Breno Sampaio

Programa Bolsa Família: impacto das transferências sobre os gastos com alimentos em famílias rurais

Conditional income transfer programs are social policies currently adopted to reduce poverty in several countries. These conditional transfer schemes have a goal to alleviate some of the consequences of poverty in the short run and increase human capital in the long run changing the intergenerational poverty cycle. Several papers evaluate the impact of income transfer on school attendance, child work and food expenses, among others. This paper analyzes the impact of the Bolsa Familia Program on food expenses of rural families. The Propensity Score Method was used to correct sample selection bias. Results show that annual food expenses increased 246 reais in relation to non participant families. Considering that average annual transfer to these families is 278 reais, it can be concluded that 88% of the transfer is expend in food products. Thus, Bolsa Familia brings a positive impact on food consumption of the benefited families.

Family background and students’ achievement on a university entrance exam in Brazil

This paper examines the determinants of students’ performance on the entrance test at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil. Particular attention is paid to the importance of family background variables, such as parents’ education and family income, on students’ performance and how they relate to the probability of attending public schools and private tutoring classes. Results suggest that parents’ education and study environment are key determinants of students’ achievements. Also, they are positively related to the probability of attending private schools and private tutoring classes, which are both estimated to have a positive effect on test scores. Finally, the quantile regression estimation shows that the effect of parents’ education and family income varies across the conditional score distribution. These results highlight the need for developing policies that seek to improve the equality of opportunities in access to higher education. They are of special importance for a developing country like Brazil, in which not only the level of inequality is among the highest in the world but also the level of social intergenerational mobility is among the lowest compared to international standards.

Diferenças de eficiência entre ensino público e privado no Brasil

Recently, quality and efficiency of elementary education in Brazil has been questioned. Evaluations conducted by INEP showed that only 5% of the students present a performance that can be classified as adequate. Even this low performance has been decreasing mainly due to the lower performance of public school students. Given the differences onpublic and private schools performance wedecided to analyze thecomparative efficiencyof public and private schools using a methodology developed by Thanassoulis (1999) and further extended by Portela and Thanassoulis (2001). The former decomposes efficiency into two components: one attributed to the school and the other exclusively to the student. Results show large differences in efficiency between public and private schools. Private schools obtained maximum efficiency score while public ones reached only 0,901. Moreover, federal public schools reached a score of 0,910 and state schools 0,879. Schools were further analyzed with respect to the equity performance considering the different performance obtained by each student. This result showed that there is no difference between federal public and private schools. With respect to state schools, they showed relatively lower efficiency for the best students compared to average students.

Identifying peer states for transportation policy analysis with an application to New York's handheld cell phone ban

There has been a significant amount of research in the transportation area on the development of strategies that allow good comparisons between states, such that policy analysis are allowed to be carried out and informative policy-oriented questions are allowed to be answered. In this article, the use of Synthetic Control Methods (SCM) is proposed to overcome several identification problems present in previous studies when constructing comparison groups/counterfactuals. The SCM is used to analyse the effect of New York states law prohibiting handheld cell phone use while driving on fatality rates. Results show that (i) a synthetic ‘peer state’ for NY when evaluating this specific policy is composed of a convex combination of the states of IL, MA and TX and (ii) that imposing the ban led to a decrease of about 9% in fatality rates.

Desempenho no vestibular, background familiar e evasão: evidências da UFPE

Este artigo tem como objetivo compreender a decisao de evasao de estudantes universitarios, assunto ainda pouco entendido no Brasil. Enfase e dada a relacao entre renda, desempenho no vestibular, evasao e a probabilidade de tentar nova carreira em novo vestibular. Atencao tambem e dada ao efeito escola publica e cursinho pre-vestibular. Os resultados mostram que renda tem papel fundamental nao so por proporcionar aos mais ricos melhores condicoes de estudo (escolas privadas, cursinhos), mas tambem por possibilitar ao aluno maior oportunidade de escolha da carreira que melhor se adeque as suas aptidoes, favorecendo assim a permanencia da desigualdade.

Impactos socioeconômicos do cultivo de camarão marinho em municípios selecionados do Nordeste brasileiro

This paper analyses the impact of farmed shrimp on the economy of ten municipalities in the Northeast of Brazil. A model of the municipal economy is developed and input-output tables are used to estimate indirect and induced impacts on job, income and municipal finances. It is concluded that farmed shrimp has a sizable contribution to job increases, in particular formal employment. Indirect and induced impacts are reduced because of spillovers to larger municipalities and other states. Income impacts can be sizable in particular in small counties. In general, the generated income represents a large share of total municipal product. In relation to municipal finance, direct contribution is rather small but indirect, through product increases and mainly transferences from State and Country taxes may be substantial. In conclusion, shrimp farms in the selected municipalities, contributes to expand and stabilize employment, to expand income and product, to increase municipal finances and to improve life conditions.

Influências políticas na eficiência de empresas de saneamento brasileiras

O setor de saneamento apresenta elevado nivel de perdas e atinge apenas 31% dos domicilios. Modelos de eficiencia DEA com 4 insumos e 8 produtos foram estimados para empresas de abastecimento de agua e coleta e tratamento de esgoto. Servicos de agua sao mais eficientes que os de esgoto. Foi estimada regressao para analisar a influencia de variaveis operacionais, geograficas e politicas. Localizacao no Sul afeta positivamente a eficiencia e localizacao no Norte e no Centro-Oeste negativamente. A eficiencia e positivamente afetada pela continuidade administrativa e pela coincidencia de partido na gestao municipal e estadual.

South Eastern Busway Network in Brisbane, Australia: Value of the Network Effect

This paper identifies how much was added to residential land values through the provision of bus rapid transit (BRT) service in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, with regard to increases in land values because of the BRT system itself and the value of the network effect as a result of incremental additions to the transport infrastructure, a much more common feature of Australian cities. Difference-in-differences models were employed to explore whether there were significant differences between the treatment group (properties close to busway stations) and the control group (properties not close to busway stations) with regard to housing price changes (first difference) before and after the opening of busway stations (second difference). Two types of control groups were defined by using conventional buffer methods and propensity score matching. Model results show increases in property prices because of better accessibility to busways themselves, on the one hand, and on the other hand, additions to the value of land through the network effect of access to a greater service area as the BRT network is developed. The paper reports how different methods of identifying control areas to match given treatment areas had different results and discusses the implications of these results for a literature that has a variety of methods established for research.

Communication Networks and Protests: Investigating the 'Occupy Movement' in the United States

This paper investigates the influence of broadband Internet availability in the occurrence of events of civil unrest, using collected data on the locations of protesting activities related with 2011s Occupy Movement in the U.S. We consider the hypothesis that the Internet sets an environment for communication and information exchange that boosts collective dissatisfaction towards unfair policies. Linear estimates suggest that each new Internet Service Provider (which is associated to an increase in broadband penetration of about 0.5 p.p.) accounts for an increase between 1 and 3 p.p. in the probability of observing protests in a given location. Results are consistent when analyzing county-level data for the contiguous U.S., for each different U.S. region separately (Northeast, Midwest, South and West), and when analyzing city-level data for California.

Ambient Light and Homicides

In this paper we investigate the effect of Daylight Saving Time (DST) on homicides. As assignment into the policy follows technical reports from the National Electric System Operator, the Brazilian setup lends itself to both within and between states comparison of homicide levels around the date of transition and during the whole period of DST adoption. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find a decrease in the number of homicides by firearms of roughly 9.83% during DST months. In line with the crime deterrence hypothesis, we show this uncovered effect is mostly concentrated in hours directly affected by the shift in daylight caused by DST - i.e., during early evening hours. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest the shift in clocks was responsible for saving about 5,035 potential victims from 2006-2015.