What makes for effective cooperation between government and business in industrial policy? Core research questions on the institutional design of arrangements for business-government interactions focus on three main functions: i) maximizing the benefits of dialogue and information exchange; ii)...

This paper uses microdata from Brazilian vital statistics natality and mortality data between 2000 and 2010 to estimate the impact of in-utero exposure to local violence -measured by homicide rates- on birth outcomes. Focusing on small communities, where it is more plausible that local homicide...

Using a hedonic residential rent model for Brazil's metropolitan areas calibrated with microdata from Brazil's annual household survey, this study estimates that increasing the sense of security in the home by one standard deviation would increase average home values by R$1,513 (US$757), or...

Violence has a striking gender pattern. Men are more likely to be attacked by a stranger, while women experience violence mostly from their partners. This paper estimates the costs of violence against women in terms of intangible outcomes, such as women's reproductive health, labor supply, and...

This paper uses a natural policy experiment to estimate how changes in the costs of engaging in criminal activity may influence adolescents' decisions in crime participation and school attendance. The study finds that, after an exogenous decrease in the severity of judicial punishment imposed on...

This paper documents the relationship between regional financial development and firm growth in the Peruvian manufacturing sector. In order to control for mutual causality between credit availability and firm growth, industry differences in financial dependence on external funds are exploited....

This paper examines the impact of ideology on tax revenues in Latin America, using a panel of 17 countries from 1990 to 2010. As a first approach, a fixed- effects model is used to identify the impact of ideology on taxation; left-leaning governments are associated with increases in total tax...

This paper studies the link between credit conditions and formalization in Brazil, as both credit and the rate of formalization have notably increased in the last decade. A firm dynamics model with endogenous formal and informal sectors is developed to quantitatively evaluate how much of the...

This paper argues that, in the presence of nominal wage rigidities, the existence of Rule-of-Thumb agents and price rigidities does not cause a change in the Taylor Principle as suggested by Galí et al. (2004), and that the only rigidity relevant for this result is that faced by Rule-of-Thumb...

Decentralization of provision of public services has been an important item in the agenda of developing countries. While some scholars and practitioners argue that decentralization is associated with improvements in provision due to higher accountability, others note its potential pitfalls. In...