In this paper we develop theoretical criteria and econometric methods to rank policy interventions in terms of welfare when individuals are loss-averse. The new criterion for "loss aversion-sensitive dominance" defines a weak partial ordering of the distributions of policy-induced gains and...

Through rapid urbanization, Brazil-previously a country where most workers were in the agricultural sector-went through a strong process of structural transformation that lasted almost four decades until economic liberalization at the beginning of the 1990s. During the same period, income...

We propose a new regression method to estimate the impact of explanatory variables on quantiles of the unconditional distribution of an outcome variable. The proposed method consists of running a regression of the (recentered) influence function (RIF) of the unconditional quantile on the...

This paper aims to estimate the effects of maternity leave legislation in women’s wages and employment in Brazil. We analyze the impact of an increase in the leave period, which was raised from 12 weeks to 120 days, as prescribed by the Federal Constitution of 1998. According to the...

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...

We study the determinants of the public-private earnings gap for different levels of schooling of Brazilian workers. First, using the current earnings as the variable of interest, we estimate that less educated people receive higher earnings in the public sector (i.e., the earnings gap is...

Neste artigo documentamos haver entre alunos do ensino básico no Brasil uma relação negativa e significativa entre dispersão etária dentro das turmas e a proficiência individual. A relação entre a defasagem idade-série da criança e a sua proficiência escolar é usualmente explicada...

School accountability systems that establish the adoption of incentives for teachers and school managers usually impact positively students' performance. However, in many circumstances, school accountability systems may face institutional restrictions to establish rewards and sanctions to...

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