IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15411.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Endowments, Fiscal Federalism, and the Cost of Capital for States: Evidence from Brazil, 1891-1930

Author

Listed:
  • André C. Martínez Fritscher
  • Aldo Musacchio

Abstract

In the last few years there has been an explosion in the number of papers that aim to explain what determines country risk (defined as the difference between the yield of a sovereign's bonds and the risk free rate). In this paper, we contribute to the discussion using by showing that Brazilian states with natural endowments that allowed them to export commodities that were in high demand (e.g., rubber and coffee) between 1891 and 1930 ended up having higher revenues per capita and, thus, lower cost of capital. The link between exports and state government revenues works in the Brazilian case because of the extreme form of fiscal federalism that the Brazilian government adopted in the Constitution of 1891, giving state governments the sole right to tax exports. We create a panel of state debt risk premia and a series of state level fiscal variables and we show, using OLS, that having specific commodities gave states access capital in better terms (i.e., lower risk premium) in international markets. We also confirm our results that states with better commodities had lower risk premia when we use export price indices for each of the states as instruments for state revenue per capita.

Suggested Citation

  • André C. Martínez Fritscher & Aldo Musacchio, 2009. "Endowments, Fiscal Federalism, and the Cost of Capital for States: Evidence from Brazil, 1891-1930," NBER Working Papers 15411, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15411
    Note: DAE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15411.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yingyi Qian & Barry R. Weingast, 1997. "Federalism as a Commitment to Reserving Market Incentives," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 83-92, Fall.
    2. Easterly, William & Levine, Ross, 2003. "Tropics, germs, and crops: how endowments influence economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 3-39, January.
    3. North, Douglass C. & Weingast, Barry R., 1989. "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(4), pages 803-832, December.
    4. Nathan Sussman & Yishay Yafeh, 1998. "Institutions, Reforms, and Country Risk: Lessons from Japanese Government Debt in the Meiji Period," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-20, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    5. Joana Naritomi & Rodrigo R. Soares & Juliano J. Assunção, 2007. "Rent Seeking and the Unveiling of 'De Facto' Institutions: Development and Colonial Heritage within Brazil," NBER Working Papers 13545, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Sussman, Nathan & Yafeh, Yishay, 2000. "Institutions, Reforms, and Country Risk: Lessons from Japanese Government Debt in the Meiji Era," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 60(02), pages 442-467, June.
    7. Bordo, Michael D. & Rockoff, Hugh, 1996. "The Gold Standard as a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval”," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(2), pages 389-428, June.
    8. Weingast, Barry R, 1995. "The Economic Role of Political Institutions: Market-Preserving Federalism and Economic Development," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 1-31, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ashok Chakravarti, 2012. "Institutions, Economic Performance and the Visible Hand," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14751.
    2. Elmas Yaldiz Hanedar & Avni Önder Hanedar & Ferdi Çelikay, 2017. "Effects of reforms and supervisory organizations: Evidence from the Ottoman Empire and the Istanbul bourse," Working Papers 0112, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    3. Wafa Ghardallou & Dorsaf Sridi, 2020. "Democracy and Economic Growth: a Literature Review," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 11(3), pages 982-1002, September.
    4. Chong Ju Choi & Philip Cheng & Brian Hilton, 2004. "European Union: Economic Convergenceversus Social Mobility," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 95(4), pages 427-432.
    5. Eicher, Theo S. & García-Peñalosa, Cecilia & Kuenzel, David J., 2018. "Constitutional rules as determinants of social infrastructure," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 182-209.
    6. Czeglédi, Pál, 2009. "A tulajdonjogi biztonság szerepe a technológia elterjedésében [The role of property-law security in the spread of technology]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 790-813.
    7. Roberto Ezcurra & Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, 2014. "Government Quality and Spatial Inequality: A Cross-Country Analysis," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(7), pages 1732-1753, July.
    8. Alexander William Salter & Andrew T. Young, 2019. "Polycentric Sovereignty: The Medieval Constitution, Governance Quality, and the Wealth of Nations," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1241-1253, June.
    9. Andrew T. Young, 2021. "The political economy of feudalism in medieval Europe," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 127-143, March.
    10. Harris,Colin & Cai,Meina & Murtazashvili,Ilia & Murtazashvili,Jennifer Brick, 2020. "The Origins and Consequences of Property Rights," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108969055, October.
    11. Jamie Bologna Pavlik & Andrew T. Young, 2020. "Medieval European traditions in representation and state capacity today," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 133-186, June.
    12. John A. Dove, 2017. "Judicial Independence and US State Bond Ratings: An Empirical Investigation," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(3), pages 24-46, September.
    13. Alexander William Salter & Andrew T. Young, 2018. "Medieval representative assemblies: collective action and antecedents of limited government," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 171-192, June.
    14. Eirik G. Furubotn & Rudolf Richter, 2008. "The New Institutional Economics – A Different Approach To Economic Analysis," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 15-23, September.
    15. Rita Martins de Sousa, 2019. "Portugal adoption of the gold standard: political reasons for a monetary choice (1846-1854)," Working Papers GHES - Office of Economic and Social History 2019/64, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, GHES - Social and Economic History Research Unit, Universidade de Lisboa.
    16. Kapás, Judit, 2008. "Az intézmények számítanak, de hogyan?. Beszámoló az ISNIE 2008. évi konferenciájáról. Toronto, 2008. június 20-21 [Institutions count, but how?. Report on the 2008 conference of the ISNIE]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(11), pages 1027-1032.
    17. Alquist, Ron & Chabot, Benjamin, 2011. "Did gold-standard adherence reduce sovereign capital costs?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 262-272.
    18. Johannes Becker & Michael Kriebel, 2017. "Fiscal equalisation schemes under competition," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 24(5), pages 800-816, September.
    19. Seppo Honkapohja & Frank Westermann, 2009. "Rethinking Subsidiarity in the EU: Economic Principles," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Seppo Honkapohja & Frank Westermann (ed.), Designing the European Model, chapter 10, pages 331-365, Palgrave Macmillan.
    20. Sukkoo Kim, 2007. "Institutions and U.S. Regional Development: A Study of Massachusetts and Virginia," NBER Working Papers 13431, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • H74 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Borrowing
    • N0 - Economic History - - General
    • N16 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Latin America; Caribbean
    • N96 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - Latin America; Caribbean

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15411. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.