Júlio César Lopes (p), Leonardo Monasterio (p)

The 1988 Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil created the Constitutional Financing Funds (FCF) to reduce regional inequalities through financing productive activities at subsidized rates in the North, Northeast and Centre West regions of the country. These funds receive three percent of the total taxes on income and industrialized products, with the Northeast region accounting for 60% of this amount and the remainder divided equally between the Centre west and the North. Low human development indicators of these regions in relation to the South and Southeast of the country, associated to the precariousness of infrastructure and distance of the great economic centers, result into less competitiveness and greater difficulty to develop productive activities in these regions. The proposal to subsidize productive activities for these regions is based on the recognition of these obstacles to their development. FCF these obstacles, increasing competitiveness, lowering the cost of capital, attracting investments and allowing rural producers and local entrepreneurs to expand their activities.
Three decades have passed since the creation of FCF and several studies have evaluated their impacts from a regional perspective. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature through the application of the Spatial Regression Discontinuity model to evaluate the effectiveness of the FCF to Centre West region (FCO) in terms of generating employment and formal income at the municipal scale. The study exploits the discontinuity the geopolitical frontier that separates the Centre West and South and Southeast regions of the country as identification strategy.
In general, our results suggest that municipalities that received FCO funds witnessed fewer job growth than those who did not. Furthermore, there is some evidence that FCO led to increases on income of Centre West municipalities.

Anna Bufetova (p)

The peculiarities of the Russian urban system are connected with the history of its formation - the period of rapid growth in the number and size of cities coincided with the period of administrative regulation of the economy. After the abolition of centralized regulation of spatial development and the institute of registration (“propiska”), the urban system began to undergo changes: researchers observe a concentration of population in large cities, which is accompanied by a decrease in population in medium-sized cities, migration flows from the eastern to western part of the country, the increase of heterogeneity of the urban system.
The aim of this work was to contribute to the study of the Russian urban system in the post-Soviet period by studying the evolution of the city size distribution in the Russian Federation using the method of analyzing the dynamics of distribution and the relative mobility of objects within the distribution based on the use of Markov chains. This method has not yet been used to study the urban system of Russia.
The study examines 1030 cities of the Russian Federation in the period 1991-2018 and verifies the hypothesis that the mechanisms of spatial evolution, launched by the market system, have shaped long-term trends in the city size distribution, which are different for the western and eastern parts of the country, cities of different sizes and administrative status. We also study the influence of large cities - administrative centers of regions on the dynamics of other cities in their regions.
For these purposes, we estimate and analyze transition probability matrices and spatial transition probability matrices, mobility indices and compare actual and ergodic distributions for different groups of cities in the eastern and western parts of the country.

Poema Isis de Souza (p), Juliana Souza

This paper investigates the effects of trade openness on income inequality in Brazil between the years 2002 - 2014. In this period Brazil is marked by monetary stability, economic growth, trade openness and reduction of income inequality. So, the objective of this article is to demonstrate how trade openness is correlated with the distribution of income in the Brazilian economy. Therefore, as an indicator of trade liberalization, we use the participation of exports and imports on Brazil's GDP and the dependent variables adopted were the following: the Gini index; the ratio of the richest 20% to the poorest 20%; and the ratio of the richest 10% to the poorest 40%. The econometric analysis was the panel models, by fixed and random effects, using the Federative Units of Brazil as units of observations. In general, the results found were statistically significant and indicated the existence of negative correlations between trade openness and income inequality. Then, the high level of trade liberalization can contribute to the lower the income inequalities in the country. There was a discrepancy between the Brazilian regions, where the South region had lower indicators of income inequality and higher levels of trade openness. The Northeast region, on the other hand, presented the worst indicators of poverty and income inequality, and a lower degree of trade openness in the country. It is concluded, therefore, that international trade can be an important tool in the promotion of Brazilian social welfare, especially if there is an increase in trade liberalization in the poorest regions, as is the case in the Northeast of the country.