MUNICIPAL FINANCING STANDARDS: AN ASSESSMENT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF URBAN CENTERS HIERARCHY

Abstract

Seeking to capture financing patterns of Brazilian municipalities, classified according to IBGE's logic of the hierarchy urban centers, this article presented an intertemporal analysis of local financing from the construction of fiscal indicators proposed by Cialdini and Afonso (2014). The results corroborate consolidated perceptions on the topic, such as the high dependence on intergovernmental transfers by small municipalities and the greater fiscal effort of larger municipalities, but also bring new information regarding the use of loan instruments (credit operations) and the liquidity level of local governments. Although the exercise was applied for a period in which the country experienced an economic crisis, it was not possible to observe an impact of this event on the indicators, suggesting that this funding pattern captured by the study has a very strong structural element, which is little sensitive to economic or even political (electoral) cycle.