Three essays on social security reform and education in Brazil

In Chapter I, I look at the macroeconomic impacts of a radical reform of the PAYG system, based on a switch to an individual retirement account system. I assume a closed economy for every simulation. In Chapter II, I use the same model as in Chapter I, but adapted to the case of an open economy. I re-calibrate the initial steady state to replicate the characteristics of the Brazilian external sector, with particular attention to the current account deficit and to the stock of foreign liability. In addition, I extend the simulations of Chapter I to allow for partial reforms in the PAYG system.In Chapter III, the issue is the impact of an increasing supply of college-educated workers in the college-high school wage gap. This chapter attempts to draw causal relationship between the evolution of college-educated labor supply and the performance of the college wage gap. I allow for imperfect substitutability between workers with the same educational level and different ages. I use the evolution of the college-high school gap over time to estimate both the partial elasticity of substitution across age groups and the elasticity of substitution between college and high school labor types.