Solvência e evolução fiscal das administrações públicas municipais no Ceará: uma análise regional

Abstract

This paper contributes with the debate concerning the local public administration’s solvency by applying two traditional methodologies in sustainability of public debt to Ceará state municipalities in the period 2000-2008. In addition, the methods are applied to municipalities aggregated, according to official classification, in eight macro-regions in the state for the sub period 2003-2008. From the estimations based upon panel unit root tests and fiscal response functions the results lead to the following conclusions: i) in the period 2000-2008, the municipalities of Litoral Oeste and Sertão dos Inhamuns fail in the attendance of the Intertemporal Budget Constraint; ii) for the subsample 2003-2008, there is evidence toward fiscal improvement in all municipalities, in the sense that they are solvent in any level of disagregation; iii) regarding the existence of an active fiscal policy in terms of primary surplus generation as a response to raises in public debt, only four macro regions are solvent in the full time series, and reduced to three regions as the series 2003-2008 is considered; iv) only in the macro region Litoral Leste/Jaguaribe, and for the overall municipalities sampled the solvency conditions are satisfied in both methods applied for the periods of time considered in the analysis.