exhiben una mayor calidad de gestión de gobierno.