This paper uses a discontinuity on the test score disclosure rules of the National Secondary Education Examination in Brazil to test whether test score disclosure affects student performance, the composition of students in schools, and school observable inputs. We find that test score disclosure...

Different episodes of economic growth display widely varying distributional characteristics, both across countries and over time. Growth is sometimes accompanied by rising and sometimes by falling inequality. Applied economists have come to rely on the Growth Incidence Curve, which gives the...

The Gini coefficient of labor earnings in Brazil fell by nearly a fifth between 1995 and 2012, from 0.50 to 0.41. The decline in earnings inequality was even larger by other measures, with the 90-10 percentile ratio falling by almost 40 percent. Although the conventional explanation of a falling...

This paper assesses whether eligibility for conditional cash transfer programs has been manipulated, as well as the impact of this phenomenon on time allocation within households. To perform this analysis, we use data from the 2006 PNAD (Brazilian national household survey) and investigate the...

Sistemas de school accountability que estabelecem a adoção de incentivos para professores e gestores geralmente impactam positivamente o desempenho dos alunos. No entanto, em muitas circunstâncias, sistemas de school accountability podem enfrentar restrições institucionais para estabelecer...

Abstract We extend the inference procedure for the synthetic control method in two ways. First, we propose parametric weights for the p-value that includes the equal weights benchmark of Abadie et al. [ 1 ]. By changing the value of this parameter, we can analyze the sensitivity of the...

This paper presents semiparametric estimators of distributional impacts of interventions (treatment) when selection to the program is based on observable characteristics. Distributional impacts of a treatment are calculated as differences in inequality measures of the potential outcomes of...

We exploit a discontinuity in Brazilian municipal election rules to investigate whether political competition has a causal impact on policy choices. In municipalities with less than 200,000 voters mayors are elected with a plurality of the vote. In municipalities with more than 200,000 voters a...

This paper argues that changes in the returns to occupational tasks have contributed to changes in the wage distribution over the last three decades. Using Current Population Survey (CPS) data, we first show that the 1990s polarization of wages is explained by changes in wage setting between and...

In the recent period, the qualitative dimension of the women participation in the labor force has improved quickly, in response to cultural and economic changes. In Brazil, many authors have pointed that women have a higher level of schooling than men, which should result, caeteris paribus, in...