A distribuição das rendas do petróleo e a eficiência na gestão financeira dos municípios do estado de São Paulo

Abstract

The federal decentralization promoted by the Constitution of 1988 raised the Brazilian municipalities to the important role in the dissemination of public policies. Once they are closest to the population, the decisions made at the municipal level are readily perceived by users and citizens. On the other hand, the social demands and the management of the administrative structure need efficient financial management and a constant search for resources. Additionally, the 9.478/97 Act, which amended the mode of distribution of oil revenues, brought to some municipalities, a new frontier of resources available by the distribution of oil royalties. Given this new frontier of resources, one wonders whether there is not relaxation in fiscal effort and an increasing inefficiency in the management of the administrative machinery by the benefited municipalities. The aim of this work is verify if petroleum revenues cause distortions in the way municipalities run their fiscal effort, that is, if the oil royalties contribute to increase inefficiencies in the municipalities involved in their search for the own revenues and their expense management. For this work, we selected 56 municipalities of the State of São Paulo which have been received the distribution of oil revenues during the period between the years 2005 to 2012. The efficiency of municipalities was obtained from a non-parametric production frontier model, the Data Envelopment Analysis - DEA, creating a ranking of the São Paulo municipalities which received oil royalties. Given the distribution rules of oil royalties imposed by the regulatory framework, the results showed the values distributed to São Paulo municipalities have great variability and has been showed relevant only in a few municipalities. There was no significant difference in the tax effort of the municipalities affected by the variable oil royalites. However, several factors related to municipal management indicated that such rents can contribute to increase inefficiencies in the management of municipal administrative machinery