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The world is experiencing a lasting shortage of organ donations – a problem more severe in some countries than others. Literature on the matter argues that an explanation for this is the various legal default consent systems, and the importance put on the opinions of the family members regarding the donation question in case of sudden death. This paper establishes the causal inference between cadaveric organ donation rates and the French amendment of the public health code, of 2017, which limited the authorization given to the family members - aiming to decrease family refusal rates and consequently increase cadaveric organ donation rates. By applying the synthetic control method, a synthetic counterfactual to France is constructed from a donor group, including comparable European countries. The counterfactual, Synthetic France, resembles what would have happened in France in the absence of the amendment. The results show that the legal amendment of article L1232-1 in the public health code (code de la santé publique) was likely the driving force behind the increased donation rate in the subsequent years. The main finding of this study is robust and statistically significant, providing confidence to the claim of causal inference.

Le secteur public joue un rôle important dans la société. Dans la plupart des pays en développement, les dépenses publiques constituent une partie importante du PIB et les entités du secteur public sont les principaux pourvoyeurs d’emploi et les principaux acteurs du marché des capitaux. Le secteur public détermine, généralement par le biais d'un processus politique, ses objectifs économiques et sociaux ainsi que les différents types d'intervention à mettre en place pour les atteindre. Comment le secteur public atteint ses objectifs constitue une question cruciale étant donné que sa taille et son importance économique en font un moteur principal de la croissance et du bien-être social. Ses performances sont jugées à travers la qualité et la nature de sa gestion des finances publiques, les infrastructures qu'il finance ainsi que la qualité de sa régulation des activités économiques. La manière dont les activités du secteur public délivrent les résultats attendus est ainsi une variable clé du développement; pourtant les études empiriques pour comprendre ce qui fonctionne dans le secteur public et pourquoi restent remarquablement limitées. Deux principales raisons expliquent cette situation: les performances dans ce secteur sont difficiles à analyser car les outputs des divers services qu’il fournit sont difficiles à mesurer et même à définir, et le manque de données quantitatives et qualitatives rend difficile une analyse économétrique rigoureuse.Dès lors, l’objectif de cette thèse est de documenter cette littérature et de proposer différentes méthodes empiriques pour évaluer les performances du secteur public dans les pays en développement. Notre analyse est organisée comme suit: la Première Partie - Chapitres 1 et 2 - présente deux essais sur l’évaluation des performances du secteur public “en amont” tandis que la Seconde Partie - Chapitres 3 et 4 - présente deux essais sur l’évaluation des performances du secteur public “en aval” Le Chapitre 1 fait usage de la technique de Blinder-Oaxaca pour examiner comment la qualité des institutions budgétaires affecte les performances budgétaires – déficit budgétaire et dette publique - en Afrique sub-Saharienne. Dans le Chapitre 2, nous utilisons une approche par le Synthetic Control pour étudier l'impact des Offices de Recettes sur la mobilisation des ressources publiques dans une vingtaine de pays en développement. Le Chapitre 3 présente un Benchmarking systématique des performances infrastructurelles de l'Afrique dans les secteurs de l'électricité, de l'eau et de l’assainissement, des technologies de l'information et de la communication, et des transports. Enfin nous évaluons, dans le Chapitre 4, les effets de la mise en place d'une Autorité Indépendante de Régulation sur les performances du secteur de l'électricité dans les pays en développement. / The public sector plays a major role in society. In most developing countries, public expenditure represents a significant part of gross domestic product (GDP) and public sector entities are substantial employers and major capital market participants. The public sector determines, usually through a political process, the outcomes it wants to achieve and the different types of intervention. How the public sector achieves results matters as its size and economic significance make it a major contributor to growth and social welfare. Its achievements emerge in the quality and nature of its financial management, the infrastructure it finances and the quality of its social and economic regulation. How well those public sector activities deliver their expected outcomes is a key development variable; yet explicit evidence base for understanding what works and why in the public sector remains strikingly limited compared with other policy areas. There are two main reasons for this situation: the performance in these areas is difficult to analyze because the outputs of many such services are hard to measure or even to define, and the lack of quantitative and qualitative longitudinal data precludes rigorous econometric analysis.Therefore the objective of this thesis is to document this literature and to propose different ways of measuring public sector performance in developing countries. The dissertation is divided into two Parts: the first Part – Chapters 1 and 2 – presents two essays on “upstream” public sector performance while the second Part – Chapters 3 and 4 – presents two essays on “downstream” public sector performance. The Chapter 1 makes use of the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition to examine how the quality of budget institutions affects fiscal performance – Primary Balance and Public Debt – in sub-Saharan Africa. In Chapter 2 we use a Synthetic Control Approach to investigate the impact of Semi-Autonomous Revenue Authorities (SARAs) on revenue mobilization in twenty developing countries. The chapter 3 provides a first systematic Benchmarking of Africa’s infrastructure performance on four major sectors: electricity, water and sanitation, information and communication technologies, and transportation. Finally we evaluate the effects of the establishment of an Independent Regulatory Authority (IRA) on electricity sector performance in developing countries in Chapter 4.

In der ökonomischen Forschung wird eine Vielzahl von Strategien verwendet, um zu versuchen kausale Schlussfolgerungen aus Beobachtungsdaten zu ziehen. Neue Strömungen in der Literatur zu kausaler Inferenz konzentrieren sich auf die Kombination von Methoden zur Vorhersage und kausalen Fragestellungen. Diese neuen Methoden ermöglichen es neue Forschungsfragen zu beantworten und bieten die Möglichkeit bestehende Forschungsfragen in der Literatur neu zu adressieren. Diese Dissertation umfasst empirische Arbeiten in den Bereichen (i) Umweltökonomie: Ich evaluiere die Preispolitik für Abfälle mithilfe der “synthetic control” Methode und Methoden des maschinellen Lernens; (ii) Arbeits- und Migrationsökonomie: Ich identifiziere und quantifiziere nicht gemeldete landwirtschaftliche Arbeitsleistung, die durch einen plötzlichen Migrationszustrom verursacht wird; (iii) Konfliktökonomie: Ich analysiere die wirtschaftlichen Kosten eines hybriden Krieges, des Donbass-Krieges in der Ukraine. Der Beitrag dieser Dissertation zur bestehenden Literatur ist dreifach. Erstens kombiniere ich neuartige Datenquellen und stelle neue Datensätze bereit. Zweitens verwende ich moderne Evaluierungsmethoden und passe sie an, um politisch relevante kausale Parameter in verschiedenen Bereichen der ökonomischen Forschung abzuschätzen. Drittens vergleiche ich neuere mit traditionellen ökonometrischen Ansätzen, die zuvor in der Literatur verwendet wurden. Meine Dissertation zeigt, dass moderne ökonometrische Techniken vielversprechend sind, um die Genauigkeit und Glaubwürdigkeit von kausalen Schlussfolgerungen und die Evaluierung von Politikmassnahmen zu verbessern. / In economics, researchers use a wide variety of strategies for attempting to draw causal inference from observational data. New developments in the causal inference literature focus on the combination of predictive methods and causal questions. These methods allow researchers to answer new research questions as well as provide new opportunities to address older research question in the literature. This dissertation entails empirical work in the fields of (i) environmental economics: I evaluate waste pricing policies using synthetic controls and machine learning methods; (ii) labor and migration economics: I identify and quantify unreported farm labor induced by a sudden migrant inflow; (iii) conflict economics: I evaluate the economic costs of an hybrid war, namely, the Donbass war in Ukraine. The contribution of this dissertation is threefold. First, I combine novel data sources and provide unique datasets. Second, I apply and tailor modern evaluation methods to the estimation of policy-relevant causal parameters in various fields of economics. Third, I compare recent versus traditional econometric approaches previously employed by the literature. My dissertation shows that modern econometric techniques hold great promise for improving the accuracy and credibility of causal inference and policy evaluation.

[pt] Políticas monetárias alternativas realmente funcionam? Depois da crise financeira e, especialmente, a partir de 2010, a Turquia enfrentou uma conjuntura de alta volatilidade nos fluxos de capital internacional e de deterioração na conta corrente. O Banco Cenral da Turquia decidiu, então, inovar sua maneira de executar a política monetária, introduzindo um novo conjunto de instrumentos e focando nos canais de crédito e câmbio. Este trabalho é um estudo de caso comparativo que avalia a eficácia e o impacto da nova estrutura de política da Turquia sobre suas principais variáveis monetárias. Nós aplicamos dois métodos de controle sintético. Nossas estimações sugerem que inflação e taxa de câmbio não foram consideravelmente afetadas. Apesar de um desvio inicial nas direções desejadas, os efeitos de dissiparam no prazo de um ano. Por outro lado, crédito doméstico parece ter entrado em uma trajetória de estabilização. / [en] Do alternative monetary policy frameworks actually work? After the financial crisis and especially in late 2010, Turkey faced a conjecture of high volatility in international capital flows and deteriorating current account. The Central Bank of Turkey decided, then, to innovate the way it executes monetary policy, by introducing a new set of instruments and focusing on credit and exchange rate channels. This paper is a comparative case study that evaluates the effectiveness and impact of Turkey s change in policy framework on its main monetary variables. We apply two different synthetic control methods. Our estimates suggest inflation and exchange rate were not considerably affected. Although there was an initial deviation towards desirable directions, the effects dissipated after one year. On the other hand, domestic credit seem to have presented a stabilization path.

Submitted by Diana Goldemberg (diana.goldemberg@gmail.com) on 2014-08-11T14:24:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao GOLDEMBERG - vBiblioteca.pdf: 2905294 bytes, checksum: 2478be29fc9539101356823f4d969567 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by BRUNA BARROS (bruna.barros@fgv.br) on 2014-08-26T17:26:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao GOLDEMBERG - vBiblioteca.pdf: 2905294 bytes, checksum: 2478be29fc9539101356823f4d969567 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2014-08-27T19:18:43Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao GOLDEMBERG - vBiblioteca.pdf: 2905294 bytes, checksum: 2478be29fc9539101356823f4d969567 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-27T19:20:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao GOLDEMBERG - vBiblioteca.pdf: 2905294 bytes, checksum: 2478be29fc9539101356823f4d969567 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05-27 / This study aims to evaluate the impact of new credit lines to Brazilian movie exhibition industry, one of the existing forms of government support for this sector. The evaluated disbursements, conducted by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), from 2007 to 2012, consist of long-term credit for opening new screens, with below-market interest rates and a flexible collateral structure. The econometric methodology used is the Synthetic Control Method, as formalized by Abadie et al. (2010). Under this method, it was not possible to identify any positive contribution of the credit policy after comparing the individual performance of the exhibitors who received the credit versus their synthetic controls, nor on the evolution of the number of screens nor on admissions. Furthermore, a possible aggregate effect was tested, considering the evolution of the Brazilian number of admissions per capita, also with no positive contribution of the policy being identified. / O objetivo deste trabalho é avaliar o impacto da criação de linhas de financiamento ao parque exibidor cinematográfico brasileiro, uma das formas existentes de incentivo governamental ao setor. Os desembolsos avaliados, realizados pelo BNDES com recursos do Procult e do FSA de 2007 a 2012, consistem em crédito de longo prazo para a criação de salas de cinema, com juros abaixo do mercado e estrutura de garantias flexível. A metodologia econométrica utilizada é o controle sintético, tal como formalizada por Abadie et al. (2010). Sob esse método, não foi possível identificar contribuição positiva da política de crédito quando se confronta o desempenho individual dos exibidores beneficiados versus seus respectivos controles sintéticos, medido pela evolução das variáveis número de salas e público. Ademais, testou-se um possível efeito agregado, considerando a evolução do número de ingressos per capita no Brasil, também não sendo possível identificar contribuição positiva da política sobre tal indicador.

Cette thèse adopte une approche analytique interrégionale de trois régions économiques pour évaluer les connaissances productives et la diplomatie dans le contexte d’intégration régionale, et en parallèle, les déterminants de la création d'entreprises. Du point de vue de l'intégration européenne, nous introduisons une nouvelle méthodologie de contrôle synthétique pour évaluer l'impact de l'adhésion à l'UE sur l'indice de complexité économique des nouveaux États membres d'Europe centrale et orientale. Nos résultats indiquent que l'adhésion à l'UE a joué un rôle catalyseur pour la connaissance productive des pays portant de faibles niveaux de complexité avant l'adhésion, permettant un taux de développement plus élevé dans la sophistication de l'espace d'exportation de leurs produits. En élargissant notre analyse à tous les pays européens et aux États d’Afrique du Nord, nous procédons dans un deuxième temps à l’analyse des déterminants du commerce des infrastructures institutionnelles et logistiques en élargissant le modèle de Gravité pour y incorporer des éléments de diplomatie (notamment la présence d’ambassades et d’ambassadeurs). Nos résultats démontrent les avantages des infrastructures immatérielles et matérielles ainsi que de l'activité diplomatique sur le commerce bilatéral des PECO et de l'Afrique du Nord, confirmant l'importance de ces variables en tant que moteurs de l'intégration régionale. Dans une dernière partie, nous concentrons notre analyse sur Fédération de Russie en tant que région géographique en introduisant une régression panel des déterminants de l’entrée et de la sortie d’entreprises. Cette évaluation empirique conclut que les défaillances institutionnelles et l’environnement politico-économique ont des effets significatifs sur la création et la destruction d’entreprises russes, avec une estimation robuste du prix mondial du pétrole (quelle que soit la différence entre les régions cibles) suggérant une forte exposition de chaque région russe à une crise mondiale. / This thesis takes a cross-regional analytical approach of three distinct economic areas to evaluate productive knowledge and diplomacy in the context of regional integration alongside determinants of business creation. From the angle of European integration, we introduce a new synthetic control methodology to evaluate the impact of EU accession on the economic complexity index of new CEE member states its results indicating that accession to the EU acted as a catalyst for the productive knowledge of countries with low levels of complexity before accession, allowing a higher rate of development in the sophistication of their product export space. Expanding our analysis to include all European countries and North African states, we proceed in a second stage to analyse institutional and logistical infrastructure determinants of trade by extending the traditional Gravity model to incorporate elements of diplomacy (including the presence of embassies and ambassadors). Our results demonstrate the benefits of soft and hard infrastructure as well as diplomatic activity on the bilateral trade fixed effect CEE and North African countries, validating their importance of these variables as powerful drivers of regional integration. In a final part, we turn our analysis to the Russian Federation as a regional geography with a panel regression analysis of the determinants of firm entry and exit. The empirical evaluation concludes that institutional failures and the politico-economic environment exhibit statistically significant and economically meaningful effects both on the creation and destruction of Russian firms, with a robust estimate of the world oil price (irrespective of the difference in target regions) suggesting a possible high exposure of each Russian region to a global crisis.

Submitted by Felipe Garcia (felipe.garcia.rs@gmail.com) on 2013-06-17T19:31:46Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese de Doutorado Felipe Garcia - Versão Final.pdf: 2832465 bytes, checksum: 1b420a2d381d534eb81e82c8a092fe26 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2013-06-17T19:45:58Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese de Doutorado Felipe Garcia - Versão Final.pdf: 2832465 bytes, checksum: 1b420a2d381d534eb81e82c8a092fe26 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-06-17T19:48:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese de Doutorado Felipe Garcia - Versão Final.pdf: 2832465 bytes, checksum: 1b420a2d381d534eb81e82c8a092fe26 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-06-07 / This thesis consists of three essays, one being on economic development and the two others on economic growth. The first essay is an investigation into how access to electricity by households affects time allocation of children and teenagers from rural Brazil in what regards the choice to attend school or to engage in the labor market. To establish a causal relationship between the availability of electricity and time allocation, we use the criteria of priority works from Luz Para Todos program as a source of exogenous variation in access to electricity of households located in rural Brazil. We apply Regression Discontinuity Design and Difference in Difference estimator with endogenous variables. The results from the latter methodology indicate that the presence of electricity increases the likelihood that children and adolescents are enrolled in school and are not delayed relative to the grade they should be attending at their age. Also, the probability of a child being literate and not being working increases with the presence of electricity. One of the possible channels that could explain these results is the increased participation of mothers in the labor market. However, one cannot discard the hypothesis that the observed results are justified by the increased access to electricity by the schools, making them better and more attractive to students and by the receipt of Bolsa Familia program which is conditional on school attendence by children and teenagers. The second study aims to contribute to the literature on institutions and economic growth through the investigation of how the 1959 socialist revolution in Cuba have affected the trajectory of per capita income in that country. To do so, we apply the synthetic control method to obtain the counterfactual path of income per capita in the absence of such revolution. The results show that the trajectory of the annual GDP per capita of Cuba between 1959 to 1980 was lower than it would have been if the socialist regime had not been implemented. This result is robust to different placebo tests deployed and also to the use of different series of GDP per capita. Alternative hypotheses that could explain the lower path of GDP per capita are discussed based on the existing literature and data. The discussion suggests that institutional change was indeed the cause of the observed negative effect on the Cuban economy during the period of analysis. Finally, the third article investigates the economic cost of a natural disaster in Brazil. The paper looks at the excessive rains that happened in the state of Santa Catarina in November and December 2008. This study contributes with some new evidence to the iv recent literature on natural disasters. To our knowledge, there are no studies in Brazil that empirically measure the impact that a natural disaster has entailed on an affected region. This study is structured in two parts. The first uses synthetic control to measure the impact of rainfall on the industrial production of Santa Catarina. For that, we propose a small accommodation method for treating the effects of possible flooding rains in other states. In the second part, we use the method of difference in difference to measure the impact of the rains on the GDP per capita of the cities. The results show that for a period of two years after the end of 2008, the impact of the rains caused a lower monthly industrial production of 2.0% in Santa Catarina. For municipalities, the estimated effect of the disaster on GDP per capita was around -7.0% in 2008 and -5.0% in 2009. There was not significant effect in 2010. / Esta tese é composta por três ensaios, um na linha de desenvolvimento econômico e dois na linha de crescimento. O primeiro deles trata de uma investigação sobre o papel do acesso à energia elétrica a nível domiciliar na alocação do tempo das crianças e adolescentes do Brasil rural entre frequentar a escola e participar do mercado de trabalho. Para o estabelecimento da relação causal entre energia elétrica e a alocação de tempo se utilizam os critérios de prioridade de obras do programa Luz Para Todos como fonte de variação exógena no acesso à energia elétrica dos domicílios localizados na zona rural do Brasil. Aplicam-se os métodos de Regressão Descontínua e Diferenças em Diferenças com Variáveis Instrumentais. Os resultados obtidos da segunda metodologia apontam que a presença de energia elétrica aumenta a probabilidade das crianças e adolescentes estarem matriculadas na escola, não estarem atrasadas em relação à série que deveriam estar dada sua idade, serem alfabetizadas e não estarem trabalhando. Entre os possíveis canais capazes de explicar estes resultados está a maior participação das mães no mercado de trabalho. Entretanto, não se pode descartar a hipótese de que os resultados observados sejam justificados pelo aumento do aceso à energia elétrica a nível escolar, o que pode tornar as escolas melhores e mais atrativas, ou consequência do aumento do recebimento do programa Bolsa Família que exige frequência escolar das crianças e adolescentes. Já o segundo ensaio objetiva colaborar à literatura de instituições e crescimento econômico através da investigação do impacto da mudança institucional ocorrida em Cuba após a revolução socialista de 1959 sobre a trajetória da renda per capita do país. Para tanto, aplica-se o método de controle sintético para a obtenção do contrafactual da trajetória da renda per capita na ausência da revolução. Os resultados apontam que a trajetória do PIB per capita anual de Cuba entre 1959 a 1980 foi inferior ao que teria sido caso não tivesse sido implantado o regime socialista. Este resultado é robusto aos diferentes testes de placebo implantados e ao uso de distintas séries do PIB per capita de Cuba. Hipóteses alternativas à mudança institucional, mas também capazes de explicar a trajetória inferior do PIB per capita, são discutidas com base na literatura e na descrição de dados. A discussão sugere que foi de fato a mudança institucional a causa do efeito negativo observado sobre a economia cubana durante o período de análise. Por fim, o terceiro estudo investiga o custo econômico de um desastre natural ocorrido no Brasil em 2008, a saber, o excesso de chuvas em Santa Catarina entre os meses de novembro e dezembro daquele ano. Este artigo colabora com mais uma evidência para a recente literatura de desastres naturais. No Brasil não há nenhum trabalho, sob nosso conhecimento, medindo empiricamente o impacto que um desastre natural tenha acarretado a uma região atingida. Este estudo está estruturado em duas partes. Na primeira se utiliza o controle sintético para medir o impacto das chuvas na produção industrial de Santa Catarina. Propõe-se uma pequena acomodação do método para tratar o possível transbordamento dos efeitos das chuvas nos demais estados. Já na segunda parte, utiliza-se o método de diferenças em diferenças para medir o impacto das chuvas no PIB per capita das cidades mais atingidas. Os resultados apontam que para um período de dois anos após o final de 2008, o desastre causou uma produção industrial mensal 2.0% menor do que seria caso as chuvas não tivessem ocorrido. Por municípios, o efeito estimado do desastre sobre o PIB per capita se situou ao redor de -7,0% em 2008 e -5,0% em 2009. Em 2010 não há evidências de efeito.

[pt] Esta tese é composta por três artigos relacionados à macroeconomia. O primeiro artigo analisa os efeitos macroeconômicos dos processos de aprofundamento de crédito observados no Peru e no México através de um modelo padrão Novo Keynesiano dinâmico de equilíbrio geral com fricções financeiras. Do ponto de vista do modelo, os efeitos sobre o consumo, o PIB e o investimento são pequenos. Assim, nossos resultados sugerem apenas uma contribuição modesta da expansão do crédito para o crescimento acima do potencial das economias peruana e mexicana durante o período considerado. No segundo artigo, documentamos que a associação entre o crescimento do consumo e expansão do crédito é maior para países com maior desigualdade de renda. Nós usamos um modelo de mercados incompletos com agentes heterogêneos, risco idiossincrático e restrições ao crédito para verificar em que medida este arcabouço teórico é capaz de racionalizar a evidencia empírica. Em nosso modelo, consideramos duas fontes de desigualdade de renda: a variância do risco idiossincrático e o nível fixo de capital humano dos agentes. Mostramos que, quando a fonte de desigualdade de renda vem da menor nível fixo das famílias do capital humano, o nosso modelo pode racionalizar a evidência empírica. Nos outros casos, o resultado oposto ocorre. O terceiro artigo testa os efeitos de um grande programa de intervenções no mercado cambial anunciado pelo Banco Central do Brasil afim de combater o excesso de volatilidade e overshooting da taxa de câmbio. Nós usamos uma abordagem de controle sintético para determinar se o programa de intervenção foi bem sucedido ou não. Nossos resultados sugerem que o primeiro programa de intervenção cambial mitigou a depreciação do real frente ao dólar. Todavia, um segundo anúncio feito no final do ano que o programa ia continuar com uma intensidade menor teve um efeito menor e não significativo. Esse resultado é corroborado por uma metodologia de estudo de evento padrão. Nós também documentamos que o programa e a continuação do mesmo não tiveram impacto sobre a volatilidade da taxa de câmbio. / [en] This dissertation is composed of three articles in macroeconomics. The first article explores the macroeconomics effects of the credit deepening processes observed in Peru and Mexico using a standard New Keynesian dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions. From the perspective of the model, the effects on consumption, GDP and investment are small. Hence, our results suggest only a modest contribution of credit expansion to the abovetrend growth experienced by Peruvian and Mexican economies during our sample period. In the second article, we documented that the association between consumption growth and credit expansion is stronger in countries with higher income inequality. We use an incomplete-markets model with heterogeneous households, idiosyncratic risk and borrowing constraints to corroborate this empirical finding. A loosening of credit constraints mitigates precautionary motives, inducing households to reduce savings along the transition path to the new steady-state. Therefore, consumption grows more rapidly in the shortrun. This consumption boom is amplified in economies with more constrained households. We consider two sources of income inequality in our model: the variance of the idiosyncratic risk and the households fixed level of human capital. They have different implications for the extent to which households are credit constrained in equilibrium. We show that when the source of income inequality comes from households lowest fixed level of human capital, our model can rationalize the empirical evidence. In the other cases, the opposite occurs. The third article tests the effects of a major program of interventions in foreign exchange markets announced by the Central Bank of Brazil to fight excess volatility and exchange rate overshooting. We use a synthetic control approach to determine whether or not the intervention program was successful. Our results suggest that the first foreign exchange intervention program mitigated the depreciation of the real against the dollar. A second announcement made later in the year that the program was going to continue on a smaller basis had a smaller effect, which was not significant. This result is corroborated by a standard event study methodology. We also document that both program did not have an impact on the volatility of the exchange rate.