ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the political economy of public investment in Brazil between 2003 and 2014 from a structural and Keynesian approach. The political coalition supported the increase in public investment and other expansionist economic policies that benefited the growth of private investment, and therefore of the gross fixed-capital formation, industrial production and the gross national product. The chapter examines the key institutions in the trajectory of public investment, both from public administration and from state-owned enterprises. It also analyses structural changes and macroeconomic results in light of the institutions and dynamics of public investments in the period. The chapter suggests the political and economic struggles, both internal and external, that were triggered and/ or intensified by public productive investment in Brazil, connecting them to the economic and political crisis faced by the country just after 2014. In Lula's Brazil, public investment had been significantly leveraged, triggering the debate about its effects on economic dynamics, but also about the controversies mentioned.
