O impacto de bancos de desenvolvimento sobre os investimentos das empresas: a experiência do BNDES

Abstract

The present study aims to analyze the impact of the BNDES's resources on the companies' investments (beneficiary companies) between 2002 and 2019. This study adopts the industrial theoretical view that the bank's intervention should positively impact the investment of the beneficiary companies and aspects of the social perspective. From a social standpoint, even non-profit projects, but socially desired because of the positive externalities they offer, should be prioritized by the government. The companies benefiting from BNDES credit lines had their projects evaluated on a Likert scale (from zero to ten). In all, 1,683 projects financed by the bank, related to a group of 664 beneficiary companies, were evaluated through questionnaires applied to people already graduated or undergraduate or graduate students in the areas of Administration, Economics, or Accounting. This assessment takes into account how socially desired the project is. With the participants' evaluations of the projects, it was possible to segregate the companies using BNDES resources for more / less socially desired projects. The analyzed sample comprises 2,515 companies, with 1,537 beneficiaries (treatment group) and 978 non-beneficiaries (control group). Through a panel event study that uses regressions controlled by fixed effects of year and firm, this study determined the causal impact on companies' investments through the support of BNDES in a methodological design of Difference-in-Differences. Without making any distinction between the credit line offered by the BNDES or the beneficiary company's ability to get involved with social projects, the results obtained for the total sample did not show consistent effect causal that beneficiary companies increased their investments after treatment, compared to non-beneficiary companies. However, when considering the companies 'ability to generate positive externalities through the benefited projects, the results showed that the BNDES impact on the companies' investments is related to the type of project financing. This effect is positive in companies with lesser socially desired projects (projects with less positive externalities). The results confirm the importance of an analysis that considers the economic and social aspects of the development banks. Therefore, the effects of the BNDES on private investments are heterogeneous. There is a sensitivity in the BNDES-Investment relationship that depends on the nature of the project financing, especially on the company's ability to generate positive externalities to society from projects financed by the bank.