Environmental disasters and their impacts on the Brazilian economy: the mining industry case.

Brazil has been known for its mineral resources, which have been exploited by companies spread for the whole country. Nonetheless, the Brazilian mining sector has also been known for the recent disasters which have generated unprecedented social, economic, and environmental costs. In this way, this work presents an analysis of the impacts of the imposition of a new tax on the Brazilian mining activity, since it is a potential cause of negative externalities, causing damage to the environment and the society. For this, the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model was used. The results show that the introduction of a tax for the mining sector increased the production cost of mining activity and related sectors, which implies a reduction in economic dynamism. On the other hand, an introduction of the tax has also generated an increase in government revenues, which can finance new spending on other sectors of the country. Therefore, the economic losses resulting from the policy are not very pronounced, making it feasible to impose the tax on mining activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]