Welcome!
I am a fourth-year PhD candidate at Universitat Pompeu Fabra
(expected job market 2026-2027)
My research interests are broadly in Macroeconomics, with an emphasis in Labor and Firm Dynamics
mailing: felipe.bordinidoamaral@upf.edu
Abstract: I develop a labor market framework when monopsony power, informality and self-employment are simultaneously present - a salient characteristic of developing economies’ labor markets. I construct a model of heterogeneous firms with endogenous entry and calibrate it with Brazilian data. Firms self-select into formality or informality andworkers have the outside option of working as self-employed. From the firm’s per-spective, labor supply elasticity is endogenously determined by competition between formal and informal firms, across sectors and against self-employment. I find that while monopsony power is responsible for significant welfare losses, to the order of 5%, firm informality can be welfare improving, albeit only slightly. Finally, shifting the fiscal burden from marginal taxation (such as payroll taxes) to corporate taxation massively improves labor allocation, firm entry and welfare
Abstract: This work builds upon the concept of "temptation goods" as established by Banerjee and Mullainathan (2010): consumption goods that are valued only when consumed, not before. This temptation preference is taken into a general equilibrium, overlapping generations environment in order to assess the difference in its theoretical predictions on aggregate measures, in comparison to traditional preferences. The model is disciplined using detailed Brazilian consumption survey data. The calibration results supports the hypothesis of "declining temptation". Adding minimum consumption a la Stone-Geary improves fit to data. An income process with non linear persistence and non log-normal innovations is constructed. This richer income process features some important aspects not considered in canonical models, such as higher persistence of high income agents and a build-up around minimum wage levels. Results from the calibrated model indicate that, although decreasing, temptation’s importance is concentrated in extremely low levels of consumption and results in effectively no impact to predicted wealth distribution. However, when it comes to evaluating perceived patience of specific agents, failing to consider the temptation mechanism results in higher dispersion and left-skewness of the time discount parameter.