About

Hi! I am Brian Daza. I am a fourth year Ph.D. student in the Department of Economics at University of Michigan. The topics I fancy the most are a subset of the union of trade, macro, and development economics.

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.

You can contact me at bdaza@umich.edu

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 examines the effects of government spending using regional data from Peru. Identification relies on increased sub-national funds from a mineral prices boom and predetermined redistribution rules, which I use to calculate a local open economy relative multiplier and assess impacts on households, workers, and firms. Findings show spending raises relative output, wages, expenditures, and income but not labor or value added. To address this discrepancy, I incorporate insights from trade theory. Spatial Auto-Regressive analysis supports these insights and provides evidence that trade-related indirect effects on output are as important as local direct effects of government spending.

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, 2024 · Made with Markdown from RStudio.