Research

Published and Forthcoming Papers

Assortative Matching or Exclusionary Hiring? The Impact of Firm Policies on Racial Wage Differences in Brazil (with François Gerard, Edson Severnini, and David Card). October 2021. American Economic Review.

Abstract: We measure the effects of firm policies on racial pay differences in Brazil. Non-Whites are less likely to be hired by high-wage firms, explaining about 20 percent of the racial wage gap for both genders. Firm-specific pay premiums for non-Whites are also compressed relative to Whites, contributing another 5 percent for that gap. A counterfactual analysis reveals that about two-thirds of the underrepresentation of non-Whites at higher-wage firms is explained by race-neutral skill-based sorting. Non-skill-based sorting and differential wage setting are largest for college-educated workers, suggesting that the allocative costs of discriminatory hiring and pay policies may be relatively large in Brazil.  

Working Papers

Collective Bargaining for Women: How Unions Create Female-Friendly Jobs (with Viola Corradini and Garima Sharma). May 2023. Reject and Resubmit: The Quarterly Journal of Economics. [Media: InequaliTalks]

Abstract: Why aren’t workplaces better designed for women? We show that changing the priorities of those who set workplace policies can create female-friendly jobs. Starting in 2015, Brazil’s largest trade union federation made women central to its bargaining agenda. Using a difference-in-differences design that exploits variation in affiliation to the federation, we find that “bargaining for women” increases female-centric amenities in collective bargaining agreements, which are then reflected in practice. These changes lead women to queue for jobs at treated establishments and separate from them less—both revealed preference measures of firm value. We find no evidence that these gains come at the expense of employment, wages, or firm profits. Our results suggest that changing institutional priorities can narrow the gender compensation gap. 

Union Bargaining Power and the Amenity-Wage Tradeoff. May 2024. Under review.

Abstract: This paper studies the relation between the wage and amenity components of compensation under collective bargaining. Using the universe of collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in Brazil, I augment information on workers' wages with the comprehensive set of amenities codified in the text of these contracts. I then estimate the effects of increasing union bargaining power with a difference-in-difference strategy that leverages 1) a judicial decision that prevented the expiration of existing CBA provisions—a policy known as ultractivity—and 2) gaps in CBA coverage across establishments when the policy was enacted. I find that boosting union power causes an increase in both wages and CBA clauses without a subsequent decrease in employment. A revealed preference approach to estimating the wage-equivalent value of negotiated clauses shows that amenity value also increases, comprising approximately 45% of workers' total gains in compensation. Results are consistent with collective bargaining functioning as a labor market institution that counters monopsony power, but where employers retain the right-to-manage the composition of their workforce.

Racial Inequality, Minimum Wage Spillovers, and the Informal Sector (with Ellora Derenoncourt, François Gerard, and Claire Montialoux). May 2021.

Abstract: This paper studies how a national minimum wage affects wages, and in particular, racial earnings disparities in a middle-income country with a large informal sector. Our context is the Brazilian economy, characterized by persistently large racial disparities and the availability of detailed labor force surveys and administrative matched employer-employee data with information on race. We analyze the effect of large increases in the minimum wage that occurred between 1999 and 2009. Using a variety of research designs and identification strategies, we obtain three main findings. First, the increase in the minimum wage erased the racial earnings gap up to the 10th percentile of the national wage distribution and up to the 30th percentile in the lowest wage region, the Northeast. Second, there is no evidence of significant reallocation of workers from the formal sector to the informal sector. This can be explained by the fact that the minimum wage is defacto binding in the informal sector (excluding agriculture, domestic workers, and the self-employed). Third, we do not find evidence of significant dis-employment effects, or of white-nonwhite labor-labor substitution. As a result, the minimum wage increases of the 2000s led to a large decline in the economy-wide racial income gap in Brazil. 

Works in Progress

"Collective Bargaining, Earnings, and Inequality" (with Ellora Derenoncourt, François Gerard, and Claire Montialoux). May 2022. 

"The Union-Politics Pipeline" (with Ricardo Dahis). January 2024. 

Other Work (not peer reviewed)

Violence and Credit Use: Evidence from MSEs in Mexico’s Drug War. Trabajo de investigación para la Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores (CNBV). 2019.

Institutional Trust: The Case Study of Mexican State Institutions. SPICE: Student Perspectives on Institutions, Choices and Ethics. 2012.