Raphael Bottura Corbi.

We investigate how powerful non?openly partisan media can change the trajectory of an
election by unexpectedly manipulating a single piece of news ? the coverage of a political debate
during the 1989 Brazilian presidential race. Using geographical distribution of broadcaster-
specific TV signals and the timing of election events, we find that the left-wing candidate lost
1.1−2.2 p.p. in vote share due to the misleading reporting, potentially costing him the election.
We provide evidence that our results are best explained by viewers switching candidates, as
their beliefs of who won the debate were swayed by the manipulation.

How much employment can be generated by decreasing payroll taxes? We examine
this question by exploring the staggered rollout of a large payroll tax reform in Brazil.
Using administrative matched employer-employee data, we find an increase of 5% on
employment, but no impact on wages. Most of the effect comes from existing firms
instead of net entry. Moreover, these estimates are driven by labor markets with rel-
atively low levels of concentration. We interpret these findings within an oligopsony
framework by arguing that the degree of labor market concentration is a quantitatively
important determinant of the employment effects of labor subsidies.

This paper analyzes the impact of emotional shocks induced by soccer game results on incumbent's vote share in Brazilian elections. Conditioning on the pregame betting markets implied probabilities of each match outcome, I am able to interpret the estimate of actual soccer results as a causal effect on voting behavior. The main findings indicate that a 10 p.p. increase in the share of people in a municipality experiencing negative emotional shocks in the days preceding an election decreases voting for the incumbent mayor by 1.1 p.p. In contrast, positive emotional shocks do not influence voting in most cases. This asymmetric effect is stronger for games with higher stadium attendance, for local teams and for more intense emotional shocks. Similar findings arise when I focus on gubernatorial and presidential elections. These patterns cannot be explained by turnout and disappear when I focus on close electoral races. Furthermore, I show that a similar close election pattern is also found in a different setting using Spanish data from Bagues and Esteve-Volart (2016) and provide extra evidence from Google searches that individuals actively seek more information about candidates in close elections. Overall these results are consistent with a behavioral political economy model with emotional voters whose behavior deviate from the forecasts of rational theory. Such deviation decreases with how close elections are as these tend to make information about candidates more salient in the media thus lowering the attention cost to picking the best candidate.

This paper uses a spatial first-difference approach to investigate the long-term impact of the Distrito Diamantino, a set of colonial policies adopted in colonial Brazil during the 1734-1832 period to control the mining of diamonds. Our results show that current household income and adult literacy are higher within the District. Using contemporary census data, we find that current settlements that belong to the corresponding area of the District also have higher urbanization rates. We also present historical evidence from 1872 and 1890 census data that areas inside the District have persistently higher human capital levels. Using a geospatial road location database and vector data constructed from historical maps, we find that observations inside the District?s historical boundaries have denser road networks today, but this was not true a century ago. Additionally we use data from the 1830s and from the 1872 census to show that the presence of slaves was more intense inside the District but such difference vanishes after the decline of diamond extraction

A América Latina e, em particular, o Brasil, tem apresentado uma relevante transformação no panorama das religiões nas últimas décadas. Entre 2000 e 2010 se verifica uma forte redução da grande maioria católica, simultânea à expansão da população de evangélicos. Transformações como essas podem se relacionar com mudanças em outras dimensões do comportamento individual, como a educação dos filhos e preferências político-eleitorais. O objetivo desse trabalho é de examinar quantitativamente o crescimento da participação dos evangélicos na população brasileira, especificamente por meio da expansão da oferta de serviços religiosos através dos canais de comunicação ligados aos grupos evangélicos. Utilizaremos dados de estações transmissoras de sinal de radiodifusão e um mo- delo técnico que leva em conta variações de relevo para prever variações de qualidade de recepção do sinal de transmissoras ligadas a grupos religiosos evangélicos entre regiões. Exploraremos a variação da qualidade da recepção do sinal devida ao relevo, condicional à distância à estação transmissora, para identificar o efeito das estações ligadas aos grupos religiosos

This paper exploits a constitutional rule in Brazil that has been enforced in the municipal elections in 2004 which sets limits to the number of municipal councillors according to local population. By exploring this exogenous change, I am able to identify that a decrease in the size of municipal legislature increases total spending over the subsequent mandate