Política regional, crescimento econômico e convergência de renda em Minas Gerais

Abstract

Minas Gerais State presents big socio-economic differences. Thus, the key question is to find out if the regional policies implemented by the government were efficacious (in terms of reducing GDP per capita inequalities) and efficient (in terms of contributing to the GDP per capita growth) over the period 1999-2004. The methodology adopted is the Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) and panel date models with spatial dependence. The results of the ESDA stress the importance of the spatial effects for the variables investigated. The spatial analysis of the economic growth rates shows the presence of spatial dependence in the data. Poor municipalities had high growth rates; rich municipalities had low growth rates. The econometric analysis indicates that Robin Hood Act was neither efficacious nor efficient. On the contrary, this act finished intensifying regional income inequalities in Minas Gerais State. The regional policies represented by tax transferences from FPM and the regional policy of the tax burden, although they have not been efficient, were efficacious. In addition to, the findings reveal that there was conditional convergence of the GDP per capita. In despite of this, the convergence speed is slow (0,012%), with a half-life of more than fifty years. This result sheds light to the need to rethink the regional policies with the objective of speeding up this process (literature indicates that high convergence occurs when this speed is about 2%). The variables that had a positive contribution to the growth were: industrial environment, regional market, neighboring municipality human capital and neighboring municipality tax burden. Those variables, in turn, that had a negative influence over growth were: demographic density, crime rates, tax transferences from the Robin Hood Act, neighboring municipality industrial environment, neighboring municipality demographic density, neighboring municipality crime rates, tax transferences from the Robin Hood Act towards to neighboring municipalities and tax transferences from the FPM towards to the neighboring cities. These findings help to elaborate regional policies by pinpointing which variables are more important in order to contribute to the growth and to reduce regional income disparities among municipalities. Finally, one concludes that the market by itself is not able to nullify regional inequalities, thereby regional policies seem to play a role in this process. However, the presence of regional policies by itself does not seem to guarantee that these policies are efficient and efficacious. It is necessary to delineate them properly in order to reach the properties of efficiency and efficaciousness.