Banca de DEFESA: FRANKLIN FEITOSA GRAMACHO

THE INFLUENTIAL DEMOGRAPHIC, SOCIOECONOMIC, POLITICAL-INSTITUTIONAL AND TAX ACCOUNTING OF MUNICIPAL TRANSPARENCY: AN APPROACH QUANTILE

Municipal Public Transparency; Culture of Transparency; Legitimacy Theory; Quasi-Cauchy Quantile Regression

Recent studies report incipient levels and a high variation in the level of transparency of Brazilian municipalities, exposing that the decision to disclose information transcends legal impositions. The heterogeneity of transparency levels among local governments is not exclusive to Brazil and the literature that investigates the factors that would influence this variation indicates divergent results. An important gap in this literature is that the authors limit themselves to evaluating the effects of explanatory variables on the average of municipal public transparency, that is, they adopt a generalist premise by suggesting that the existence or not of influences, as well as the size and direction of the effects, are the same regardless of the local culture of transparency. Thus, considering the demographic, socioeconomic, political-institutional, and fiscal accounting influences indicated by the literature, the objective of this research is to verify which variables make up the three sets of factors that influence the public transparency of Brazilian municipalities at levels high, medium, and low of culture of transparency. Based on the Legitimacy Theory, especially strategic legitimacy, it is suggested as a hypothesis that the three sets of variables that influence the public transparency of Brazilian municipalities at high, medium, and low levels of transparency are not identical. To meet the research objective, the methodological approach relies on the Quasi-Cauchy quantile regression model. Quantiles 0.25 (q25), 0.50 (q50) and 0.75 (q75) are explored, where q25 represents a culture with a low level of transparency, q50 represents a culture with a medium level of transparency and q75 represents a culture of high level of municipal public transparency. The research findings do not allow us to reject the research hypothesis. Among the 14 variables that influence q25, 6 are from the demographic dimension, 3 are from the socioeconomic dimension, 2 are from the political-institutional dimension and 3 are from the fiscal accounting dimension. Among the 16 variables that influence the q50, 6 are from the demographic dimension, 5 are from the socioeconomic dimension, 2 are from the political-institutional dimension and 3 are from the fiscal accounting dimension. Among the 13 variables that influence q75, 6 are from the demographic dimension, 3 are from the socioeconomic dimension, 1 is from the political-institutional dimension and 3 are from the fiscal accounting dimension. As a way of strengthening the research findings, a robustness analysis was proposed. Despite some differences in relation to the main model, the robustness analysis also does not allow rejecting the research hypothesis. The results of this study can be useful for citizens, legislative powers, and external control bodies. Among the contributions, the findings allow us to profile municipalities that tend not to be transparent. This can serve as red flags for legislatures and audit courts in their supervisory functions and for citizens to make more rational decisions, including electoral ones