Next Economic Analysis Seminar Series
Next Monday 16th, February 2026 at 12:00 P.M.
El próximo lunes 16 de febrero endremos un seminario impartido por Damian Clarke (University of Exeter)
Sala de Juntas 1 del Edificio 2 a las 12:00.
Título: Does Increasing Public Spending in Health Improve Health? Lessons from a Constitutional Reform in Brazil
Coautores: Rudi Rocha y Michel Szklo
Abstract: This paper makes two contributions in understanding how government health spending shapes health outcomes by exploiting unique top-down variation generated by Brazil's 29 th Constitutional Amendment, which mandated minimum thresholds for municipal health spending. Firstly, we track downstream effects from increases in spending, documenting increases in available resources and access to health, with resulting declines in infant mortality. Secondly, we uncover non-linearities and input complementarities in production functions of public healthcare, mapping margins of spending effectiveness and constraints, including institutional factors. In particular, we find that effects are eroded in high corruption areas but substantially enhanced where strong management capabilities exist.