Research

Working Papers

• Perceptions of Race in the Labor Market (with Sulin Sardoschau and Aiko Schmeisser) [Working Paper]
  Abstract

  Empirical studies of racial disparities often treat race as fixed, though scholars across disciplines view it as fluid, context-dependent, and observer-specific. We study the determinants of racial perception in the labor market and its consequences for measured wage disparities. Using linked administrative data on 330,000 workers in Brazil (2003-2015), we observe three racial measures: employer-recorded race from payroll filings, self-identified race from electoral records, and phenotype from standardized photographs. Self-identified and employer-ascribed race diverge in over 20% of cases, and employers disagree in their classification of the same worker. Estimating a "race function" that captures how employers map worker characteristics into racial categories, we find that phenotype matters, but so do productivity-relevant characteristics. University-educated workers are 10 pp more likely to be classified as White than workers with the same skin tone but no high school degree. Education "whitens" workers even conditional on self-declared race, all visual cues in the photographs, and firm-by-occupation fixed effects. Conventional wage-gap estimates based on recorded race or skin tone shrink by 80-90% under a comprehensive set of controls, partly because those controls also shape racial classification. We introduce a perception-normalized disparity measure that attenuates far less, suggesting conventional estimates overstate how much productivity differences explain racial wage gaps.

• Rooting for the same team: Shared social identities in a polarized context (with Nicolás Ajzenman and Bruno Ferman) [Working Paper]
  Abstract

  Can shared social identities help overcome online political divides? We investigate this question through a field experiment with 4,620 unique Twitter users conducted over six months during the 2022 Brazilian elections. Although both political congruence (supporting the same candidate) and social non-political congruence (rooting for the same football team) increase follows and reduce blocks, the positive effect of shared social identity weakens substantially when political identity information becomes available. The effect of political congruence remains strong even after the election and is unaffected by the Brazilian national team's positive results during the 2022 FIFA World Cup, despite the team being a quintessential national symbol. Text analysis of live-streamed tweets of Brazilian nationals during the tournament suggests that this shared national experience failed to reduce political polarization in our setting because polarization had extended to the players themselves. Overall, our results indicate that political polarization can undermine the potential of other shared identities to reduce political divides and foster social cohesion.

  AEA RCT Registry
  Media Coverage: Esto no es Economía

Publications and Accepted

• Discrimination in the Formation of Academic Networks: A Field Experiment on #EconTwitter (with Nicolás Ajzenman and Bruno Ferman) [Published Version] [Working Paper Version], American Economic Review: Insights, 2025
  Abstract

  This paper documents discrimination in the formation of professional networks among academic economists. We created human-like bot accounts that claimed to be PhD students in economics, differing in gender (male or female), race (Black or White), and university affiliation (top- or lower-ranked). The bots randomly followed users who belong to the #EconTwitter community. Follow-back rates were 12% higher for White students compared to Black students; 21% higher for students from top-ranked universities compared to accounts of lower-ranked institutions, and 25% higher for female compared to male students. The racial gap persisted even among students from top-ranked institutions.

  AEA RCT Registry
  Media Coverage: Promarket; Folha de São Paulo

• Elections that Inspire: Effects of Black Mayors on Educational Attainment (with Jorge Ikawa, Clarice Martins, and Rogério Santarrosa; Previously circulated as: “Black Mayors as Role Models: Evidence from close elections in Brazil”) [Published Version], Journal of Public Economics, 2026
  Abstract

  We study the impact of the election of a Black mayor in Brazil on Black students’ educational attainment. Using a regression discontinuity design in close elections, we find that Black students in municipalities where Black candidates won are more likely to register for the National High School Examination, attend university, and graduate. Our evidence is consistent with changes in students' aspirations: secondary/tertiary education is not a mayor’s primary responsibility; Black mayors do not perform better in policies that affect our outcomes; and effects are strong for Black students from both public and private schools, while weaker for White students from public schools.

  Media Coverage: Foco Economico

Previous Work

• Crime and Vote: Public Violence and the Election of Law and Order Candidates (with Guilherme Luz). Annals of the 47th National Meeting of Economics, 2019. Available here (in Portuguese)