© Laudo M. Ogura, August 19, 2009

Research areas

· Urban Economics: local policies

· Public Economics: provision of public goods

· Development Economics

· Political Economics

· Applied Microeconomics

Publications

E-mail a request for electronic copies (working paper version) of published papers. Copies of forthcoming papers are available below.

· Urban growth controls and intercity commuting, Journal of Urban Economics 57, 2005.

· A note on tax competition, attachment to home, and underprovision of public goods, Journal of Urban Economics 59, 2006.

· Skill differentiation between formal and informal employment, with Enlinson Mattos, Journal of Economic Studies, forthcoming 2009.

(Previously titled “Skill segmentation in informal employment”) (working paper version)

· Effects of urban growth controls on intercity commuting, Urban Studies, forthcoming. (working paper version)

Working Papers

Copies of revised working papers are available at the author’s SSRN page: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=558046

· Effects of urban growth controls on local taxation, working paper, under revision.

· A note on agriculture subsidies and urban growth, working paper, under revision

· Can land use regulations hinder regional economic growth, theoretical working paper

· Do urban growth controls hurt regional economic growth?, empirical working paper, to be completed soon.

Other Academic Works

· An empirical evaluation of the political business cycles models for the Brazilian economy – 1980~1999

ABSTRACT: This paper tests the "opportunistic" political business cycle models against a broad range of stylised facts for the Brazilian economy. I study the period spaning from 1980 to 1999, which encompasses the recent return to a democratic regime. The results show evidence in favour of the models in several aspects.

This article was presented in the Brazilian Annual Economic Meeting (ANPEC), Brazil, 12/1999 [meeting version in Portuguese] and is published in the Proceedings of the meeting. The article presents the empirical chapter of the author’s master dissertation for University of Brasilia, Brazil, 6/2000. Further work is needed for reliable results (however, there are more recent works on the same subject by other authors). A draft version (2000) in English can be found here, but it is not well written.

Current or past research topics of interest

(Collaboration on these topics is welcome)

URBAN ECONOMICS

· Fiscal competition (Ph.D. dissertation)

· Urban growth controls (Ph.D. dissertation)

· Crime (in progress)

· Urban squatting

PUBLIC ECONOMICS

· Non-profit organizations and government grants (in progress)

· Fiscal decentralization

DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH

· Informal economies (in progress)

· Economic growth and technology adoption

· Political economy models of growth and development in the Brazilian case (Ph.D. work)

· Corruption/rent-seeking/soft-budget constraints

· Regional development

POLITICAL ECONOMICS

· Political cycles in the Brazilian economy (M.A. dissertation)

· Election concerns and public policies

· Politicians versus parties interests

· Ethnic conflict management