| Hello, *|NOME|* With the objective of fostering research in the field of social mobility, IMDS, together with SBE (Brazilian Society of Econometrics), conceived the IMDS-SBE Award, which is now in its second edition. After the completion of the evaluation phase of the articles submitted for presentation at the 45th Brazilian Meeting of Econometrics, the following papers were selected by an examining board chosen by SBE: "Teacher Mindsets and Student Learning: A Randomized Intervention in Rio de Janeiro", by Tássia Cruz (FGV-EBAPE) and "The Kids Aren't Alright: Parental Job Loss and Children's Outcomes Within and Beyond Schools", authored by Diogo Britto, Caíque Melo (both from Bocconi University, Italy) and Breno Sampaio (Federal University of Pernambuco - UFPE). The first paper deals with an experimental impact evaluation designed in schools of the fifth grade of elementary school in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The experiment, workshops applied to teachers, aimed to answer the following questions: (I) is it possible to change teachers' beliefs about their students' progress prospects, even in a context of extreme social vulnerability? (ii) if so, is this alone sufficient to have an impact on students' academic performance, particularly in mathematics and Portuguese, a year later? The content of the dynamics with the instructors aims to induce them to think optimistically about their students' ability to surpass themselves. The theory of change, therefore, is that with more optimistic tutors, the classroom environment would transform, and student performance would improve. There is growing international academic literature on the role of the psyche – specifically "growth mindset" – showing that this type of intervention changes the way students face challenges and deal with frustrations. The adaptation of pedagogical practices that grant a certain degree of autonomy would induce an increase in self-confidence and an understanding of the role of will and effort as engines of transformation. A differential of Tassia's work is that she directly observes the pedagogical practices of teachers (TeachPlus observation methodology) and how these change with intervention and workshops. She found an impact of 1 (one) standard deviation of teachers' mindset change from the workshops (captured from the application of a questionnaire one year after the experiment) and an increase in grades in Portuguese and mathematics also of 1 (one) standard deviation, with evidence that this was mediated by the adoption of better pedagogical practices. The second paper studies the effect of parents' job loss on their children's school performance, and how access to unemployment insurance mitigates these impacts. The authors integrate children with parents using three databases with individualized records: RAIS, CadÚnico and the School Census. They do this for all children enrolled in 2014 in Brazil, managing to find 58% of fathers and 72% of mothers in RAIS or CadÚnico. The question to be answered in the study is: what effect does an event of mass dismissal of parents that occurred in 2014-2015 have on their children's dropout and school delay - defined by the authors as the probability of the child being older than that corresponding to the grade in which he or she is enrolled. On average, the authors found that a job loss due to mass layoffs reduces the average formal wage by 45% of those affected over the next two years. The authors identified a worsening of children's school results: a) a 0.4 percentage point drop in the enrollment rate when the average dropout rate was about 6% at baseline and b) a 0.5 percentage point increase in the age-grade distortion (relative to an average of 18% at baseline). The two selected articles, therefore, have in common the intense use of unpublished databases or an unprecedented integration of databases: in the first case, resulting from primary data collection that results from the evaluation of an educational pilot; in the second, integrating old administrative records in an unprecedented way. The two papers will be presented at the IMDS-SBE Award session and evaluated by the committee composed of Vladimir Ponczek (EESP-FGV) and Edson Severnini (Carnegie Mellon University). The session will be held on 12/14, Thursday, at 8:30 am, and the announcement of the winner and the award will take place on 12/14, at 7:30 pm.
Until the next “Letter from IMDS”! Paulo Tafner CEO | 
