Peer-Reviewed Papers
Which institutional features do Latin American elites favor for local climate change policies? Climate change mitigation requires active local-level implementation, but it remains unclear which institutional arrangements maximize support for environmental rules. In this paper, we run a conjoint experiment with elite members of 10 Latin American countries and ask respondents to evaluate institutional designs drawn from a pool of 5,500 possible local climate governance arrangements. We find that Latin American elites prefer international organizations to formulate climate policies, support imposing increasing fines on violators, and favor renewing agreements every 5 years. We also find that elites support both international institutions and local courts to mediate conflicts, but they distrust non-governmental organizations and reject informal norms as a means of conflict resolution. Our results identify possible challenges in crafting local climate mitigation policies and offer new insights about how to integrate local and international levels in environmental agreements.
Replication Materials: [here] – Commentary: [here] – Tweeter Thread: [here]
Does local oversight improve public service delivery? We study the effect of a mobile phone application that allows citizens to monitor school construction projects in Brazilian municipalities. The app prompts users to submit data about construction sites, sends such crowdsourced information to independent engineers, and contacts the mayors’ offices about project delays. Our results show that the app has a null impact on school construction indicators. Additionally, we find that politicians are unresponsive to individual requests. The results question the impact of bottom-up monitoring on public service performance and suggest that interventions targeted at other groups, or focused on different issues, may produce better policy outcomes.
Replication Materials: [here] – EGAP Brief: [here] – Tweeter Thread: [here]
Replication Materials: [here]
The Effect of Budget Amendments in Parliamentary Behavior (with F. Vasselai) Dados 57(3), 2014.
In this article the authors examine whether, between 1996 and 2010, the Executive’s execution of individual amendments proposed by federal deputies to the budget was responsible for increasing the proximity between parliamentary votes and government preferences in roll-calls. The possible influence of such amendments is where scholars still search for a non-partisan, personal and parochial component of the Legislative support of the Executive. However, both the usual defense of this idea as well as its refutation have considerable gaps to be filled, leaving the question unresolved as time as a factor was not considered in tests or because their methodological approaches require adjustments. This investigation addresses these problems by verifying whether the distance between the ideal points of congressmen and of the appointments by the government chief whip in a given year are influenced by the execution of the budget amendments made by deputies – on the same year as well as on previous ones. We propose to model the temporal between amendments and legislative support, correcting serial auto-correlation, controlling for the coalition membership and dealing with the inherent problems of instrumentalization that come with these types of models.
Commentary: [here]
Um Modelo para Explicar as Coligações Eleitorais para a Câmara Federal Brasileira (with R. Bernabel and M. Galdino) Revista Política Hoje 20(2), 2012.
Replication Materials: [here]
The Impact of Corruption in the Quality of the Democratic Government. Plural 18 (2), 2011.
In this paper, I study the empirical operationalization of the quality of government and corruption, focusing on its impacts on democratic countries. In the first part of the text, I present the Diamond and Morlino (2005) quality of government attributes: procedures, results, and contents. Then, I show that corruption can deteriorate each of these elements, affecting the government’s quality. I show that my argument holds empirically studying a panel comprised of 154 countries between 1996 and 2005. By comparing democracies and non-democracies, this paper shows that higher levels of corruption deeply harm democracies.
Other Publications (Edited Books, Book Chapters, and Non-Peer Reviewed)
 | Geopolitics of Renewable Energies in Latin America: a survey (w. D. Freire). Technical Report, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2019. [report-en] [report-sp] [report-ptbr] |
 | Diplomacia da saúde global [Global health diplomacy]. In Desafios da Política Externa Brasileira [Brazilian Foreign Policy Challenges], 2016. [book] [video abstract] |
 | Brasil: Las Capas Medias en Las Elecciones Presidenciales de 2010 (with M. Tavares de Almeida, and A. Pereira). In Clases Medias y Procesos Electorales en América Latina, by Ludolfo Paramio. Ed. Catarata, 2012. [book] [paper] [book review] |
 | Faz Alguma Diferença Corrigir as Distorções de Representação no Brasil? (with R. Bernabel and M. Galdino) In: O Papel do Congresso Nacional no Presidencialismo de Coalizão, 2011. [book] [paper] [cite] |
| O Poder Ausente: o Congresso Nacional e a Segurança Pública no Brasil (with L. Piquet and R. Mucinhato) In: O Papel do Congresso Nacional no Presidencialismo de Coalizão, 2011. [book] [paper] [cite] |
