Two Essays on Housing Programs and the Labor Market

Carlos Alberto Belchior.

26/03/2019

Orientador: Gabriel Ulyssea.

Co-orientador: Gustavo Gonzaga.

Banca: Cecilia Machado. Claudio Ferraz.

This dissertation is comprised of two chapters. In the first chapter, we assess how a large public housing program in Brazil affected short and medium-run employment probability and other labor market outcomes. We use data from lotteries in Rio de Janeiro to identify these impacts. We concluded that the program increased formal employment by about two percentage points and had no effect on informal employment. Moreover, we also find evidence that receiving a house increased wages and the quality of jobs held for the treated individuals and reduced participation in other social programs. Additionally, we used reduced-form models to test the mechanisms that might explain the observed increase in employment probability. We found evidence that the mobility costs from the individual job to the provided houses is an important determinant of the impacts of the program. On the other hand, neighborhood effects, relocation from the individuals’ house, migration and the distance from individuals’ previous homes do not seem to be important mechanisms in explaining the effect of the program on employment. In the second chapter, we complement the previous analysis by building and estimating a static labor supply structural model. We incorporate in the model the simultaneous decision to participate in the labor market and a housing program. We use data for lotteries to help identify the parameters of the model. The lotteries data is also used to out-of-sample validation. Our estimated model is able to reproduce well both the behavior of individuals in the data used for estimation and in the experimental hold-up sample. Then, we use this model to perform policy experiments and evaluate counterfactuals.

Login - Área do Aluno

Login ou senha invalido!

Search here