A Note on the Effect of Decomposing Credit for Explaining Brazilian Cross-State GDP Growth

Abstract

We add to the literature on financial system and development by proposing an empirical exercise to better understand the channels through which credit drivers are able or not to promote economic growth. Methodologically, we estimate an extend version in difference of Barro-style growth panel regression. We measure the individual impact on the Brazilian cross-state GDP growth from 2003 to 2017 of household credit, enterprise credit and government credit, controlling for exports, imports, years of schooling, current and capital government expenditures. We find that Brazilian cross-state growth depends more on the evolution of household credit than on credit to firms. We claim that regardless of the benefits due to household credit, we need to better understand the behavior of this insolvent economic growth driver, given its prominent role in the credit market. We also highlight the negative role played by government credit to GDP given by the significant elasticity of -0.87.