Expansão e estatização do crédito: a recessão brasileira de 2014 sob a ótica austríaca do ciclo econômico

Abstract

The business cycle stands for the recurring alternation between periods of expansion and contraction in each region or country. The optimism that persists during the expansion phase is reflected in the results of national output, as well as in the level of employment and income. However, such a situation can change abruptly, leading to a recessionary period where unemployment spikes, credit supply plunges, and positions are liquidated in the financial system. Historically, Brazil has been a fertile ground for the recurrence of business cycles, given the country's difficulties in sustaining longer periods of growth. That said, this work addresses the period between the years of 2009 and 2015 and aims to analyze how variations in the supply of money and credit led by the Central Bank and commercial banks reflect on the capital structure of the economy and whether such variations can represent cyclical fluctuations, as proposed by the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT). To this end, a contextualization of the period in question is made, which corroborates the distinct phases of the economic cycle. To help in the results, a vector autoregressive model and Granger causality test were used to verify the effect of changes in the money supply on the productive structure. Apart from the extractive industry, the other industrial ratios and aggregate industrial production reveal causality with variations in the money supply, as well as the economic activity index and capacity use rate. Therefore, the results obtained support the patterns suggested by the Austrian Business Cycle Theory and confirm the hypothesis of cyclical fluctuations caused by monetary shocks. [resumo fornecido pelo autor]