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• This paper simulates hypothetical student loan schemes for Brazil. • Designs are assessed in terms of affordability for graduates and size of subsidies. • A copula approach is applied to simulate dynamic earnings paths for graduates. • ICL with surcharge, limited concessions and progressive repayment rates is favoured. • A nationwide ICL is technically and institutionally feasible in Brazil. This paper simulates student loan schemes for Brazil. A copula approach is applied to simulate dynamic earnings paths for graduates. Repayment patterns are then simulated for time-based and income-contingent loan designs. The results show that the Brazilian time-based scheme involved unsustainable repayment burdens for many graduates and contributed to the scheme's high default rates. We also show that the new income-contingent scheme is also likely to involve high taxpayer subsidies. We consider alternative designs with different strengths and weaknesses but favour an income-contingent scheme with a loan fee, repayment rates at 50% of current income tax rates and an interest rate at the government's cost of borrowing upon graduation and above initial tax threshold. We conclude by emphasising that full involvement of the federal revenue system is more desirable than the present approach of employer withholding. This would increase the earnings base and reduce costs, which is important for Brazil's current precarious fiscal situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Municipalities benefited by the FUNDEF redistribution increased teacher salary. • Municipalities harmed by the redistribution increased expenses by hiring teachers. • The amount transferred led to an increase in teachers and a decrease in salaries. • The net value was more important to salary levels than the absolute value. • Results suggest that bargaining power is an important factor in hiring decisions. Abstract This paper examines the teacher hiring decisions of Brazilian local governments in response to an education funding reform, called FUNDEF. The reform redistributed funding across municipalities and determined a minimum spending on teachers. While several papers have already examined the overall effect of the FUNDEF reform, this is the first analysis of the effects of the municipalities' relative positions after the redistribution on hiring decisions. Using a simulated difference-in-differences model, I find that FUNDEF only led to salary increases in municipalities that benefited from the redistribution. Contrary to its initial goal, municipalities harmed by the redistribution responded by increasing hiring. Additionally, employing a simulated instrumental-variable model, I find that the amount received in FUNDEF transfers did not lead to pay increases. Models of government-union interaction are used to explain these results, suggesting that the bargaining power is the main driver of teacher pay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

College students graduating in a recession have been shown to face large and persistent negative effects on their earnings, health, and other outcomes. This paper investigates whether students delay graduation to avoid these effects. Using data on the universe of students in higher education in Brazil and leveraging variation in labor market conditions across time, space, and chosen majors, the paper finds that students in public institutions delay graduation to avoid entering depressed labor markets. A typical recession causes the on-time graduation rate to fall by 6.5% in public universities and there is no effect on private institutions. The induced delaying increases average graduation by 0.11 semesters, consistent with 1 out of 18 students delaying graduation by one year in public universities. The delaying effect is larger for students with higher scores, in higher-earnings majors, and from more advantaged backgrounds. This has important implications for the distributional impact of recessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the long-term impact on earnings of attending a tuition-free, top-quality university in Brazil. We identify the causal effect through a sharp discontinuity in an admission process based on test scores. If admitted, low-income students are found to increase their earnings by 26% ten years later. However, admission has a small and insignificant effect on high-income students. The difference between income groups is not explained by educational attainment, program choice, or selection into better-paying jobs. The evidence suggests that most low-income applicants, if not admitted, still graduate from college but with much lower returns to education. High-income applicants who just miss the cutoff, however, can find other opportunities such that earnings trajectories are unchanged. Our results underscore the role of affordable higher education in promoting social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how resource-based windfalls to Brazilian municipalities' revenues affects their provision of education. Using within-municipality variation in per capita oil revenues transferred to municipalities, we find that receiving more oil royalties increases municipal education expenditures, which translates into more teachers, classrooms, and schools per capita. These effects are present only for municipally funded schools, implying that increased educational provision is due to better funding and not through increased demand for schooling. We also find, however, that some evidence that some types of school infrastructure and services may be affected by oil royalties, implying that this additional schooling coverage may be of lower quality. Interestingly, despite the increased provision of education student outcomes like the dropout rate worsen with higher oil royalties, although this may be due to changes in student composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs on crime. Making use of a unique dataset combining detailed school characteristics with geo-referenced crime information from the city of São Paulo, Brazil, we estimate the contemporaneous effect of the Bolsa Família program on crime. We address the endogeneity of CCT coverage by exploiting the 2008 expansion of the program to adolescents aged 16 and 17. We construct an instrument that combines the timing of expansion with the initial demographic composition of schools to identify plausibly exogenous variation in the number of children covered by Bolsa Família . We find a robust and significant negative impact of Bolsa Família on crime. Incapacitation from time spent in school does not seem to be an important driving force behind the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Affirmative action led to more disadvantaged students enrolling in Brazilian universities. • Policy effects were concentrated within the most competitive programs. • Race-neutral policies did not increase the enrollment of Black students. This paper investigates how the adoption of affirmative action for college admission affected the enrollment of students from disadvantaged backgrounds in Brazil. We explore the time heterogeneity of policy adoption by universities to identify the policy impacts while accounting for contemporaneous confounding effects. Our study shows that the adoption of affirmative action increased the enrollment of students from groups explicitly targeted by each policy, particularly public high-school students and Blacks. 1 1 The standard racial/skin-color categories used by the Brazilian Statistical Agency (IBGE) include: Branco (light-skinned), Preto (black-skinned), Amarelo (yellow – mainly referring to Chinese and Japanese origin), Pardo (brown-skinned or mixed) and Indígena (Indigenous). The Portuguese term " Pardo" is especially ambiguous (Cicalò, 2008), and any direct translation to English may be misleading. Therefore, we use the original Portuguese terms to refer to the standard racial categories used in Brazil. However, Brazilian affirmative action policies with a racial component were mostly defined to target the combined group of Pretos and Pardos , without any differentiation between those groups. Therefore, in this paper, we use the English word " Black" to refer to the combined group of Pretos and Pardos. We note that the word negro is sometimes used in Brazil to refer to that same combined group , however, this is not a consistent definition, especially in terms of racial identity as not all pardos may consider themselves as negros (Francis & Tannuri-Pianto, 2012a). Therefore, our definition of the term "Black" should not be considered a direct translation of the Portuguese term Negro. We also demonstrate that these effects were concentrated within more competitive and more prestigious academic programs. Lastly, we find that universities that adopted affirmative action policies with explicit racial criteria experienced an increase in the enrollment of Black students whereas universities that adopted race-neutral policies had no significant changes in the racial profile of their students. These results indicate that affirmative action policies were successful in improving access to higher education for targeted groups. However, we also identify important limitations of these policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]