About

Hi! I’m Brian Daza, a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Michigan. I focus on questions that sit within the union of international trade, macroeconomics, and development economics. I use both structural and empirical tools to study how globalization, domestic frictions, and government policy interact with economic growth and distribution.

My research experience includes being a Research Assistant at MIT, the World Bank’s DIME, and the Research Center of Universidad del Pacífico. I also worked as a consultant for the Peruvian Government in the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Transports and Communication.

I hold a M.A.Sc in Data, Economics and Development Policy from MIT and a Bachelor of Economics from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

Research

Working Papers

  • “Government Spending Multipliers and Distribution of Commodity Booms in the Spatial Economy”
    Latest Version (February, 2025) | RSIE Discussion Paper 690
    Abstract This paper studies the effects of local government spending and examines an empirical puzzle: while income, wages, and household expenditure rise following spending increases,local employment and firm value added do not. I exploit plausibly exogenous variation in public investment spending in Peru, where a commodity boom in the 2000s and ex ante defined natural resource revenue-sharing rules generated resources windfalls to local governments even to non-extractive provinces. Using these transfers as an instrument for public investment purchases, I estimate an open-economy relative local multiplier of 0.376. To explain the disconnect between rises in wages, expenditures, and income gains, and no response in local production, I propose a spatial transmission mechanism: government spending raises local demand, which is met through trade with other regions rather than only local production. I formalize this mechanism in a spatial trade model, where local fiscal shocks propagate through goods market linkages. The model’s equilibrium conditions map to a Spatial Auto-Regressive (SAR) specification, which I estimate to quantify indirect effects. The SAR results confirm that trade spillovers substantially amplify the aggregate effects of local spending. These findings imply that local multiplier estimates, which do not incorporate spatial propagation, likely understate the broader economic impact of fiscal policy.

Selected Work in Progress

  • “Teenage Labor, Trade, and Market Access”
    Working Paper Coming Soon - Draft Available by Request
    Abstract This paper exploits drastic tariff reductions and increased export possibilities to study their effects on teenage labor, its interaction with adult labor, and the role that market access plays in that interaction. In the context of Peru’s last liberalization episode that took place in the 2000s and the growth of China as the main Peruvian trade partner, I find that both episodes are associated with higher teenage labor participation in districts more exposed to them. These effects seem to be sharper in districts with lower market access, which is consistent with complementarities between adult labor and teenage labor in household production activities and contributes to explaining why child and teenage labor didn’t decrease despite the severe reductions in poverty rates.

Pre-Doctoral Work

 

Brian Daza, 2025 · Contact: bdaza@umich.edu

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