Judicial decisions in bankruptcy are often influenced by the goal to preserve employment in financially distressed firms. What are the effects of these pro-labor decisions on workers' earnings and employment trajectories? We construct a new court-level measure of pro-labor bias based on the text...

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 the effects of climate change on labor and capital reallocation across regions, sectors and firms. We use newly digitized administrative reports on extreme weather events occurred in Brazil during the last two decades and a meteorological measure of excess dryness relative to historical...

We study how the disclosure of corrupt practices affects the growth of firms involved in illegal interactions with the government using randomized audits of public procurement in Brazil. On average, firms exposed by the anti-corruption program grow larger after the audits, despite experiencing a...

The introduction of new technologies in agriculture can foster structural transformation by freeing workers who find occupation in other sectors. The traditional view is that this reallocation of workers towards manufacturing can lead to industrial development. However, when workers moving to...

Brazil experienced one of the most severe recessions in its history from 2014 to 2016. Following a pattern shown for previous economic downturns in other countries, the Brazilian recession was preceded by a substantial increase in household debt from 2003 to 2014. This study utilizes a novel...

We extend the literature on interest group behavior and policy outcomes by examining how groups with limited resources (votes and campaign contributions) effectively influence government by manipulating media information to voters. Voters in turn lobby politicians to implement the group's...

Tenancy has been a means for labor to advance their socio-economic condition in agriculture yet in Brazil and Latin America, tenancy rates are low compared to the U.S. and the OECD countries. We test for the importance of insecure property rights in Brazil on the reluctance of landowners to rent...

We present a conceptual framework to better understand the interaction between settlement and the emergence of de facto property rights on frontiers prior to governments establishing and enforcing de jure property rights. In this framework, potential rents associated with more exclusivity drives...

The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 gave relatively strong powers to the President. We model and test Executive-Legislative relations in Brazil and demonstrate that Presidents have used pork as a political currency to exchange for votes on policy reforms. In particular Presidents Cardoso and Lula...