Research

Working Papers
An Aspiring Friend Is a Friend Indeed: On the Mechanisms Behind Peer Influences on Human Capital  Accumulation 

This paper studies friends' influence on the process of human capital accumulation. I leverage novel data on Brazilian students' networks and investigate whether friends' school completion impacts students' school completion. The employed methodology first models friendship formation based on quasi-random interaction opportunities and then uses the attributes of predicted friends of friends as instrumental variables for friends' outcomes. The results show that an extra friend graduating from high school increases the likelihood of students' graduation by 6.62 percent. An in-depth analysis of the mechanism behind such effects underscores the role of aspirations as the primary driver of friends' influence. 

Coverage: Development Impact


Enforcement spillovers under different networks: The case of quotas for persons with disabilities in Brazil - with Samuel Berlinski

This paper investigates the spillover effects of law enforcement and how such spillovers depend on the networks where such enforcement occurs. We study the case of mandate quotas for workers with disabilities in Brazil, a law establishing that firms with more than one hundred workers should reserve at least two percent of their vacancies for workers carrying a disability. We first employ a difference-in-discontinuity strategy to show that introducing new inspection procedures to enforce compliance with the quota law increased inspections and the issuing of fines due to non-compliance. Firms reacted to this increase in enforcement by hiring more workers with disabilities. Interestingly, even firms not directly impacted by the quota law enforcement reacted to introducing the new inspection procedures, indicating the presence of enforcement spillovers. We then directly test the emergence of spillovers from law enforcement in different firms' networks. Using a stacked differences-in-differences strategy, we show that spillovers arise when a quota law fine happens in the firm's neighbor, owner, and human resources workers' networks. The total number of workers with disabilities hired due to spillover effects is more relevant for the neighbor and the human resources workers' networks since they are considerably larger than the owner network.


Words Can Hurt: How Political Communication Can Change the Pace of an Epidemic  - with Lucas A. Mariani and Paula Rettl  

While elite-cue effects on public opinion are well-documented, questions remain as to when and why voters use elite cues to inform their opinions and behaviors. Using experimental and observational data from Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic, we study how leader cues influence decisions about issues of direct personal relevance. Relying on an event study design, we first document a divergence in mobility and excess-death trends between municipalities with low or high concentrations of Bolsonaro voters. We argue that these patterns are explained by Bolsonaro polarizing the electorate regarding COVID-19-related issues. Evidence from two pre-registered survey experiments supports this argument. We also explore whether voters react to Bolsonaro’s cues as a way to make decisions with little cognitive effort (heuristics) or to express group membership (expressive utility). Results from our survey experiments show that the effects of Bolsonaro’s cues among his supporters tend to be stronger for individuals that both strongly identify with the leader and have high cognitive resources. Findings are less clear for Bolsonaro opponents. We conclude that in-groups may follow political-elite cues to protect their social-political identity even in situations where the decision at hand has direct implications for their well-being and way of life.

Coverage (in Portuguese): O Globo, CNN Brazil, Jovem Pan 




Work in Progress

"In the Eye of the Beholder: Peers' expectations and long term educational outcomes in Brazil" (with Marcos A. Rangel)

"Air Pollution, Human Capital Accumulation, and Labor Market Outcomes:  Evidence from Brazil " (with Bridget Hoffmann,  Marcos A. Rangel, and Diego A. Vera-Cossio)

"Contract enforcement and workers' referrals" (with Giovanna d'Adda and Giovanni Righetto)

"Evaluating the take-up of digital programs: Evidence from a debt relief program in Brazil"  (with Lucas A. Mariani, Daniel Grimaldi,  Jose Renato Ornerlas, and Diego Vera-Cossio)

Policy Research

"Health Inequality: A Tale of Expansion and Fragmentation" (with Samuel Berlinski and Marcos Vera-Hernandes) In The Inter-American Development Bank's report  "The inequality crisis"


"Universal Basic Income: How the experience in developing countries can inform the discussion in South Africa",  ERSA's discussion document, 2022


"Importance of employment programs for the youth in South Africa" (with Michelle Pleace), ERSA's discussion document, 2023