Returns to Education and Wage Differentials in Brazil: A Quantile Approach

This paper uses quantile regression techniques to analyze the returns to education across the conditional distribution of wages from individuals, separated both by gender and skin color, while accounting for the endogeneity of education decisions. Are the returns to education heterogeneous across the conditional distribution of earnings? Using data from the 1996 PNAD, the results indicate that the returns to education are, indeed, significantly heterogeneous across the distribution of earnings, as well as a considerable wage gap between the groups, according to gender and skin color.

INDUÇÃO A OCUPAÇÃO DECORRENTE DE UMA OBRA VIÁRIA: O CASO DO RODOANEL

This paper attempts to forecast the impact of a large transport infra-structure implementation (the outer ring in São Paulo Metropolitan Area) on firms location decision (i.e. the number of jobs by industry) and on households location decision by income class and origin-destination zones. Using the variation in commuting time given by the new infrastructure we can estimate the change in location decision by firms or households. The simulation results show that the south part of the outer ring does not have any significant impact on firm or households location decision if initial conditions are kept relatively constants. However, if there is an employment bubble in a site close to the new infrastructure the outer ring may work as a catalyst to induce more occupation in its surrounding areas.

Dry law and homicides: evidence from the São Paulo metropolitan area

Over the last 15 years, several Latin American cities have adopted dry laws, which restrain the sale of alcohol in bars and restaurants during specific hours of the week. Bogotá, in 1991, was the first. Several more have followed suit, or are likely to do so in the near future. Policy makers and the general press have argued that these measures reduce crime. In this paper, we use a particular feature of the adoption of laws in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area (SPMA) to estimate the effect of dry laws on the ultimate form of violent crime: murder. Between March 2001 and August 2004, 16 out of the 39 municipalities of the SPMA have adopted, at different dates, dry laws. By comparing the dynamics of homicide between adopting and non-adopting cities, we estimate that dry laws reduce homicides by at least 10%, with an even higher effect in high crime cities. Results are robust to inclusion of a large set of controls, to propensity score matching, to outliers, and to correction possible spillover effects from adopting to non-adopting cities.Dry Law, Alcohol, Crime, Difference-in-Difference

Distribuição Regional do Crédito Bancário e Convergência no Crescimento Estadual Brasileiro

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a convergência no crescimento entre os Estados brasileiros no período 1988-2001. Além das variáveis tradicionalmente utilizadas em estudos de convergência estadual, foram incluídos indicadores de credito, o que configura a inovação deste artigo. Os resultados mostram que algumas variáveis de crédito aumentam a velocidade de convergência. A variável de crédito que se revelou mais relevante nessa analise de convergência estadual foi a razão entre os empréstimos e títulos descontados e a renda. Com base nesses resultados, são extraídas algumas implicações de política pública.Distribuição Regional do Credito, Crescimento Estadual, Convergência

DISTRIBUIÇÃO REGIONAL DO CRÉDITO BANCÁRIO E CONVERGÊNCIA NO CRESCIMENTO ESTADUAL BRASILEIRO

The aim of this paper is to analyze the convergence in the growth rates among Brazilian States in the period 1988-2001. In addition to the traditional variables used in the studies about convergence, Brazilian States credit indicators were included, which is the very innovation of this study. The results show that, in general, credit increases the speed of convergence, although some kinds of directed credit generate the inverse effect. This suggests that credit has a positive impact in the growth of Brazilian States. Furthermore, the credit variable that was more effective in the convergence analysis is loans and bonds discounted in relation to the State income. As it turns out, this variable is likely to be a suitable proxy for the level of financial development of a State.

Regional, Economic, and Environmental Implications of Dual Ethanol Technologies in Brazil

Climate change, food security, and energy efficiency have become universal challenges for global economic development and environmental conservation that demand in-depth multidisciplinary research. Biofuels have emerged as a decisive factor in the fight against global warming and air pollution from fossil fuel use, and they can play an important role in the development of poor as well as rich regions. In this work, we investigate the implications of biofuels for regional development in Brazil given its historic experience as an ethanol producer. We compare the environmental and economic impacts of the two predominant ethanol production techniques, in order to understand their effects on output, employment and income and also their potential to reduce the intensity of fossil fuel use and emissions of greenhouse gases. As we focus on a developing country, we also examine the distributional impacts of ethanol technology deployment, in terms of its potential contributions to poverty alleviation and the reduction of regional income inequalities. The production technologies currently used to produce ethanol differ spatially in Brazil, with a capital-intensive technology being used in the Southern regions of the country, and a traditional labor-intensive technology in the Northern regions. We take advantage of this regional variation to conduct a comparative regional analysis of ethanol production technology choice. We evaluate and compare the direct and indirect relationship between output, employment, income, energy intensity, and pollution emissions at the subnational level for the two ethanol production technologies, showing quantitatively the interrelations between the ethyl alcohol industry and the rest of the economy. We hypothesize that the adoption of capital-intensive ethanol production technology provides greater output and employment and lower environmental and energy costs than more traditional technologies and, in contrast, that the implementation of the traditional technology alleviates income inequality by increasing the income received by households in economically deprived regions

Sources of the Incumbency (Dis)Advantage

An emerging literature finds that legislators frequently suffer a negative incumbency advantage in developing countries but disagrees as to the sources of this anti-incumbent bias. We contribute to this literature by examining the case of Brazil, where the extant literature predicts a large incumbency disadvantage. Building a new methodology for OLPR which leverages both inter- and intraparty thresholds, we find, contrary to expectations, a large ‘positive’ incumbency advantage. We further exploit within-country variation and show that this advantage appears to be largest in the least developed areas. Our results suggest that previous work may be confounding country-specific factors with development levels