Abstract: We examine the role of politician preferences and beliefs about tax policy drawing on a unique survey of over 700 local government leaders (mayors) in Brazil. Mayors rate raising tax revenue as an important policy priority and express strong beliefs that a range of tax interventions have the potential to improve revenue collection. Mayors are generally confident in their beliefs and often appear overoptimistic relative to existing empirical evidence. Mayoral political preferences as well as beliefs about the effectiveness of tax interventions are predictive of mayors seeking out further knowledge by attending an information session on raising tax revenue.

Abstract: Many social transfer programs around the world face capacity constraints that prevent all means-eligible individuals from accessing benefits. These constraints include budgetary limitations, logistical inefficiencies, or institutional barriers, and can present as de jure-where the government assigns a fixed number of quotas to the program-or de facto in programs where all eligible individuals are legally entitled to receive benefits, yet in practice, there are often insufficient resources to accommodate the entire target population. Such constraints are often viewed as suboptimal because they prevent intended transfers from reaching all eligible individuals. However, they may, in fact, serve as a targeting mechanism when individuals' true income or need is not directly observable by the government. Intuitively, these limitations introduce uncertainty into program participation, reducing the incentive for less disadvantaged individuals to become eligible, and thereby leaving more resources available to those most in need. Do capacity constraints affect the targeting of social programs? If so, how does this phenomenon affect programs' optimal design? In this paper, I address these questions by developing a simple model of welfare program participation under asymmetric information. The model illustrates how capacity limitations can function as a screening mechanism, leaving more resources available to be distributed among those most in need.

Abstract: Local registration offices and interviewers play a crucial role in determining access to benefits, serving as the direct link between individuals and the welfare system. Extensive literature has examined how challenges in the application process-such as the location of registration offices and long waiting times-affect the targeting of social programs. Moreover, another strand of literature has explored the role of registration officers as gatekeepers, whose discretion during the verification process can shape individuals' eligibility and access to benefits. In Brazil, local offices and staff have considerable discretion over the registration process and the enforcement of conditionalities for the CCT Bolsa Familia program. This project aims to examine the effect of interviewer discretion on the misreporting of information in the Cadastro Unico-leveraging central-level audits to identify individuals caught misreporting-as well as its impact on registration rates and the selection of beneficiaries for Bolsa Familia and other programs.

Abstract: Governments, when designing cash transfer programs, often face the challenge of targeting the poor when true income is unobserved. Many programs rely on verification mechanisms like audits to detect and remove ineligible recipients. While audits are typically costly to implement, they may influence the behavior of non-audited individuals through informal information channels. Although prior research has documented the direct effects of audits and explored peer effects in tax compliance settings, little is known about such spillovers in the context of means-tested welfare programs-where enforcement tools differ and social networks may play a larger role. This project aims to investigate whether individuals adjust their income reporting after learning that others in their area lost access to benefits due to misreporting. I focus on Brazil's Bolsa Familia program, which reaches millions of low-income families and relies heavily on self-reported income in a largely informal labor market. The federal government conducts annual audits to flag discrepancies and remove ineligible recipients, offering a natural setting to study these indirect effects.

Abstract: How do short benefit calculation windows impact individuals' earnings? We aim to answer this question within the context of public-sector employees in the Paraguayan Social Security System, where retirement benefits are calculated using the final 5 years of work. We use administrative payroll data from the Ministerio de Hacienda of Paraguay, which encompasses all public sector employees (totaling 250,000 employees) spanning the period from 2013 to 2024. The dataset includes yearly data on each employee's position within the government, their role, and dependency, as well as details on their total remunerations, including base salary, overtime, representation charges, and bonuses disbursed by the government. Our empirical analysis will conduct event studies to evaluate whether workers respond to the incentives embedded in the social security system by strategically increasing some margins of earnings in the 5 year-benefit calculation window (BCW). Additionally, we will examine a series of reforms during the 2010s that decreased the BCW for some groups of employees at different points in time. Our hypothesis is that while public sector workers may not have direct influence over their base salary, they might delay claiming certain bonuses until their final working periods so that these earnings can be included in the calculation of their future pension.