Vinícius Botelho, PhD
Special Projects Manager at FIN
Former Secretary for Social Policy Evaluation at the Brazilian Ministry for Social Development
My main research interests are in Public Economics and Industrial Organization
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Publications
Estimating the Economic Impacts of Power Supply Interruptions
(2019) Energy Economics, v.80, May 2019, pp.983-994
The cost of power system rationing, which is a crucial parameter for determining optimal resilience investments, is usually estimated using reduced-form linear models or ordinary input-output analysis. However, such methods do not properly address either consumers' rational reactions to rationing policy or policy design nonlinearities. To solve this problem, this paper estimates the effects of power system rationing using a general equilibrium model. The model solution shows that the power cut distribution among industries is a critical variable for quantifying policy effects and provides insights into optimal policy design.
Saving more than R$ 85 billion of Brazilian Social Security System: The case of PRBI
(2020) Brazilian Journal of Public Administration, v.54, n.6, pp.1729-1746, with Raquel Freitas and Alberto Beltrame
Since 2016, the number of recipients of incapacity allowance in Brazil has been continuously falling. This article presents the program of incapacity benefits assessment (PRBI) to help understand the dynamics around incapacity allowance and similar benefits. The study shows that the PRBI can save more than R$ 85 billion of the budget allocated to social security in the country.
Working Papers
[Job Market Paper] Optimal Subsidies in Capacity-Constrained Essential Services
The public provision in mixed markets for essential services, like education, health, and childcare, is typically subsidized to increase take-up despite being often capacity-constrained. However, subsidizing a capacity-constrained option does not increase access unless subsidies reduce private prices or the crowding out of the private alternatives (through consumer sorting). If these equilibrium effects are absent, maximizing access may require reallocating resources currently used to subsidize the public option toward other strategies, such as expanding public firm capacity or subsidizing private supply. This paper focuses on the optimal combination of subsidies between private and public firms, keeping capacity fixed. We estimate a structural supply and demand model for the Brazilian higher education market, where private firms compete with a high-quality, free, and capacity-constrained public provision. We show that subsidizing the public option when it is capacity-constrained increases the crowding out of private schools but reduces private prices. The private price reduction could make the subsidies to capacity-constrained providers increase access; nevertheless, we show that implementing a reform that slightly increases the monthly tuition for public degrees and provides a budget-neutral unconditional scholarship reduces excess demand in public schools and increases enrollment, consumer surplus, and profits.
The Insurance Role of Public Employment
with Anna dos Reis and Eduardo Zilberman
A public job can be a source of insurance against income risk. Indeed, many public employees have job stability, which is compounded with less volatile and more compressed wages. Hence, by increasing its number of employees, the government improves the degree of insurance in the economy. In order to quantify this source of insurance, we introduce public employment in an incomplete markets model. In a model economy calibrated to Brazil, if the share of public workers reduces from 13.5 to 10 percent, social welfare increases but losses due to the worse degree of insurance are of 1 to 2 percent.
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