In Brazil, legalising outsourcing of security to specialised firms reduced hiring frictions, boosting formal jobs for young men, but came at a large and lasting cost to older guards in previously well-paid jobs.
Decades of evidence from Mexico and Brazil show that conditional cash transfers reduce poverty, improve education and employment, boost local economies, and yet can still be undone when policy ignores research.
Prioritising women in collective bargaining led unions to expand female-friendly workplace amenities, increasing women’s retention and productivity without reducing wages, employment, or firm profits.
Commodity booms are often seen as development opportunities, but new evidence from Brazil shows they can deepen inequality and reshape consumption in unexpected ways.
Increases in Brazil’s national minimum wage between 2000 and 2009 moved the country from a regime of low minimum wage bite to one of high bite. This column exploits variation in the bite of the reform across states and industries to reveal immediate ...
It is often argued that returns to R&D are low in developing countries, making imported technologies a better path to growth. Yet technologies designed for frontier nations may not fit local conditions, limiting their productivity gains. This column ...
In Brazil, anti-corruption audits substantially reduced vote buying and citizens’ demands for private favours – demonstrating how transparency initiatives can weaken clientelism and strengthen democratic accountability.
Evidence from Brazil suggests that the crop-specific knowledge of domestic migrant farmers, during a period of large-scale migration, was a key driver of the recent transformation of the country’s export patterns – highlighting the importance of migr...
