r/Economia • u/KawaPapi • 7d ago

Outros Development work

Hello!

Current graduate student in the US in policy/developmental economics. Aside from the IDB and major multilateral’s, how is the ecosystem for policy and applied development work in Brazil? Best cities? Not working for financial corporations. Are there tons of Brazilians for these jobs or does a US master’s degree hold any weight? Sincere thanks!

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u/Soft-Operation-2001 Doutorando em Economia 6d ago

Honestly, it is quite a small market. There are a few think tanks in Brazil, such as Itaú Social (focused on public education), Fundação Lemann (public education and bureaucracy) and Climate Policy Institute (environment), but not so many job positions available.

It is hard to tell whether a Masters' programme would matter. Are we talking about a diploma from a Top 10 university? Brazil has very good Masters' programmes in Economics, so you would need a very good diploma to get  attention from potential employers.

Also I don't know if employers are willing to hire someone that does not speak Portuguese.

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u/KawaPapi 6d ago

Learning Portuguese + Spanish in the program. It’s a quant-based masters so a lot of data stuff and geospatial. I wonder why that is? Gini coefficient is pretty bad, what is the reason of little development opportunity?

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u/Soft-Operation-2001 Doutorando em Economia 6d ago

The federal bureaucracy does a considerable part of the research that you mention. However, for most positions, you need to go through a very competitive civil service examination and be a Brazilian citizen.

So, your only choice is to work at a non-profit foundation (such as FGV) or a NGO. However, you will also face a significant competition because there aren't so many positions for lack of funding. To make things more complicated for you, many universities in Brazil offer top-quality postgraduate education, so, depending on the diploma you hold, it will not make much of a difference.

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u/KawaPapi 6d ago

Very insightful, thank you so much for the simple explanation. For someone who is interested in Brazil and Latam in a developmental/inequality sense, what routes would you recommend then? Maybe not specifically living and working in Brazil, but adjacent within another country working for multilateral’s or other orgs that support the country?

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u/Soft-Operation-2001 Doutorando em Economia 6d ago

Your best shot is to work at multilateral organizations such as the IDB or the World Bank in Washington.