Simulado para Auditor-Fiscal da Receita Federal – Prova da Manhã – Gabarito Comentado

Text I
Adding ethics to public finance
Evolutionary moral psychologists point the way to garnering
broader support for fiscal policies
Policy decisions on taxation and public expenditures
intrinsically reflect moral choices. How much of your hard-earned
money is it fair for the state to collect through taxes? Should the
rich pay more? Should the state provide basic public services such
as education and health care for free to all citizens? And so on.
Economists and public finance practitioners have traditionally
focused on economic efficiency. When considering distributional
issues, they have generally steered clear of moral considerations,
perhaps fearing these could be seen as subjective. However,
recent work by evolutionary moral psychologists suggests that
policies can be better designed and muster broader support if
policymakers consider the full range of moral perspectives on
public finance. A few pioneering empirical applications of this
approach in the field of economics have shown promise.
For the most part, economists have customarily analyzed
redistribution in a way that requires users to provide their own
preferences with regard to inequality: Tell economists how much
you care about inequality, and they can tell you how much
redistribution is appropriate through the tax and benefit system.
People (or families or households) have usually been considered
as individuals, and the only relevant characteristics for these
exercises have been their incomes, wealth, or spending potential.
There are two — understandable but not fully satisfactory —
reasons for this approach. First, economists often wish to be
viewed as objective social scientists. Second, most public finance
scholars have been educated in a tradition steeped in values of
societies that are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich,
and Democratic). In this context, individuals are at the center of
the analysis, and morality is fundamentally about the golden rule
— treat other people the way that you would want them to treat
you, regardless of who those people are. These are crucial but
ultimately insufficient perspectives on how humans make moral
choices.
Evolutionary moral psychologists during the past couple of
decades have shown that, faced with a moral dilemma, humans
decide quickly what seems right or wrong based on instinct and
later justify their decision through more deliberate reasoning.
Based on evidence presented by these researchers, our instincts in
the moral domain evolved as a way of fostering cooperation within
a group, to help ensure survival. This modern perspective harks

back to two moral philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment —
David Hume and Adam Smith — who noted that sentiments are
integral to people’s views on right and wrong. But most later
philosophers in the Western tradition sought to base morality on
reason alone.
Moral psychologists have recently shown that many people
draw on moral perspectives that go well beyond the golden rule.
Community, authority, divinity, purity, loyalty, and sanctity are
important considerations not only in many non-Western
countries, but also among politically influential segments of the
population in advanced economies, as emphasized by proponents
of moral foundations theory.
Regardless of whether one agrees with those broader moral
perspectives, familiarity with them makes it easier to understand
the underlying motivations for various groups’ positions in debates
on public policies. Such understanding may help in the design of
policies that can muster support from a wide range of groups with
differing moral values.
Adapted from: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/Adding-
ethics-to-public-finance-Mauro

Text II
How trade can become a gateway to climate resilience
Most people don’t think about climate change when they lift a
café latte to their lips or nibble on a square of chocolate — but this
could soon change.
Based on current trajectories, around a quarter of Brazil’s
coffee farms and 37% of Indonesia’s are likely to be lost to climate
change. Swathes of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire — where most of the
world’s chocolate is sourced — will become too hot to grow cocoa
by 2050.
Climate-related droughts and deadly heatwaves across the
world have coincided with severe storms, cyclones, hurricanes,
and, of course, a pandemic. As a consequence of these shocks,
millions of people have been left without homes, and a growing
number of people now face starvation and a total collapse of
livelihoods as growing and exporting staple crops becomes
untenable.
We must immediately rethink the shape of our economies,
agricultural systems and consumption patterns. Our priority is to
manufacture climate resilience in global economies and societies
— and we must do it quickly.
Trade can kickstart the emergence of climate-resilient
economies, especially in the poorest countries. Trade has a
multiplier effect on economies by driving production growth and
fostering the expansion of export industries. By shifting focus to
production and exports that increase climate resilience, there is
potential to exponentially increase the land surface and trade
processes prepared to withstand the climate crisis.
Adapted from: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/trade-can-be-a-
gateway-to-climate-resilience