Restrições e auxílio emergencial: uma análise de bem-estar comagentes heterogêneos

Abstract

The world economy and the global society have faced an arduous task imposed by the Covid- 19 pandemic: maintaining the citizens' health as well as the health of its businesses. The impact of the pandemic situation on the economy is evident, either by the high degree of contamination - which directly affects people and overburdens the health system, requiring greater financial contributions - or by the cost of restrictive measures, which slow down trade and generate the need for direct financial support to individuals (such as emergency aid, applied in Brazil to assist the most vulnerable). In addition to the sensitive economic situation, the disagreement in the political scenario and in the positioning between individuals weakens the enforcement of decrees and the efficiency of measures. Considering these factors and their potential to interfere with the agents' utility, this paper aims to investigate how Emergency Aid (AE) and the appreciation of restrictive measures affect the welfare of consumers. A DSGE model with heterogeneous agents is used, inserting the lockdown as a compulsory reduction in the agents' available time, allocated to consumption and leisure. The amount of time restricted by the lockdown is redirected to a new asset in the utility function - preventive care - from which agents can (or not) extract utility. AE is injected into transfers as a proportion of GDP, corresponding to that observed in the year 2020.As expected, the economy responds negatively to the shock. Public debt and transfers increase in the period of the shock; and product, consumption and investments fall in response to the reduction in hours worked. However, although relevant variables show a decline, it is possible to obtain welfare gains when agents attribute value to restrictive measures, regardless of the AE. When the agents disregard such measures, there are losses of welfare and the AE is not able to reverse this condition. It was concluded that the agents' welfare is more sensitive to their position regarding social distance and lockdown measures than to the transfer amount received.