Distribuição territorial da despesa em Minas Gerais: avaliando possíveis fatores influentes para a alocação de recursos públicos entre os municípios do estado de 2008 a 2016

Abstract

Efficient allocation of public resources is a major challenge for decision-makers at all levels of government. The mayors and other municipal managers, because they are closer to the citizens, are better acquainted with their reality, but have to deal directly with the collection for different demands. On the other hand, state and federal managers, to a greater or lesser extent, deal with the great heterogeneity of the localities for which they work. Moreover, in every case a common problem is faced, the insufficiency of available resources, which results in the intensification of the dispute, by the various social groups, for the fulfillment oftheir desires. The great complexity of allocation decisions, however, is not just for the administrative sphere. The processes of public management are linked, in their conception or in practice, to the political, economic, fiscal and demographic spheres, and there are reasons to suppose that there are variables linked to these spheres that influence their functioning. In this way, this study intends to evaluate, in the state of Minas Gerais from 2008 to 2016, the possible influence exercised by several variables on the distribution of the expenditure carried out by the state among its municipalities. Among the variables investigated, can be mention: the party of the municipal political leaders, the economic dynamicity of the municipalities, its importance for the formation of state revenues, and also its distance to the local centers. The methods of statistical inference and regression analysis used allowed the validation of some hypotheses and indicated to exist, to a greater or lesser degree, some relation between the evaluated variables. There was a significant association between the distribution of expenditure and the participation of municipalities in the total votes received by local politicians, as well as the volume of resources per capita from agreements and parliamentary amendments. It was also possible to observe that municipalities with an industrialbased economy had higher per capita expenditure than municipalities with services sector predominance, and although municipalities with a higher HDI value tended to receive more resources per citizen compared to municipalities of lower HDI. On the other hand, it is understood that the results of the quantitative analyzes carried out capture only a part of reality, and an important part of the existing association is difficult to measure objectively.