Publications

Does Local Politics Drive Tropical Land-Use Change? Property-Level Evidence from the Amazon
(with Fanny Moffette) (Conditionally Accepted at The Economic Journal)
Working Paper   Slides

Timing is Everything: Labor Market Winners and Losers during Boom-Bust Cycles
(with Dominic Parker and Steven Poelhekke) (Accepted at JAERE)
Working Paper   CEPR Discussion Paper   Slides (English)   Slides (Portuguese)   Ipea Webinar (Portuguese)

Winning and Losing the Resource Lottery: Governance after Uncertain Oil Discoveries
Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 166 (2024)
Published Version   Slides   Replication Package
Media Coverage:   VoxDev   World Bank Development Impact Blog   Grist

Quantifying the Effects of Energy Infrastructure on Bird Populations and Biodiversity
Environmental Science and Technology, Vol. 58(1), pp. 323–332 (2024)
Published Version   Open Access Pre-Print   Slides   Replication Package
Media Coverage:   The Economist   Los Angeles Times   Die Presse (Austria)   Courrier International (France)   Focus Online (Germany)   BNNVARA (Netherlands)   El Imparcial (Mexico)   El Nacional (Spain)   ETC (Sweden)   Le Temps (Switzerland)   Tages Anzeiger (Switzerland)   Basler Zeitung (Switzerland)   Berner Zeitung (Switzerland)   Der Bund (Switzerland)   Enrique Dans (Medium Blog)   Big Pivots (USA)   The Song Sparrow (Quebec)

The Relation Between Labor Productivity and Wages in Brazil: A Sectoral Analysis
(with Alexandre Gori Maia)
Nova Economia, Vol. 28(1), pp. 7-38 (2018)
PDF   Published Version

Are GMO Policies “Trade Related”? Empirical Analysis of Latin America
(with Pamela Smith)
Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Vol. 39(2), pp. 286-312 (2017)
Published Version

Working Papers

Explosive Diversification: Organized Crime Adaptation to Mexico’s Crackdown on Fuel Theft (Under Review) (with Itzel de Haro Lopez)
Working Paper

Critical Mining Contributes to Economic Growth and Forest Loss in High-Corruption Settings (Under Review) (with Jonah Rexer)
Working Paper

Local and Multinational Comparative Advantage in the Global Mining Industry
(with Jonah Rexer and Utsoree Das)
Latest Working Paper   STEG Working Paper

Firm-Level Impacts and Spillovers of a Local Content Requirement
(with Fabio Maciel) Funded by STEG Small Research Grant
[Draft Coming Soon!]

Work in Progress

The Politics of Structural Transformation: Evidence from Brazil’s Agrobusiness Boom
(with Ricardo Dahis)

Traceability and Sustainability in Cacao Supply Chains: Experimental Evidence from Ghana
(with Salvatore di Falco and Utsoree Das) Funded by Horizons Europe “Transformative Pathways” Project

Dynamic Adaptation to Sanctions: Within-Firm Evidence from the Oil Industry

Supply Response to Oil Production Taxes: Evidence from the US Royalty Relief Program
(with Julien Daubanes, Diego Cardoso, and Pritam Saha)

Click for Details Description: Supply-side climate policies are receiving increasing attention from governments. For instance, the US is currently considering a major overhaul of rules governing oil extraction on federal lands – which have remained unchanged for nearly a century. We exploit lease-level variation introduced by a temporary royalty relief policy in 2020 to estimate the effects of changes in oil extraction taxes on drilling activity, oil and gas production, and royalty revenues. We assemble a month-lease panel covering drilling and production on all federal oil and gas leases in the contiguous United States between 2005-2022 that accounts for allocation agreements across leases. Using a difference-in-differences strategy that compares outcomes on leases approved for royalty relief with similar untreated leases, we find that royalty reductions lead to immediate increases in the number of producing wells (extensive margin), but also in production from already active wells (intensive margin). Evidence of an intensive-margin response differs from previous studies focused on conventional oil production, suggesting unconventional leases may be more reactive in the short run. Our estimates allow us to quantify the effects of proposed US oil extraction tax reforms on oil and gas production, public revenues, and carbon emissions.
Status: Drafting working paper

Human Capital and Local Spillovers Across the Mining Lifecycle
(with Steven Poelhekke and Fabio Maciel)