Publications
“Subjective Models of Workers and Managers for Macroeconomic Expectations” AEA - Papers & Proceedings. 2025
with Francesco D’Acunto, Saten Kumar, Michael Weber
Abstract We propose a measure of subjective models of the macroeconomy for firms and workers. Subjective models are highly heterogeneous across agents and their distribution is similar within the groups of firm managers and workers. At the same time, the beliefs of managers and workers who hold the same subjective models react differently to monetary shocks. The expected persistence of monetary policy tightening differs across managers based on their subjective models but not across workers. And, the expected effect of monetary tightening on short-term inflation differs across workers based on their subjective models but not across managers.
Working Papers
“Effects of sharing positive credit information on consumer loans” with Marco Bonomo, Ricardo Schechtman
Abstract We use a change in regulation that improved financial institutions' information about borrowers with good credit repayment history as a natural experiment for investigating the causal effect of reducing informational asymmetries on credit outcomes. Brazilian SCR contains data for all loans with amounts above a certain threshold. The SCR information contains individual information derived from financial institutions' loans and is shared with all lending institutions. We exploit a reduction in the SCR individual debt threshold that made information about a group of borrowers suddenly available to all lending institutions. We investigate whether this improved positive information benefited households with loan amounts between the new and the previous thresholds. According to our estimation, after the threshold change, the cost of credit for those borrowers decreased by 33.5 p.p., the size of new loans increased while the average maturity was unchanged. We also document that smaller banks drove the results. Our results indicate that information asymmetry is an important determinant of lending rates. Thus, measures to improve positive information access should increase the efficiency of credit markets, benefiting on-time borrowers.
“Deposit Insurance Effects: Competition and Risk-Taking. Evidence from Brazil”
Abstract Does Deposit Insurance (DI) increase competition in the banking industry and does this affect sector stability? This study considers the creation of a deposit insurance fund for credit unions (CU) in Brazil that affected only part of the financial system, without a direct influence on the operations of banks in municipalities where there were no CU. This change was explored to investigate the effects of DI on competition and risk-taking. The study finds that after CU started offering DI, banks lost 3% of their deposits. This effect was stronger in markets where CU had previously a larger market share, indicating that DI can affect competition in the banking industry. It also observes that the increase in competition didn't affect sector stability by encouraging banks to take more risks. These findings show that deposit insurance can be important in leveling the playing field for smaller financial institutions.
“Payroll Payments Microdata and Aggregate Labor Market in Brazil”
Abstract Alternative private data sources that record economic activity on a granular, frequent, and timely basis are becoming increasingly available to academic research. Data from Itaú - the largest bank in Brazil, that processes payrolls for about one-fifth of the formal Brazilian private sector workforce - are used in this paper to create new statistics that complement existing measures regarding the formal labor market. The proposed indicator allows the measurement of employment at a timely frequency and has the potential to improve the understanding of the labor market in Brazil during the Covid-19 pandemic, a period in which government official series for employment underwent methodological inconsistencies due to changes in sample sizes, data collection methods, and representativeness.
White Papers
“Avaliação do Programa de Estímulo à Reestruturação e ao Fortalecimento do Sistema Financeiro Nacional (PROER)”
with Aldo Musacchio, André Martínez. IDB Working Paper (forthcoming)
“A Indústria de Meios de Pagamento no Brasil: movimentos recentes” with Adriana Perez. 2018.
“Regulação em Meios de Pagamento: Contratos de Interoperabilidade ou Participação?” with Adalto Gonçalves. 2018.
Dormant Research
“How a Development Bank Affects Productivity?” with Marco Bonomo, Ricardo Brito, Sergio Lazzarini. FEBRABAN Working Paper. 2019.
“How Do State Enterprises Adapt: An Historical And Comparative Exploration of CEO Turnover Decisions" with Paul Ferreira, Aldo Musacchio, Sergio Lazzarini. Academy of Management - Proceedings. 2018.
“Do CEOs of State-Owned Enterprises Matter? Evidence from Brazil, 1973-1993” with Aldo Musacchio, Sergio Lazzarini. 2012.