Macroeconomic Determinants of Household Consumption in Brazil

This work analyzes macroeconomic variables' influence on Brazilian families' consumption. For this, an Autoregressive model with distributed lags is used with Pesaran's Bond Test (2001) and quarterly information from 2000 to 2023. The results point to a significant impact of GDP, real exchange rate, real interest rate, unemployment rate, consumer confidence, and savings rate on consumption. On the other hand, credit volume did not present statistical significance regarding the dependent variable. As a measure of robustness, a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model with impulse-response functions, Granger causality, and prediction of the variance of forecast errors were used. The VAR results indicate that the real exchange rate and credit volume are relevant in determining consumption. This work makes a relevant contribution to the scientific literature by investigating family behavior and can serve as input for decision-making by policymakers, production sectors, and consumers.