O objetivo deste estudo é analisar os fatores que determinam a escolha de um indivíduo por um emprego secundário e como tal decisão está relacionada com a informalidade. Para tanto, a partir dos dados da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD) contínua, é estimado um modelo logit de efeitos aleatórios para verificar os fatores que influenciam nesta decisão de inserção. Os resultados apontam que o rendimento do trabalho principal, a escolaridade e a informalidade no emprego principal influenciam positivamente na decisão dos trabalhadores em ingressar em um emprego secundário.

The growing demand for forest products and the increasing interest worldwide in this market requires studying the behavior and defining Brazil’s role in relation to other competitive countries in the sector. This study analyzed the international trade in forest products from 2000 to 2014 emphasizing Brazil’s role. The Revealed Comparative Advantage index (RCA) and Revealed Comparative Disadvantage index (RCD) were analyzed based on the matrix of the symmetric Aquino index, also through the intra-industry and interindustry analysis using the Grubel-Lloyd index. Brazil shows RCA in fuel wood, wood panels, wood floors and wood articles as well as wood pulp. Brazil imports relatively small amounts of wood; nevertheless, it still has relatively high dependence on paper importations.

A presente pesquisa teve como objetivo analisar a dinâmica das exportaçõesbrasileiras de Recursos Naturais Não Renováveis (RNNR) entre o período de 2000a 2012. Para tal, foram utilizados o indicador de Vantagens Comparativas Reveladas(VCR) e o modelo de Constant Market Share (CMS). Os resultados mostraram queo Brasil apresentou Vantagens Comparativas Reveladas nas exportações de RNNRem todo o período, porém essas vantagens estão concentradas em minérios, escóriase cinzas, e ferro fundido, ferro e aço. Verificou-se aumento contínuo do indicador deVCR para combustíveis minerais, óleos e ceras minerais, o que indica tendência demudança de uma situação de desvantagem para vantagem comparativa revelada paraessa categoria nos próximos anos. Por outro lado, o Brasil reduziu suas vantagenscomparativas nas exportações de alumínio e suas obras e, a partir de 2010, passou aapresentar desvantagem nessa categoria. O principal efeito responsável pelo crescimentodas exportações brasileiras de RNNR foi a composição da pauta de exportação, sendoo efeito competitividade predominante apenas no período 2000-2003, caracterizadopela desvalorização cambial no Brasil.

O objetivo deste estudo é analisar os fatores que determinam a escolha de um indivíduo por um emprego secundário e como tal decisão está relacionada com a informalidade. Para tanto, a partir dos dados da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD) contínua, é estimado um modelo logit de efeitos aleatórios para verificar os fatores que influenciam nesta decisão de inserção. Os resultados apontam que o rendimento do trabalho principal, a escolaridade e a informalidade no emprego principal influenciam positivamente na decisão dos trabalhadores em ingressar em um emprego secundário.

The Green-Blue Municipality Program (GBMP) was implemented in 2008 by the government of São Paulo State, Brazil. This program has as main goal to improve the environmental quality through actions based on ecofriendly directives. This study evaluates the impact of GBMP certification on hospitalizations regarding air quality and cases of diseases due to contact with contaminated water in São Paulo State from 2007 to 2015. This analysis focuses on the effects of post-certification, then pre-certification effects are not identified, classifying this analysis as partial. The identification strategies used were Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences. Estimates suggest that no significant reduction in the cases of diseases related to polluted water and air quality is observed in municipalities that received the GBMP certificate in initial years.

Essays on fuel policies in BrazilThe Brazilian fuel market is an interesting case study. There are several policies regarding biofuels and fossil fuels. Since 1997, through Law No. 9,478 the called Oil Law, the oil industry permits the entry of foreign companies. In 2004, the establishment of the National Biodiesel Production and Use Program (PNPB) by Law No. 11,097 introduced the blend mandate of biodiesel in petroleum diesel. In 2017, Petrobras started a new pricing policy, frequently adjusting the fossil fuel prices and following the international level. In the same year, the government approved Law No. 13,576, creating the National Biofuel Policy (RenovaBio), which aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with actions to expand biofuel production. The blend mandates of anhydrous ethanol in gasoline and between biodiesel and diesel play an important role since these policies combine fuel and food sectors such as sugar and soybeans. Thus, this thesis aims to evaluate complementary themes concerning fuel markets in Brazil through three essays. The first paper analyzes the oil industry between December 2002 and June 2017. We employ the New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) model to assess demand and supply functions and the market power degree. The results show that the Brazilian oil industry is characterized as a monopoly in the analyzed period. The second paper examines the relationships between soybeans, biodiesel, and blended diesel (diesel C) sectors using data from January 2006 to December 2018. We use unrestricted and structural specifications of Vector Error Correction Models (VECMs) to evaluate: the linkages between prices of products of the soybean complex such as soybean grains, soybean meal, soybean oil, and biodiesel; the relationships between diesel, biodiesel, and soybean markets; and the demand for blended diesel. The estimates show that soybean prices from different locations in Brazil are important to determine the blended diesel price. An increase of 1% in petroleum diesel price impacts the diesel C price by 0.31-0.33%, while an equivalent expansion in biodiesel price decreases diesel C price by 0.22%-0.54%. The third paper measures the effects of several fuel policies on social welfare and GHG emissions. Through a partial equilibrium model concerning the sectors of gasoline, ethanol, biodiesel, diesel, other petroleum products, soybeans, and sugar, we evaluate different scenarios: Status Quo* adopts current fuel policies; First-Best scenario assumes a competitive market and GHG emission tax applied by the government; and, RenovaBio policy combines the existing policies and carbon credits supplied by biofuel producers and purchased by fossil fuel industry. The First-Best policy results in the highest surplus with a welfare gain of 40.40% and -11.49% of GHG emissions if compared to Status Quo*. The RenovaBio scenario produces -7.06% of GHG emissions, while welfare rises 0.31%, a gain of R$ 6.43 billion in the Brazilian economy.

The spread of infectious diseases is a complex system in which pathogens, humans, the environment, and sometimes vectors interact. Mathematical and simulation modelling is a suitable approach to investigate the dynamics of such complex systems. The 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic reinforced the importance of agent-based simulation models to quickly and accurately provide information about the disease spread that would be otherwise hard or risky to obtain, and how this information can be used to support infectious disease control decisions. Due to the trade-offs between complexity, time, and accuracy, many assumptions are frequently made in epidemiological models. With respect to vector-borne diseases, these assumptions lead to epidemiological models that are usually bounded to single-strain and single-vector scenarios, where human behavior is modeled in a simplistic manner or ignored, and where data quality is usually not evaluated. In order to leverage these models from theoretical tools to decision-making support tools, it is important to understand how information quality, human behavior, multi-vector, and multi-strain affect the results. For this, an agent-based simulation model with different parameter values and different scenarios was considered. Its results were compared with the results of a traditional compartmental model with respect to three outputs: total number of infected individuals, duration of the epidemic, and number of epidemic waves. Paired t-test showed that, in most cases, data quality, human behavior, multi-vector, and multi-strain were characteristics that lead to statistically different results, while the computational costs to consider them were not high. Therefore, these characteristics should be investigated in more detail and be accounted for in epidemiological models in order to obtain more reliable results that can assist the decision-making process during epidemics.

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