Essays on Development Economics and Public Policy: Sustainable Agriculture, Management in Health, and Political Accountability

Orientador(a): Juliano Assunção

Co-orientador(a): Claudio Ferraz

This thesis is composed of 3 chapters in development economics, all of which relate to the role of public policy either in promoting sustainable policies for long-run maintenance of natural resources, or meeting citizens’ needs through efficient service delivery or questioning the accountability of current political institutions. The first paper shows that, by adopting a technology that incorporates sustainable agricultural practices, farmers have positive dynamic effects on productivity and climate resilience.We provide evidence of the mechanism of these dynamic effects: soil improvement. The second one presents the results of an RCT designed to test whether a managerial intervention in health centers in Mozambique can reduce coordination failures, increasing HIV patients’ retention in care and quality of care provided. Finally, the third one look at the large street protests that took place in Brazil in 2013 to analyze whether protests can work as an accountability mechanism for elected politicians. Using Twitter historical data, we create a measure of protest intensity and how noisy protesters’ demands were in each municipality. We present evidence that protests may work as accountability mechanism only if messages sent by protesters are sharp and clear, and politicians face reelection incentives.