Welcome

I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at FGV EESP.

I am interested in environmental issues and their social effects.

Feel free to contact me about research, code, and data.

Email: rafael.araujo@fgv.br

Publications

Estimating the Spatial Amplification of Damage Caused by Degradation in the Amazon

with Juliano Assunção and José A. Scheinkman and Marina Hirota
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Preprint

The Value of Tropical Forests to Hydropower

Energy Economics. Preprint
Media: Folha, Jornal Nacional

Going Viral: Public Attention and Environmental Action in the Amazon

with Francisco Costa and Teevrat Garg
Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. Preprint
Media: Nature CC

Efficient Conservation of the Brazilian Amazon: Estimates from a Dynamic Model

with Francisco Costa and Marcelo Sant’Anna
The Review of Economic Studies. Preprint
Media: VoxDev

Transportation Infrastructure and Deforestation in the Amazon

with Juliano Assunção and Arthur Bragança
Journal of Development Economics. Preprint
Media: VoxDev

Seeds of Disparity: the Gender Land Divide from Brazil’s Agricultural Transition

with Bruna Borges, Francisco Costa, and Kelly Santos
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, forthcoming

Working papers

When Clouds Go Dry: An Integrated Model of Deforestation, Rainfall, and Agriculture

R&R Journal of Political Economy

I develop a discrete choice model of deforestation with spatially heterogeneous endogenous climate. Using pixel-level data for the Amazon Rainforest and the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, one of the most important agricultural hubs in the world, I estimate the model and consider a counterfactual where farmers are allowed to deforest protected areas. Deforestation reduces rainfall and increases temperatures for downwind farmers, creating cascading effects on a network of externalities. Ignoring climate feedback loops significantly underestimates the costs of deforestation, highlighting the importance of considering climate endogeneity beyond the production-emissions-temperature framework.

Voting in the Heat of the Moment: Climate Change Salience and Electoral Behavior

with Leila Pereira and Rogerio Santarrosa

We examine the impact of short-term temperature changes on voting behavior in the Brazilian presidential elections from 2010 to 2018, focusing on the candidacy of Marina Silva, a prominent pro-environment politician. Using data on municipality-level voting and daily wet bulb temperature, we find that an increase in temperature on election day increases votes for Marina Silva. We argue that this effect is driven by the salience of climate change issues, which influences last-minute voting decisions. Our analysis also shows that temperature variations in the days preceding the election have a limited impact on voting outcomes, highlighting the transient nature of climate salience effects.

Potato Potahto in the FAO-GAEZ Productivity Measures? Nonclassical Measurement Error with Multiple Proxies

with Vitor Possebom

The FAO-GAEZ crop productivity data are widely used in Economics. However, the existence of measurement error is rarely recognized in the empirical literature. We propose a novel method to partially identify the effect of agricultural productivity, deriving bounds that allow for nonclassical measurement error by leveraging two proxies. These bounds exhaust all the information contained in the first two moments of the data. We reevaluate three influential studies, documenting that measurement error matters and that the impact of agricultural productivity on economic outcomes may be smaller than previously reported. Our methodology has broad applications in empirical research involving mismeasured variables.

Rafael Araujo