Pedro Rossi, Grazielle David e Sergio Chaparro | Principles for Human Rights in Fiscal Policy

Human rights are a topic often neglected among economists which seldom appears as a relevant issue for fiscal policy and that is usually ignored in the design of rules for the management of public budgets. This article seeks to investigate the reasons for this omission and to contribute to thinking about fiscal policy from a human rights perspective.

The aim of this paper is to think the issue of human rights and fiscal policy in an articulated manner, and with this perspective in mind, present a conception of fiscal policy and rules that have the progressive guarantee of human rights as their ultimate goal. To this end, the paper is divided into three sections. The first seeks to assess the distance between economic theory and the human rights approach, specifically pointing out incompatibilities between the latter approach and orthodox economics, inspired by methodological individualism, which explains why human rights approach bring issues that are difficult to assimilate among economists. The second part of the paper deals with the relationship between human rights, fiscal policy, and inequality and shows how these three topics are mutually conditioned, which justifies thinking of them in an articulated manner. Finally, the third section reviews the economic debate over fiscal rules and proposes a fiscal policy from a human rights perspective, emphasizing three pillars: respect for human rights principles, social and environmental missions, and social stabilization. In doing so, it seeks to redefine the idea of fiscal responsability and propose considerations for fiscal rules and a fiscal policy focused on guaranteeing human rights.

Paper in English

Artigo em Portugues