Working Papers
How are wages determined? A quasi-experimental test of wage determination theories (with João Galindo da Fonseca and Rogerio Santarrosa) (R&R at the Journal of Labor Economics) [latest version][RCEA WP]
We use novel quasi-experimental variation to first test whether firm-specific demand shocks impact wages, then to disentangle predictions coming from wage bargaining and firm upward labor supply (wage posting). We use a unique institutional feature of public procurement auctions in Brazil: the moment in which the auction ends is random. Under this setting, for auctions in which firms are constantly outbidding each other by incremental amounts, winner and runner-up are as good as randomly assigned. In addition, contract value is higher for auctions that (randomly) end earlier. We use these two sources of exogenous variation to disentangle the effect on wages that comes from changes in firm size (wage posting) and the part that comes from changes in contract value holding size constant (bargaining).
Do high-ability bosses affect workers' wages?
How does a boss' ability affect their workers' wages? If a high-ability boss induces higher productivity, this effect should be positive. On the other hand, if a good boss is someone who decreases their subordinates' wages, this effect would be negative. I propose an estimator inspired by the peer effects literature, and estimate the effect of bosses' types on other workers' wages in three types of local labour markets. In small town and rural labour markets and in labour markets defined by knowledge-intensive skills, the estimated effect is negative and statistically significant. In the market for low-skilled service sector workers, instead, the effect is small and not statistically significant.
Product demand and labour demand at the firm-level
I use matched administrative data on Brazilian firms to test whether changes in the composition of firm-level product demand drive corresponding shifts in the composition of labor demand. I construct revenue and payroll concentration indices at the firm-occupation and firm-product level by linking public procurement auctions to employer-employee records. First, I show that firms with more concentrated product revenue also display more concentrated occupational payrolls. Second, I show that when firms experience changes in the composition of their revenue—through growth or diversification—these are followed by systematic changes in the distribution of occupations they employ. The relationship holds even after controlling for overall firm size. These findings provide direct evidence that firms adjust their internal occupational structure in response to changes in product demand, consistent with models of multidimensional firm heterogeneity.
Work in Progress
Referral Networks: A quasi-experimental approach (with João Galindo da Fonseca and Rogerio Santarrosa)
We use quasi-random allocation of government contracts as exogenous variation on job creation. We then evaluate whether workers who have connections in firms that are hiring are more likely to (i) change jobs, and (ii) receive higher wages without moving. This is a direct test of exposure to information on job creation.
Estimating product complementarities in multi-product firms: a network approach with millions of procurement contracts
How can one estimate product complementarity using a large administrative data set with product-level sales? In this research I use data from government contracts that result from procurement auctions to estimate the complementarity between different products from the producer's point of view. A network can be drawn where nodes are products and edges are relative frequencies of products being sold by the same firm. Then, edge weights - how common we observe two products being sold by the same firm - can be thought of as the complementarity between two products. Additionally, by exploring the order in which auctions happen, I can explore the progression of firms over the product space: if it is common for one product to be sold before the other, we can think of the first as a possible steppingstone towards the latter.