O custo de bem-estar do regime automotivo brasileiro

Abstract

The Brazilian government has enacted, since 1995, a series of measures which came to be known as the Brazilian automotive regime. There is no doubt in the international literature that such measures have distributive impact, but there are different views about how much and which part of society should bear the cost. This paper estimates the welfare effects of the Brazilian automotive regime. The first part presents a historical of the governmentís measures that have affected directly the automotive sector in Brazil from 1990 to 1998. The second part reports how some economists have estimated the distributive effects of policies like the Brazilian automotive regime in other countries. The third part estimates the distributive impacts of the Brazilian automotive regime. The synthesis of this paper presents the following results: the cost of automotive regime to consumers during the regimeís effective time span will be approximately US$ 33,9 billion. The cost of each job created or saved is about US$ 339 thousand. If itís supposed that the price elasticity of supply is unitary, the gain of producers would be US$ 23,3 billion. The government gains would be US$ 3,5 billion and the death weight loss would be US$ 7 billion.