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I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam and have a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois. My research is focused on firm creation and growth, education, household investment decision, and individual acceptance and externalities of public policies.

My most recent paper investigates the acceptance of prostitution by quantifying the value that households pay to reside close to a Red Light District (winner of the SBE Best Paper in Applied Microeconomics in 2017). In another study (2nd prize GDN Medal for Research on Development in 2012), I exploit a liquidity shock from a large-scale welfare program in Brazil to investigate the importance of credit constraints and informal assistance between households in explaining entrepreneurship. On education and labor markets, my last working paper presents evidence that the ordinal rank of college students affects their career choices. Other published work includes analyses of stock liquidity and firm growth (winner of the RCFS Best Paper Award in 2015), poverty and labor market, and age differences in college admission.

I also have a Master degree in Economics from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and worked as an Associate Researcher for UNDP's International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG).