While there is evidence of gender differences in leaders' behavior, less is known about what drives these gaps. This paper uncovers the role of electoral incentives. Using a close election regression discontinuity design in Brazil, we first show that female mayors handled the COVID-19 crisis...

This paper presents an overview of how health outcomes vary across cities in Latin America and discusses some of the known drivers of this variation. There are large disparities in outcomes across cities and across neighborhoods of the same city. Because health is closely related to the...

This paper investigates what explains the variation in impacts of COVID-19 across Brazilian cities. I assemble data from over 2,500 cities on COVID-19 cases and deaths, population mobility, and local policy responses. I study how these outcomes correlate with pre-pandemic local characteristics,...

This study assesses the empirical relevance of the Harris-Todaro model at high levels of urbanization a feature that characterizes an increasing number of developing countries, which were largely rural when the model was created 50 years ago. Using data from Brazil, the paper compares observed...

This paper examines why a larger share of COVID-19 deaths occurs among young and middle-aged adults in developing countries than in high-income countries. Using novel data at the country, city, and patient levels, we investigate the drivers of this gap in terms of the key components of the...

This paper explores the effects of weather-induced rural-urban migration on urban labor and housing markets in Brazil. In order to identify causal effects, it uses weather shocks to the rural municipalities of origin of migrants. We show that larger migration shocks led to an increase in...

This study analyzes mobility patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic for eight large Latin American cities. Indicators of mobility by socioeconomic status (SES) are generated by combining georeferenced mobile phone information with granular census data. Before the pandemic, a strong positive...