A further deterioration of the Brazilian fiscal reaction in view of COVID-19

Abstract

ABSTRACT The fiscal reaction function measures how the government’s primary surplus reacts to the evolution of public debt. Campos and Cysne (2019b) observed that the reaction function has been almost steadily decreasing since 2012 and it has turned from positive to negative values in 2017 and 2018. In the subsequent period, the improvement of some economic indicators led the fiscal reaction to a recovery. Nevertheless, in 2020, with the advent of COVID-19, health spending and emergency aids caused a sharp fiscal deterioration, leading the fiscal reaction coefficient to assume, again, negative values.