Rodrigo is a Research Associate at UNU-WIDER, and his research interests are Development Economics, Economics of Education, and Labor Economics.
His leading research focuses on the impact of education on a wide range of outcomes and uses different methods. During his Ph.D., he studied how education and labor market structure explain the evolution of Brazil's regional inequality between 1970 and 2010. After the Ph.D., his research focused on the impact of vocational training, affirmative action policies, and evaluating other educational or labor policies. Recently he started projects involving tax-and-benefit microsimulation methods in selected African countries and the long-run impacts of socio-economic shocks.
He also has at least five years of experience leading research teams in Brazilian Universities, one year of experience leading a research team in the Brazilian private sector. Currently, he coordinates research and technical assistance activities in Mozambique and Tanzania in collaboration with UNU-WIDER colleagues and leads the UNU-WIDER seminar series.
This report documents ZANMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Zanzibar. This work was carried out by staff at Zanzibar University, the Second Vice President’s Office in Zanzibar, the University of Dar es Salaam, and the University of Dodoma, in...
This report documents MOZMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Mozambique. This work was carried out by the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Mozambique in collaboration with the project partners. The results presented in this report are derived...
This report documents TAZMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Tanzania Mainland. This work was carried out by University of Dar es Salaam in collaboration with the project partners. The results presented in this report are derived using TAZMOD...
Evidence from Brazil shows how affirmative action students in the higher education system adjust their behaviour to catch up with initially higher...
Affirmative action in higher education can lead to mismatch, where students admitted through preferential treatment struggle academically due to inadequate preparation before college. Although some students may face initial challenges, by providing...
Using two rich administrative data sets and a rule of admission at one top university in Brazil that splits students into two classes, we apply a regression discontinuity design to study the effect of class allocation on academic performance and...
We examine the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated tax-benefit measures in seven sub-Saharan African countries, focusing on the onset of the crisis.We evaluate impacts on disposable incomes, considering variations across...
This report documents TAZMOD, the SOUTHMOD model developed for Tanzania Mainland. It describes the different tax–benefit policies in place, how the microsimulation model picks up these different provisions, and the database on which the model runs...
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