Ariel Akerman, PhD

Development Effectiveness Consultant, Inter-American Development Bank (SPD/SDV)

Working papers

Deforestation and the Demographic Transition: Lessons from Brazil (new draft soon)
The premise of this paper is that the population slowdown in Brazil was a major factor preventing the deepening of deforestation in the Amazon. I construct a novel dataset covering deforestation, population, and agricultural outcomes in every municipality in Brazil over the last 60 years. I then use an instrumental variable strategy to estimate that a birth rate decline of five children per thousand leads to around 10 percent less deforestation after twenty years. Using these and other findings, I estimate a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model with agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, population growth, and deforestation. The model predicts that if Brazil’s population growth slowdown had started two decades later, around 13 percent more of the Amazon would be deforested today.

[The Effects of Zoning Reform on Formal and Informal Housing], with Zhongy Tang
Although slums offer affordable housing options near employment opportunities, their residents often face the risk of displacement due to urban development initiatives and land use policy changes. This paper examines the impacts of a zoning reform in São Paulo, Brazil, on formal and informal housing. To evaluate these impacts, we compile an extensive dataset covering 1996-2016, tracking slum evolution, zoning changes, public housing constructions, detailed formal housing records from property tax, and socioeconomic variables at the neighborhood level. Our identification strategy combines propensity score matching and difference-in-differences design. The reform led to increased formal housing supply, decreased slum prevalence, and an uptick in public housing development. Neighborhoods affected by the reform show positive but statistically insignificant evidence of higher income and education attainment, indicating weak gentrification despite displacement.

[Public R&D Meets Economic Development: Embrapa and Brazil’s Agricultural Revolution], with Jacob Moscona, Heitor Pellegrina, and Karthik Sastry [NBER version], [SSRN version]Coverage and summaries: [Valor Econômico], [NBER Digest], [VoxEU], [Globo Rural]
Can public R&D investment in developing countries drive productivity growth? We study this question in the context of Brazilian agriculture and the Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Embrapa), a public research corporation established in 1973 to develop locally suitable science and technology. First, we show that Embrapa redirected research toward prioritized staple crops and local ecological conditions, and increased research productivity, especially in remote and research-scarce regions. Second, exploiting the staggered rollout of research centers alongside heterogeneous local exposure to Embrapa's technology development, we find that Embrapa significantly increased agricultural output, driven both by higher productivity and expanded input use. Combined with a model, these estimates imply that public R\&D investment increased national agricultural productivity by 110% with a benefit-cost ratio of 17. The decentralized structure, in which research labs were spread across many ecological zones instead of in a single hub, explains a large share of these benefits.

Work in progress
Mining Income and Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa, with Enrico Di Gregorio and Myrto Oikonomou (slides available upon request)

Mapping Population in the Colonial US, with Martin Fiszbein (draft available upon request)

Guns, Rails, and Letters, with Sam Bazzi, Chelsea Carter, Martin Fiszbein, and Mesay Gebresilasse

Publication
[The West's Teeth: IMF Conditionality During the Cold War], with Leonardo Weller and João Paulo Pessoa

Dormant projects
The Green Revolution Impacts on Brazilian Agriculture: Structural Transformation and Development (draft available upon request)

Bandits in Brazil: the Economics of the Cangaço (slides available upon request)

Undergrad thesis: [A conferência sobre inflação e desenvolvimento de 1963], in Portuguese

Teaching
Boston University Teaching Fellow, Intermediate Macroeconomics, Fall/2024 and Fall/2023 Teaching Fellow, International Macroeconomics, Fall/2024 and Fall/2023 Teaching Fellow, Introductory Microeconomics, Fall/2020 and Spring/2021 (Outstanding Teaching Fellow Prize, 2020-21)
São Paulo School of Economics, Getulio Vargas Foundation Teaching Fellow, Brazil's Economic Formation, 2018 Teaching Fellow, Brazilian Institutions, 2018 Teaching Fellow, Undergraduate Econometrics, 2018 Teaching Fellow, Professional Master's Macroeconomics, 2018

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