Democratic representation is constrained by the alternatives available to voters. In this paper, we develop a methodology to gauge the extent to which the "supply side" of politics hinders voter welfare. Using rich data on thousands of candidates in three Brazilian legislative elections, we...

Using rich administrative and household survey data spanning 34 years from 1985 to 2018, we document a series of new facts on earnings inequality and dynamics in a developing country with a large informal sector: Brazil. Since the mid-1990s, both inequality and volatility of earnings have...

This paper analyzes how changes in the concentration of political power affect long-run development. We study Brazil's military dictatorship whose rise to power dramatically altered the distribution of power of local political elites. We document that municipalities that were more politically...

Since Brazil's adoption of universal health care in 1988, the country's health care system has consisted of a mix of private providers and free public providers. We test whether income-based disparities in medical visits and medications remain in Brazil despite universal coverage using a...