Description:

Speaker: Devis Decet 

Title: The Geography of State Capacity

Abstract:  In this preliminary work, I employ census data to map the extent of public sector presence across 10 African countries and 1,203 regions. I show some descriptive facts about public sector workers' human capital and their allocation across regions. I conclude by proposing possible ways of using this measure to better understand the organization of the State in the Global South. 

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Speaker: Matheus Sampaio

Title: Transfer Cost and Financial Access: evidence from Brazil

Abstract: Low-cost instantaneous transfer systems are being developed all over the world, and at the same time that central banks are worried that these technologies could increase bank deposit competition and destabilize the banking industry, these technologies could increase financial access and strengthen the financial sector.
In this paper, We explore how the introduction of a free transfer system in Brazil, called Pix, disrupted individuals' financial access. We use rich confidential data from the Brazilian Central Bank on every individual and firm in Brazil, and a natural experiment in which 21 million families had to access governmental assistance either through Pix or at some determined withdrawal locations. The distance to those locations becomes an instrument to determine Pix's causality on several outcomes.