Impactos econômicos e financeiros da expansão da UNIFAL-MG para o município de Alfenas no período de 2002 a 2014

Abstract

This paper aimed at presenting a study over the importance of a federal university as a promoter of social and economic development in the city where it is located. It used as basis the case of Universidade Federal de Alfenas (UNIFAL-MG) in the city of Alfenas-MG, mainly during the 2002 to 2014. With this aim, a quantitative survey was done in order to identify which sectors of the city's economy were affected the most by UNIFAL-MG's expansion in the period after REUNI, considering the increase in wage and employment rates. To arrange the data, this research included document analyses, the microdata from RAIS and closed questionnaires asked to active civil servants of the university located in Alfenas-MG. The collected data was treated in the perspective of econometrics analysis. To confirm the existence of a relation between the studied variables the t-test and Simple Linear Regressions and the Corrected Akaike Information Criterion to small samples (AICc) were used. After EFOA became UNIFAL-MG, it was verified a positive economic effect which contributed to the growth to the economic sectors of Food and Hospitality, Construction, Real Estate Activities, Vocational Service, Technical and Scientific, Transport Services and Mail and Education. Besides, the financial transactions carried out in 2014 in Alfenas-MG as a result of UNIFAL-MG through the spending by civil servants, students from other cities and expenditures and investments made by the own university was estimated at R$ 68,124,332.53. Although positive economic impacts were found and high financial transactions, significant positive impacts on various economic activities in the city of Alfenas-MG, concluding the importance of a public institution of higher education for the economy of a medium-sized city.