This article investigates the effect increasing secondary education opportunities has on teenage fertility in Brazil. Using a novel dataset to exploit variation from a 57 increase in secondary schools across 4,884 Brazilian municipalities between 1997 and 2009, the analysis shows an important...

This study proposes a novel supply-side mechanism driving economic structural transformation: grid electrification. Increasing electricity availability affects the reallocation of inputs to more productive activities through generating higher returns and lowering entry costs in sectors with...

What is the impact of greater teacher autonomy on student learning? This paper provides experimental evidence from a program in Brazil. The program supported teachers, through a combination of technical assistance and a small grant, to autonomously develop and implement an innovative project...

The production of export goods has become increasingly unbundled, and countries positioning to become more integrated in the global economy are increasingly looking toward global value chains. This paper uses the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/World Trade Organization's...

Traditionally, governments seek to mobilize tax revenues by expanding their enforcement of existing tax regimes and facilitating tax payments. However, enforcement and facilitation can be costly and produce diminishing marginal returns if citizens are unwilling to pay their taxes. This paper...

Electronic reverse auctions are the most used competitive method for procurement of goods and non-consulting services by the Federal Government of Brazil. These auctions are closed randomly, which perfectly satisfies fairness considerations but may be suboptimal from an efficiency perspective....

This paper examines two new methods to generate gridded agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and compares the results with a traditional method. In the case of Brazil, these two new methods of spatial disaggregation and cross-entropy outperform the prediction of agricultural GDP from the...

Policy makers in Brazil attempted to improve human capital through changes in the legislated requirements for teacher education in 1996. They passed a national Law of Guidelines and Standards of Education that established 2007 as the deadline for all Brazilian basic education teachers to have...

Drawing on in-depth interviews with young women and men in rural and urban Brazil, this qualitative research explores gender dimensions in the causes and consequences of being "out of work and out of school." A key conclusion from this research is that this term (or the Portuguese: "nem-nem")...

How do labor income shocks affect household investment in upper secondary and tertiary schooling? Using longitudinal data from 2005-15 for Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, this paper explores the effect of a negative household income shock on the enrollment status of youth ages 15 to 25. The...