This paper studies the effect of changes in economic conditions on crime. We exploit the 1990s trade liberalization in Brazil as a natural experiment generating exogenous shocks to local economies. We document that regions exposed to larger tariff reductions experienced a temporary increase in crime following liberalization. Next, we investigate through what channels the trade-induced economic shocks may have affected crime. We show that the shocks had significant effects on potential determinants of crime, such as labor market conditions, public goods provision, and income inequality. We propose a novel framework exploiting the distinct dynamic responses of these variables to obtain bounds on the effect of labor market conditions on crime. Our results indicate that this channel accounts for 75 to 93 percent of the effect of the trade-induced shocks on crime

We augment a standard dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions, in order to quantify the macroeconomic effects of the credit deepening process observed in Latin America in the last decade - most notably in Brazil. In the model, a stylized banking sector intermediates credit from patient households to impatient households and entrepreneurs. Motivated by the Brazilian experience, we allow the credit constraint faced by households to depend on labor income. Our model is designed to isolate the effects of credit deepening through demand-side channels, and abstracts from potential effects of credit supply on total factor productivity. In the calibrated model, credit deepening generates only modest above-trend growth in consumption, investment, and GDP. Since Brazil has experienced one of the most intense credit deepening processes in Latin America, we argue that the quantitative effects that hinge on the channels captured by the model are unlikely to be sizable elsewhere

(revisto em Junho de 2017)

Esta tese é composta por 3 capítulos. No primeiro capítulo mostro que quando um banco central não é totalmente apoiado financeiramente pelo  tesouro e enfrenta uma restrição de solvência, um aumento no tamanho ou uma mudança na composição de seu balanço pode servir como um mecanismo de compromisso em um cenário de armadilha de liquidez. Em particular, quando a taxa de juros de curto prazo está em zero, operações de mercado aberto do banco central que envolvam compras de títulos de longo prazo podem ajudar a mitigar a deflação e recessão sob um equilíbrio de política discricionária. Usando um modelo simples com produto exógeno, mostramos que uma mudança no balanço do banco central, que aumenta seu tamanho e duração, incentiva o banco central a manter as  taxas de juros baixas no futuro, a fim de evitar perdas e satisfazer a restrição de solvência, aproximando-se de sua política ótima de commitment. No segundo capítulo da tese, eu testo a validade do novo mecanismo desenvolvido no capítulo 1, incorporando um banco central financeiramente independente em um modelo DSGE de média escala baseado em Smets  e Wouters (2007), e calibrando-o para replicar principais características da expansão do tamanho e composição do balanço do Federal Reserve no período pós-2008. Eu observo que os programas QE 2 e 3 geraram efeitos positivos na dinâmica da inflação, mas impacto modesto no hiato do produto. O terceiro capítulo da tese avalia as consequências em termos de bem-estar de regras fiscais simples em um modelo de um pequeno país exportador de commodities com uma parcela da população sem acesso ao mercado financeiro, onde a política fiscal assume a forma de transferências. Uma constatação principal é que as regras orçamentárias equilibradas para as receitas de commodities geralmente superam as regras fiscais mais sofisticadas, em que as receitas de commodities são salvas em um Fundo de Riqueza Soberana. Como os choques nos preços das commodities são  tipicamente altamente persistentes, a renda atual das famílias está próxima de sua renda permanente, tornando as regras orçamentárias equilibradas próximas do ideal. 

This thesis is comprised of three chapters. In the first two I analyze how fertility decisions and the presence of young children in the household affect the labor supply of women on the intensive margin and their labor market allocation across different types of work such as formal, informal and self-employment. To do so, I use Brazilian data, motivated by the relative rigidity of the labor legislation in Brazil, the high prevalence of informal work and the scarcity of part-time jobs in the formal sector. In the first chapter I specify a reduced-form, dynamic discrete choice model of sequential labor supply decisions in two margins, labor force participation and work in the formal sector. I use longitudinal household survey data representative of the Brazilian population for the years 2012- 2017 to estimate the model. The results show that, among low-education women, observed fertility is endogenous with respect to the decision to work in the formal sector, and that the presence of children in the household has a significant negative effect on the probability of having a formal job conditional on labor force participation. No such evidence is found for college-educated women. In light of these results, in the following chapter I develop an estimable structural model of life-cycle labor supply and fertility decisions and estimate it using data for the years 2002-2015. I then perform counterfactuals on the estimated model in order to isolate the effect of fertility on female labor market informality and to show the partial equilibrium effects of increasing the availability of part-time work in the formal sector and of increasing the duration of maternity leave. In the third chapter, I present a new approach  to handle the “initial conditions problem” in dynamic binary choice models with individual unobserved heterogeneity. I assess the performance of my method relative to existing approaches using a set of simulation experiments and show that it displays relatively better precision and only slightly worse accuracy.

Estudos recentes estimam que a elegibilidade ao programa de seguro desemprego aumenta a probabilidade de demissão em 12% no Brasil. Esse artigo desenvolve um modelo de equilíbrio parcial onde trabalhadores buscam por emprego e podem se demitir para coletar benefícios do seguro desemprego. Calibramo-lo usando dados do Brasil e o utilizamos para medir as consequências desse comportamento sobre o acúmulo de capital humano específico à firma e sobre a produtividade do trabalho na economia. Por meio de exercícios contrafactuais, descobrimos que tornar a elegibilidade ao seguro desemprego mais estrita aumentaria o salário médio, a estabilidade no emprego, mas também a taxa de rotatividade. Discutimos esse último resultado e concluímos que isso depende de como a política modifica a fração de trabalhadores empregados que voluntariamente se separam de seus empregos. Em outro exercício, encontramos uma relação negativa entre a mudança na taxa de reposição do programa de seguro desemprego e a duração média do emprego.

Do alternative monetary policy frameworks actually work? After the financial crisis and especially in late 2010, Turkey faced a conjecture of high volatility in international capital flows and deteriorating current account. The Central Bank of Turkey decided, then, to innovate the way it executes monetary policy, by introducing a new set of instruments and focusing on credit and exchange rate channels. This paper is a comparative case study that evaluates the effectiveness and impact of Turkey’s change in policy framework on its main monetary variables. We apply two different synthetic control methods. Our estimates suggest inflation and exchange rate were not considerably affected. Although there was an initial deviation towards desirable directions, the effects dissipated after one year. On the other hand, domestic credit seem to have presented a stabilization path.

Neste estudo avaliamos a literatura referente à modelagem de volatilidade, com foco na metodologia da volatilidade realizada. Implementamos dois métodos de estimação para a previsão de um dia, da volatilidade realizada de uma ação representativa do mercado brasileiro, a ETF BOVA11. Inicialmente usamos o método considerado benchmark para previsão de RV, o modelo auto regressivo heterogêneo, ou HAR. Em seguida, implementamos a modelagem preditiva por métodos de estimação de modelos de regularização e seleção variáveis. O grande benefício desses modelos é a capacidade de lidar com enorme número de variáveis (candidatas) implementando uma função perda para estimação dos coeficientes de variáveis candidatas. Nossos resultados apresentam evidencias a favor da superioridade dos modelos obtidos por regularização sobre o modelo HAR. Especialmente quando calibramos os modelos por regularização de modo a não penalizar 2 variáveis (componentes do modelo HAR) dentre as variáveis disponíveis na base. 

This thesis consists of three essays on firm dynamics. The first essay evaluates the effects of supply and demand shocks on firm dynamics and selection in Brazil. We explore the fact that China’s recent growth has led not only to an increase in import competition, but also to higher export demand for commodities, which is especially relevant in developing countries. We find that firms facing greater competition from Chinese imports suffer from an increase in exit probability, while firms in industries benefiting from increased export demand have lower probability of exit. In both cases, these effects are concentrated among smaller firms. In the second article, we describe the relationship between energy misallocation and resource misallocation across manufacturing industries in Brazil, and quantify the extent to which distortions affecting energy use result in output losses at the aggregate level. We find that these two measures of misallocation are positively related across industries, which suggests that energy is an important component of resource allocation efficiency. We show that reallocating resources between firms would result in substantial aggregate output gains. However, capital distortions account for most of the potential gains in manufacturing from reallocating resources between firms. The third essay compares firm life cycle dynamics in manufacturing band services, and finds that life-cycle growth is slower for service firms, even when controlling for initial size. We show that this result arises because of the selection pattern and weaker relationship between productivity and size in service industries. Finally, we assess the role of two potential explanations  for these results: age-related distortions and monitoring costs.

Since the mid 1990s, theories of speculative attacks have argued that fixed exchange rate regimes induce excessive borrowing in foreign currency as an optimal response to implicit guarantees that the government will not devalue the domestic currency. Using data on Brazilian  firms before and after the end of the fixed exchange rate regime in 1999, we estimate the relevance of the government guarantees by comparing the changes in foreign debt of two groups of firms: those that hedged their foreign currency debt prior to the exchange rate float and those that did not. Using the difference-in-differences approach, in which firm-specific characteristics are introduced as control variables, we exclude the macroeconomic effects of the change in the exchange rate regime and the possible differences in foreign debt trends of the two groups of firms, thus obtaining an estimate of the impact of the government guarantees on borrowing in foreign currency. The results suggest that the guarantees do not induce  excessive borrowing in foreign currency

How countercyclical macroprudential credit policies affect the loan spread?   To answer this question, we propose a microeconomic model of bank competition  that contemplates differences in the behavior of public and private banks and  the peculiarities of the market for corporate loans vis-a-vis the market for consumer loans. We solve the model and calibrate it using parameters of the Brazilian economy, where government-owned banks not only account for almost half of the outstanding loans in the credit market but also have played a strong countercyclical role in the economy. Subsequently, we use the equilibrium conditions of the model to study the effects of macroprudential credit policies on loan  preads. The results indicate that credit expansion by public banks is more effective to reduce loans interest rates during recession periods than during periods of economic expansion