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...

This article analyses the impact of the Programa Bolsa Família (PBF), Brazil's Conditional Cash Transfer Programme), by way of an "income shock" on the labour supply of beneficiaries as measured by probability of working and number of weekly hours worked by both men and women. Bolsa Família...

As with many other addictions and risk behaviours, smoking initiation is an early affair: most who adopt it at all do so early on during adolescence, rarely beyond their mid-20s. It is known that the cumulative health and mortality effects of smoking take a long time to unfold (Gajalakshmi et...

There are many elements to the public policies required to reduce educational disparities among students. They include issues related to infrastructure, remuneration and training of education professionals, and debates regarding unifying content at the national level and on forms of public...

This paper evaluates the impact of the 2007 expansion of the Bolsa Família programme to families with youths aged 16 to 17 years (Benefício Variável Jovem) on the time allocation of youths and on the labour supply of adults. The differences-in-difference estimator was used to compare...

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...