Determinants of access to voluntary transfers: analysis of Brazilian municipalities between 2008 and 2016

Abstract

The objective was to analyze the factors that determined the access of voluntary transfers of the Union (TVM) by Brazilian municipalities from 2008 to 2016. The panel date was applied considering the definition of technical, political and redistributive factors. For the technical, although a large number municipalities participate, only the submission of proposal did not prove to be relevant to achieve a better performance; still, part of the indicators of state capacity demonstrated that the autonomy and professionalization of the bureaucracy had a negative influence on resources. In politics, the presidential elections positively influenced the volume of resources transferred to the municipalities while the local elections had a negative impact. And in the redistributive, TVM behaved as a distributive and non-redistributive policy, with the results pointing to the prioritization of municipalities with lower levels of human development or with low rates of own revenue.