We investigate the effect of having a child on parents’ criminal behavior using rich administrative data from Brazil. Fathers’ criminal activity sharply increases by up to 10% during the pregnancy period, and by up to 30% two years after birth, while mothers experience only a transitory decline in criminal activity around childbirth. The effect on fathers lasts for at least six years and can explain at least 5% of the overall male crime rate. Domestic violence within the family also increases after childbirth, reflecting both increases in actual violence and women’s propensity to report. The generalized increase in fathers’ crime stands in sharp contrast with previous evidence from developed countries, where childbirth is associated with significant and enduring declines in criminal behavior by both parents. Our findings can be explained by the costs of parenthood and the pervasiveness of poverty among newly formed Brazilian families. Consistent with this explanation, we provide novel evidence that access to maternity benefits largely offsets the increase in crime by fathers after childbirth. 

We study formal workers who receive part of their salary off the books, which we refer to as ”payments under the table” (PUT).We surveyed Brazil’s formal employees, accountants, and firm owners, providing the first comprehensive evidence on PUT. Despite the widespread belief about low evasion rates of third-party reported income, PUTs are sizeable and proportionally larger for higher-income workers, accounting for almost 7% of the revenue lost due to income tax. We provide a conceptual framework in which employer and employee bargain over the government’s forgone revenues that arise due to PUTs. A Nash Equilibrium guarantees that PUTs depend on both employees’ and employers’ marginal cost of evasion, which we test on the data. First, we leverage discontinuities on social security benefits to show that workers closer to retirement have incentives to reduce PUT to increase their pension. Then, we use novel data on PUT-related labor lawsuits to induce exogenous variation in employers’ perceptions of risks. We find a significant reduction in PUT for incumbent workers of firms that were sued for PUT, suggesting that employers learn about the risk associated with PUT.

We investigate how the racial composition of entrepreneurs affects racial differences in labor market outcomes of workers. We explore a unique Owner-Employer-Employee data set that contains race information of firm owners and workers in Brazil. We find that: (i) firms with nonwhite owners employ 18.7% more nonwhite workers. (ii) the adjusted racial wage gap is 32% smaller in firms with nonwhite owners. This is partially explained by nonwhite workers accessing better occupations in firms with nonwhite entrepreneurs. (iii) Nonwhite workers are more likely to become entrepreneurs if they were previously employed by firms with nonwhite owners. 

We explore a large-scale formalization program in Brazil to investigate how formality costs affect the registration and growth of microentrepreneurs. Using new administrative data, we leverage industry eligibility criteria from the program to show that a substantial reduction in formality costs increased formal firm registration by 76% in eligible industries between 2009 and 2015. In the same period, the formality rate of microentrepreneurs increased by 88%. Nevertheless, despite the considerable effects on informality, we reject that the reduction in formality cost caused major economic benefits for the newly formal microenterprises as they do not grow in observable measures.

I provide evidence on how individual labor supply responds to deaths of family members in the presence of survivors’ pensions. I use new administrative data from a generous pension scheme in Brazil and explore timings of deaths to identify an event-study model. I estimate that four years after the death of a household member, surviving members entitled to pensions reduce their labor supply by 38% and labor earnings by 23%. Labor supply responses are driven by extensive margin decisions and are larger for individuals with lower baseline earnings. However, foregone labor earnings are larger for those with higher baseline earnings. 

Abstract: This article aims to analyze the influence of the expansion of higher education on the labor market. For this, we examine how the increase of the graduates of the public and private sectors in Brazilian municipalities is related to variables of labor market and the average income. Using panel data of municipalities and different specifications, our results indicate that the growth of higher education is associated with the increase in average wage, occupation rate and per capita income. The variation of graduates in public institutions is strongly correlated with wages and average incomes, while graduates of private institutions showed comparatively higher correlations with the employment rate. In addition, the area of knowledge associated with the greatest wage and income variation is agriculture and veterinary. 

Abstract: This article aims to evaluate the impact of educational policies adopted in the early 2000s on the quality of education in the municipality of Sobral, in the State of Ceará. These policies have reorganized the educational system without incurring significant increase in spending on education. We use a combination of Propensity Score Matching and differences in differences method to estimate the impact. The results indicate significant positive effects in the short and long term for the early years of elementary school. However, challenges remain in extending these results to the final years of the same level of education

Wage variance in the Brazilian formal sector has reduced from 0.70 log points in 1995 to 0.41 in 2012. Despite the constant fall, the process wasn’t homogeneous through those years.  In this paper I show that the decline in wage inequality in the formal sector can be divided into two different processes that followed each other. The first one goes from the mid 1990’s to the early 2000’s while the following one goes from the early 2000’s to the end of my analysis in2012. I present several labor market trends that highlight the differences between both periods. This article doesn’t aim to identify direct causalities behind the two processes. Rather, I show descriptive statistics that must be taken into account when analyzing the reasons for the decline of wage inequality in the formal sector.

The labor market in Brazil had significant changes between 2003 and 2012. Wage inequality, informality and unemployment decreased while the real minimum wage rose. This paper has two major features. First, I propose a search and matching model with heterogeneous firms and workers that takes into account several attributes of the Brazilian labor market such as informality, unemployment, minimum wage, wage variance between and within firms and the educational composition of the workforce. Then, with an estimated model that fits important moments of the labor market in 2003, I make counterfactual exercises to quantify the determinants beneath the reduction of wage inequality. Results from the model suggest that changes in the real value of the minimum wage and the educational attainment of the workforce explain most of the reduction of wage inequality in the formal sector, but are more limited factors in the reduction of wage inequality in the whole economy.