Working papers

• Consumer Misperceptions and Redistribution in Financial Products: Evidence from Brazilian Consórcios
  [Job Market Paper] October 2026
  (with Otávio Braga and Lucas Iten Teixeira)
  Abstract PDF
  Financial innovations may expand access to credit, but also introduce complexity that leads to consumer losses and redistribution across consumers. We study consórcios, a group savings-and-credit product accounting for 25% of new vehicle credit in Brazil. Consumers pool monthly payments and receive funding through lotteries or bids, allowing consumers with liquidity to obtain funding earlier at the expense of others. Using administrative data covering 59 million contracts and a survey of 1,296 consumers, we document four facts. First, 81% of contracts lose money relative to saving and borrowing in the market. Second, losses are regressive. Third, firms’ allocation decisions favor bidding, which can improve expected returns, while consumers waiting for lotteries face long waits and large expected losses. Fourth, consumers overestimate chances of receiving funding early through lotteries. These findings challenge explanations of participation in group savings products based on commitment and suggest that misperceptions about allocation probabilities may help sustain regressive contract designs. In a randomized information experiment, disclosing true lottery probabilities increases liquidity-constrained consumers’ willingness to forgo a real bonus for access to groups with more lotteries, but has no corresponding effect among consumers able to bid. Our findings show that correcting misperceptions can differentially affect demand across consumer types, with possible implications for market composition and redistribution.
• Inflation Beliefs and the Indexation of Household Debt
  [Otávio's Job Market Paper] October 2026
  (with Otávio Braga and Lucas Iten Teixeira)
  Abstract PDF
  Economic theory dictates that inflation beliefs should shape household financial decisions, but establishing this link empirically has been a central challenge. We argue that such difficulty can be partly explained by the fact that many households do not understand their own financial exposure to inflation. To show this, we study households holding inflation-indexed debt, whose contracts establish a one-to-one relation between inflation and the growth of their nominal payments. In a survey experiment with Brazilian borrowers, we separately elicit forecasts for inflation and installments. Most respondents underestimate their own exposure, expecting payments below what their inflation forecasts imply. We cross-randomize two independent treatments informing respondents about (i) historical inflation and (ii) the payment increase implied by their own inflation forecast. We find that shifts in inflation beliefs affect households' financial planning only when paired with (ii), which makes their payment consequences explicit; (i) alone revises forecasts but leaves planning unchanged. Finally, we calibrate a consumption-savings model to show that borrowers tolerate inflation exposure in their indexed debt far more than the rational benchmark predicts, even after accounting for possibly biased inflation beliefs and the underestimation of their future debt burden.
• Good News and Bad News: The Effects of Consuming Professional News Outlets During the 2022 Brazilian Elections
  September 2026
  (with Caio Castro)
  Abstract PDF SSRN
  We study the effects of direct professional news consumption in a randomized experiment with 1,658 voters during Brazil’s 2022 elections. Participants interested in subscriptions chose among five newspapers. Offering three-month free subscriptions and reading incentives shifted consumption from social media to newspapers without increasing total news consumption. Treatment improved news knowledge and trust in professional media, with evidence of stronger support for democratic norms and no effect on affective polarization. Effects on trust and democratic attitudes were concentrated among non-left-wing participants. Despite the positive overall effects of consumption, only three participants subscribed to newspapers after the intervention.
• Blue Spoons: Sparking Communication about Appropriate Technology Use
  September 2022
  (with Arun Chandrasekhar, Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer, Jon Robinson, and Frank Schilbach)
  Abstract PDF SSRN
  An enduring puzzle regarding technology adoption in developing countries is that new technologies often diffuse slowly through the social network. Two of the key predictions of the canonical epidemiological model of technology diffusion are that forums to share information and higher returns to technology should both spur social transmission. We design a large-scale experiment to test these predictions among farmers in Western Kenya, and we fail to find support for either. However, in the same context, we introduce a technology that diffuses very fast: a simple kitchen spoon (painted in blue) to measure out how much fertilizer to use. We develop a model that explains both the failure of the standard approaches and the surprising success of this new technology. The core idea of the model is that not all information is reliable, and farmers are reluctant to develop a reputation of passing along false information. The model and data suggest that there is value in developing simple, transparent technologies to facilitate communication.
• Can Income Targeting Be Explained by Dynamic Sample Selection?
  July 2021
  (with Pedro Bessone)
  Abstract PDF
  In neoclassical models, transitory income shocks should not affect labor supply. This prediction has often been rejected empirically in favor of theories featuring reference-dependent preferences. We show that apparent negative daily income effects can be generated in a neoclassical model of labor supply by dynamic selection, where wage variation causes differential attrition throughout workers’ shifts. Using data from an RCT with experimental variation in wages and fine measures of labor supply, we show that estimates of negative income effects are an artifact of dynamic selection in this setting, providing a neoclassical explanation to the findings of the income-targeting literature.

Work in progress

• The First Mile of Accountability: The Roles of Citizen Values and Conceptual Models
  (with Leon V. Eliezer and Anirudh Sankar)
  Funded by the Weiss Fund Pilot Grant
  Abstract
  Information campaigns often have muted effects on political accountability. This project tests whether a core friction lies at the “first mile” of citizens’ willingness and ability to engage, rather than just the “last mile” of information delivery: people may lack both fundamental civic values and a conceptual framework for interpreting factual information on government performance. We study this in the context of Brazil’s complex public healthcare system, where municipalities are primarily responsible for service provision but all levels of government are involved. Partnering with Politize!, Brazil's largest civic education NGO, we combine a standard public information campaign with a three-week treatment in which participants receive video content on (i) participatory values; (ii) a model of how public healthcare works; (iii) both; or (iv) a placebo. We then deliver primary healthcare report cards and measure belief updating, demand for additional information, and costly civic engagement. In a second study, we examine the broader equilibrium effects of civic education by testing how public officials respond to a more informed and engaged citizenry. We randomly disclose the civic education effort to officials, invite them to respond to the healthcare report card, and then study how citizens react to their messages. The pilot is planned for early 2027.