Brazil: an empirical study on fiscal policy transmission

Abstract

This article sets out to empirically determine whether the ratiobetween debt and gross domestic product (GDP); affected real and nominalvariables such as the demand for money, the nominal interest rate,investment and the output gap, between January 1995 and March 2008.The specific aim is to identify fiscal-policy transmission channels and decidewhether this policy was active or passive in the period in question. Thestudy finds empirical evidence that fiscal policy was active and monetarypolicy passive -features that characterize a non-Ricardian model.