This paper presents new empirical evidence about the wage gap between union and nonunion workers in Brazil. In principle, due to the rules governing union organization/mobilization, no one should rationally expect such gap. However, as this paper reveals, there is empirical evidence of its...

Time and locally specific poverty lines for Brazilian metropolitan areas, which concentrate a third of the country's population, are used for examining the proportion of poor along the short-term cycles, typical of the economic evolution in the 80's. Although the sensibility of poverty to the...

During the 2000s, Brazil experienced slow economic growth and a substantial improvement in labour market indicators. From 2001 to 2012, Brazil grew less than the Latin American average. However, the unemployment rate decreased, the employment composition improved, the educational level of...

The vigorous growth of the Chinese economy together with its growing role in international trade has raised fears of deindustrialization among developing countries. This study draws on the large increase in the international trade exposure of the Brazilian economy from 2000 to 2012 to assess the...

Can students' rank in the ability distribution of their class impact their academic achievement? We aim to answer this question using a discontinuity generated by a rule for the distribution of students between classes at a prestigious Brazilian university. The rule means that in almost 30 per...

Labor markets in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are characterized by high levels of informality and relatively rigid regulation. This paper shows that these two features are related and together make the speed of adjustment of employment to shocks slower, especially when regulations are...

This paper first exploits a "bonus" policy providing low-income workers with cash grants in Brazil to study the effect of liquidity provision on unemployment outcomes. Based on a RD Design, I find that granting unemployed workers with a bonus equal to half of their previous monthly earnings...

This paper aims at contributing to the debate regarding the role of the minimum wage in Brazil. This is carried out by assessing its potential effects on the labor market outcomes, as well in terms of poverty alleviation and fiscal impact. First, a succinct description of the institutional...

This paper analyses - in a structuralist approach - the recent path (1980/2000) of Brazilian economy and the consequencies over the labour market. There are three important aspects to be noted in the text. First, we present the main relations between the crisis of Brazilian economy and the...