Essays on the dynamics of the Brazilian distributive conflict (2000-2020)

• Ano de defesa: 2023
• Autor(a) principal: Marques, Pedro Romero
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Desenvolvimento econômico; Distribuição de renda; Economia política; Economic development; Income distribution; Political economy
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/12/12140/tde-23062023-185930/

This work consists of three essays on the dynamics of the distributive conflict in Brazil in the first two decades of the 21st century. Following a critical approach influenced by Michal Kalecki\'s political aspects of full employment, these essays investigate how Brazil\'s recent growth trajectory affected the relationship between labour and capital via changes in income distribution. It entails analysing how it contributed to the economic and political crises that burst in the mid-2010s. The first essay, \"Rentiers and distributive conflict in Brazil (2000- 2019)\", estimates an expanded functional income distribution that considers the share appropriated by rentiers besides wages, profits, and government income. It indicates that despite being relatively stable during the period, rentier income has significantly changed its composition due to the increasing importance of interest income paid by the household sector. The results stress the role of financial expropriation (interest payments out of wage income) in changing the trend in wage share, suggesting an alternative interpretation of the distributive conflict. The second essay, \"Fiscal policy and distributive conflict in Brazil (2000-2019)\", aims at evaluating the redistributive role of the Brazilian state by estimating the net social wage (the net contribution of fiscal policy to the working class) for the same period. Results show that the net social wage has increased from 2004 to 2017, mainly due to rising social spending. Its composition suggests that the upward trend resulted from activating existing institutional mechanisms that promote redistribution, producing a resilient pro-labour orientation for the fiscal policy. Finally, the third essay is intituled \"Toward a critical appraisal of the Growth Model Perspective: the political business cycle in Brazil (2003- 2016)\". It addresses contemporary trends in comparative political economy by offering a critical assessment of the Growth Model Perspective. It contributes to the debate by reconsidering Brazil\'s growth model from a Kaleckian viewpoint, which puts the distributive conflict at the centre of the nexus between the economic and political foundations of growth models. By relating the trajectory of redistributive growth to the rise and fall of the Workers\' Party (2003-2016), the essay elaborates on how growth drivers have been related to socio- political determinants and concludes that this relationship has influenced both the formation and the exhaustion of Brazil\'s recent growth model.