From 2011 to 2014, the Brazilian government conducted a heavily advertised major credit expansion program through government banks as part of its effort to stimulate the economy. Using administrative data on individual-level borrowing and spending, we find that the program led to a substantial...

We study how financial development affects economic development and wage inequality. We use a large expansion of government-owned banks into Brazilian cities with low bank branch coverage and combine it with data on the universe of employees from 2000-2014. We find that higher financial...

We analyze the macroeconomic effects of macroprudential policy - in the form of legal reserve requirements - in three Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay). To correctly identify innovations in changes in legal reserve requirements, we develop a narrative approach - based on...

This paper shows how changes in the volatility of the real interest rate at which small open emerging economies borrow have a quantitatively important effect on real variables like output, consumption, investment, and hours worked. To motivate our investigation, we document the strong evidence...

The recent world energy crisis raises serious questions about the extent to which the United States should increase domestic oil production and develop alternative sources of energy. We examine the energy developments in Brazil as an important experiment. Brazil has reduced its share of imported...