O impacto do crédito rural no produto agropecuário brasileiro

The paper assesses the relationship between rural credit and agricultural product in the years 1999 to 2018. Using the methodology of autoregressive vectors, Granger causality, and the method of ordinary and generalized least squares, it was possible to estimate the impacts expressed through elasticities and the optimal relationship resulting from this relationship. Over the analyzed period, there was a significant real increase in rural credit; however, this expansion was limited to a lower number of rural establishments and contracts with higher values. Despite the existing rural credit rationing environment in the country, it is concluded that the impact of total rural credit on the agricultural product was 0.20%. As for Granger causality tests, the results indicate that there is temporal precedence of rural credit to the agricultural product and, therefore, in a unidirectional way, rural credit causes, in the sense of Granger, the agricultural GDP. Finally, concerning the optimal relationship between agricultural product and rural credit, the estimated value of rural credit that maximizes agricultural product was approximately R$ 58 billion per quarter.