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In this paper, we present a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the location patterns of manufacturing industries in Brazil using a distance‐based measure and micro‐geographic panel data for a 10‐year period. Our results show that 89.9% and 91% of manufacturing at the 3‐digit level have statistically significant localization for 2006 and 2015, respectively, and that these patterns remain high when we consider 4‐digit classification. High‐tech industries have location patterns at short distances, being localized mainly in large urban areas, while low‐tech industries are also localized at long distances. We also present evidence that agglomeration economies affect the degree of spatial concentration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our main goal in this paper is to understand the fuel market's spatial price competition. While most of the literature uses the density of gas stations and proximity to rivals as proxies for spatial competition, we measured the marginal increase in spatial competition by the entrance of a new rival nearby. The empirical results indicate that a new firm's entrance reduces prices, and the reduction is more significant the closer the new rival is. A new rival less than 100 meters away is related to a reduction of 2.6% on the typical incumbent firm price. When the new rival is located farther than 250 meters, the incumbent response is lower than 1%. For even greater distances, the effects were significant only when incumbents are unbranded. The extent of spatial competition matters for the outcome; while firms that already faced intense spatial competition are not impacted by having an entrant seller nearby, those facing low spatial competition had a significant price reduction. The pattern, entry of rivals closer matters more, remains when investigating the gasoline price, the ethanol price, and the gasoline wholesale‐retail margins in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the influence of agglomeration and spatial sorting on wages in Brazilian cities. The empirical strategy is based on a two‐step estimation. The first step estimates a wage equation with the observed characteristics of workers and firms and location effects. The second step decomposes the location effects into employment density and fixed effects of firm and worker. We estimate an urban wage premium for a developing country with the simultaneous inclusion of worker and firm fixed effects, instrumental variables, and nighttime lights. We find agglomeration effects of 4.3–5.7%, which are larger than those obtained for developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of the incidence of the Zika virus on birth rates in Brazil. We estimated a difference‐in‐differences model that explicitly considers the spatial interaction of virus incidence, measuring its impact on the affected municipalities and their neighbours—not directly affected. Our results show that directly affected municipalities experienced a 1.7% decrease in birth rates in 2016 and 2.5% in 2017, while municipalities close to those affected—but not directly affected—showed reductions of 1.2% and 2.1% for the same periods. Moreover, the evidence shows that the effect was not guided by biological effects and was concentrated among younger women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Fernandópolis, located in the countryside of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, imposed a juvenile curfew in 2005. This decision was not made at the municipal or state level, but in a courtroom. Subsequently, other municipalities in the state of São Paulo decided to adopt a juvenile curfew. To assess the effect of the curfew on reducing crime, this paper uses the difference‐in‐differences estimation to compare its impact, relative to municipalities that did not adopt a curfew. The results suggest that the curfew led to a decrease of 17.9% in thieves per thousand inhabitants in municipalities that adopted it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food security and nutrition is a multidimensional theme consisting of three pillars: food access, availability, and sufficiency. Given food security and nutrition's extent, its measures are usually limited. To address these limitations, this paper proposes the creation of a disaggregated food insecurity index for Brazilian states, with the three dimensions in mind. The results show that while food availability elevates the average of the index, the sufficiency still is a problem. Even though the distribution of and access to food in Brazil has increased in the last years, it was not combined with policies that guarantee its safety and quality, reinforcing the need for specific interventions considering regional particularities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the impact of economic externalities on the local growth emphasizing the industrial, geographic, and temporal scope of agglomeration economies. Thus, we estimated a spatial dynamic panel model using GMM associated with the use of data at different levels of sectoral aggregation. Estimation takes into account the endogeneity of agglomeration economies. Our database consists of 558 Brazilian regions for 1995–2015. The main results suggest that while externalities act in a local dimension they also have a regional scale. These externalities are determined by their temporal trajectory. The effects of agglomeration economies on local growth are sensitive to the choice of sectoral aggregation. Local growth exhibits positive specialization effects and negative diversity effects. However, greater industrial diversity of neighbouring regions has a positive impact on local growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Political institutions are an essential component to explain income variation. Brazilian municipalities are characterized by a great contrast in the colonization process and its impacts on the current income level and distribution, and other development aspects. This study analyzes the spatial heterogeneity of the relationship between institutional quality and the municipalities' economic development. We use a spatial moving window method applied to weighted regressions—Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). We find evidence that good institutions increase income and other variables related to economic development. In addition, the institutional quality influence on economic development measures is distinct across the Brazilian regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Damage Assessment Reports from the Civil Defence, the current study investigates the relationship between the damage caused by natural disasters and local development at the municipality level in Ceará state, Brazil. The results show that a better urban and water supply infrastructure, a lower population density, and a higher proportion of own revenues relative to total revenues are associated with smaller disaster damage. However, economic development in terms of GDP per capita exhibits a convex relationship with the impact of natural disasters across municipalities, reflecting the potential decreasing returns of preventive investments due to the highly hazardous environment that involves municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gibrat's law asserts that the growth of a city is independent of its initial size, but the populations of cities display a pattern of systematic agglomeration. This pattern may emerge because some cities are more attractive than others. We analyse the relationship between the growth and size of 1,188 cities in the South Region of Brazil using municipal data between 2000 and 2010. The selected model is the spatial Durbin model (SDM) that controls for temporal and spatial dependence, relevant omitted variables, economic factors, local amenities and externalities. The results indicate that Gibrat's law is not robust when cities interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Routine activities theory establishes that the greater the exposure to public spaces with weak guardianship the higher the probability of being a victim of urban violence. Using a unique dataset for the year 2009 that includes all Brazilian metropolitan regions, we provide evidence for the causal effect of a long commute time on the chance of being a victim of violence in these urban centres. The set of evidence was obtained by applying propensity score matching techniques to create counterfactuals and is robust to different robustness checks and sensitivity analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]