We study the impact of the Belgium lockdown on retail prices using a unique dataset tracking daily prices and promotions for various products in different stores and retail chains. Two distinctive features of our analysis are the ban on promotions during the first two weeks of the lockdown, and...

Mergers realize heterogeneous competitive effects on profits, production, and prices. To date, it is unclear whether differential merger outcomes are caused mostly by firms' technology or product market attributes. Furthermore, empirical merger studies conventionally assume that, conditional on...

We study the labor market outcomes of a deregulation reform in Germany that removed licensing requirements to become self-employed in some occupations. Using longitudinal social security data, we implement a matched difference-in-differences design with entropy balancing to account for...

To examine the drivers of innovation, this paper studies the global R and D effort to fight the deadliest diseases and presents four results. We find: (1) global pharmaceutical R and D activity-measured by clinical trials-typically follows the 'law of diminishing effort': id est the elasticity...

We use an OLG model to study the effects of the generous public sector pension system in Brazil. In our model there are two types of workers, one working in the private sector, the other working in the public sector. Public workers produce infrastructure or education services. We find that...

We estimate the subnational employment and GDP multiplier of Brazil's 2020 federal cash transfers to vulnerable households. Using two-stage least squares regressions we estimate a formal employment multiplier and then apply an analytical transformation to recover an implied GDP multiplier in the...

We document the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Brazilian labor market focusing on employment, wages and hours worked using the nationally representative household surveys PNAD-Continua and PNAD COVID. Sectors most susceptible to the shock because they are more...

Employment is key to combating poverty. Thus, detractors of social assistance programs argue that they create disincentives to work. While there is substantial evidence showing limited effects of these programs on overall labor supply, the jury is still out with respect to their impact on formal...

We quantify the effect of a minimum wage on compression throughout the earnings distribution. Using the case of Brazil, which experienced a large decrease in earnings inequality while its real minimum wage increased from 1996-2012, we document that the inequality decrease was bottom-driven yet...