Pork for policy
Subtitle: executive and legislative exchange in Brazil
By: Lee J. Alston, Bernardo Mueller.
Contributors: Mueller, Bernardo, 1963-; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- no. 11273.; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 11273.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 58
Subjects: Executive-legislative relations -- Brazil -- Econometric models; Government spending policy -- Brazil -- Econometric models
Description: "The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 gave relatively strong powers to the President.  We model and test Executive-Legislative relations in Brazil and demonstrate that Presidents have used pork as a political currency to exchange for votes on policy reforms.  In particular Presidents Cardoso and Lula have used pork to exchange for amendments to the Constitution.  Without policy reforms Brazil would have had greater difficulty meeting their debt obligations.  The logic for the exchange of pork for policy reform is that Presidents typically have greater electoral incentives than members of Congress to care about economic growth, economic opportunity, income equality and price stabilization.  Members of Congress generally care more about redistributing gains to their constituents.  Given the differences in preferences and the relative powers of each, the Legislative and Executive benefit by exploiting the gains from trade"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: "April 2005."

Includes bibliographical references (p. 35-43).

Also available in PDF from the NBER world wide web site (www.nber.org).