Minha Casa Minha Vida Program (2012-2016): analysis of the relative efficiency of Brazilian municipalities in the implementation of federal programs

This research aims to evaluate the relative efficiency of Brazilian municipalities in the implementation of the Brazilian federal program for affordable housing Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV) program. The study discusses characteristics or factors that seem to affect municipal efficiency in policy implementation providing theoretical and empirical support to research in the area. The MCMV program is part of the Social and Urban Infrastructure axis of the Growth Acceleration Program (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento – PAC). The work was divided into two stages. The first step is the classification of municipalities into homogeneous groups. The second refers to the municipalities’ relative efficiency in the MCMV, through the application of data envelopment analysis (DEA). As a result, we identified that Brazilian municipalities have different structuring patterns. The majority of them were classified as poorly structured or minimally structured. In the analyzed data, we observed a clear regional pattern, where South and Southeast have more well-structured municipalities compared to the Central-west, North, and Northeast. By analyzing the relative efficiency in MCMV, considering as universe only municipalities that completed MCMV projects between 2012 and 2016, better-structured municipalities also presented better results, indicating that structural conditions may be determinants of program performance. In contrast, the regional analysis presented that Centralwest, North, and Northeast demonstrated efficient municipalities more often, on average, in implementing the program.