Economy of Santa Catarina in the pandemic scenario: perspectives, opportunities and evidence for the year 2020

Abstract

Amid the gradual process of economic recovery that took place from 2017 onwards in the state of Santa Catarina, there was a relevant diesel crisis in the second quarter of 2018, and, in the first two months of 2020, the beginning of an unprecedented health crisis in this century. The latter constitutes the main object of analysis of this study, which proved to be persistent, requiring, therefore, an effort to support the proposition of public policies not only countercyclical, but also development by the State. After a time of living with this important shock, many reflections came to the fore in society, making it pertinent not only to carry out a quantitative investigation that was as broad as possible within the period of analysis, about its probable impacts with regard to the different sectors of state economic activity in the process of recovery, as it is also essential to reflect on the necessary opportunity to review our social contracts in more depth. Therefore, this study sought to give its share of contribution to this discussion based on the verification of the possible impacts of the numbers of the Coronavirus pandemic throughout 2020 on the state economy and also on the federal government's emergency aid program for low-income families. For this, causal models were estimated for 42 dependent variables collected referring to the Santa Catarina economy (41 on the Central Bank of Brazil website and 01 on the ESAG/UDESC website), which generated a total of 58 estimated models to support the statements made here. With regard to the main results obtained, it is pointed out the need to expand policies that involve government spending and the articulation for expansion and flexibility of policies that involve credit lines, aiming to make them more universal and with a more ostensible developmental character, in relation to the view adopted so far in this observed “response” to the health crisis, which can be classified as insufficient.