Urban policy analyst and modeller · Ipea, Brasília
I build agent-based and complex-systems models that let policy analysts ask what if — about housing markets, taxes and transfers, commuting, labour, carbon emissions and violence against women. Since 2014 I have worked almost exclusively on complex systems applied to urban and regional analysis.
Selected recent work
Carbon taxes and subsidies in Brazil
Do carbon taxes push firms to innovate or simply to contract? A firm-level simulation of emissions under alternative policy mixes.
Cities and institutions
How institutional rules and urban dynamics co-evolve — a chapter for the Handbook on Institutions and Complexity.
Simulations against gender violence
Using the VIDA model to inform policy on violence against women in Brazil, with Lígia Mori Madeira and Ludmila Ribeiro.
Coupled housing and labour markets
Modelling urban transition when where people live and where they work adjust to each other, with Jiaqi Ge.
PolicySpace2
A spatial agent-based model of Brazilian metropolitan regions: real estate, credit, taxes and endogenous public policy.
PolicySpace3
An open platform for ex ante simulation of public policy in Brazilian urban areas: families, firms, local governments and a bank across five markets.
Current projects
Phasing out oil in urban contexts
A three-city comparison of how urban economies absorb the end of oil. Member, since 2023, with Jiaqi Ge, Yuri Kasahara and Kristian Tvedt.
Comparative public policy
An endogenous, empirical and spatial approach — the line the carbon-tax and emissions work comes from. Coordinator, since 2023, with Olândia Ferreira Lopes and Gustavo L. Rocha Lima.
SobreVIDA
Agent-based modelling of the mechanisms of intimate partner violence. Since 2024, coordinated by Lígia Mori Madeira (UFRGS), funded by CNPq.
Environmental macro-criminality
Institutional capacity in security and justice policy against illegal mining, deforestation and wildlife trafficking. Since 2025, coordinated by Lígia Mori Madeira (UFRGS), funded by CAPES.
Path dependence
I trained as an architect and urbanist, writing on slums and urban mobility in Belo Horizonte in the 1990s. A quantitative master’s in Geography followed, with an emphasis on municipalities and spatial analysis. From 2005 I read for a doctorate in Regional Economics at CEDEPLAR, spent 2008 at RIKS in Maastricht, and defended a co-tutored thesis at Utrecht University in 2009 on social heterogeneity and urban real estate prices.
I joined Ipea in 2009 as a planning and research analyst, received tenure in 2012, and have worked since in the Directorate for Regional and Urban Studies. Along the way I coordinated urban studies (2011–13), was deputy director of the directorate (2013–15), coordinated the Department of Sectoral Studies, DISET (2015–19), headed a division (2019–21) and served as Coordinator for Financing and Investment in 2023. Since 2015 I have also taught in Ipea’s master’s programme in Public Policy and Development. In 2018 I held a post-doctoral position at the University of Oxford, funded by UNDP Brazil. CNPq has awarded me a research productivity grant three times, in 2014, 2017 and 2020.
Elsewhere
Curriculum Vitae · Lattes CV · GitHub · ResearchGate · LinkedIn · Twitter
Email: bernardo.furtado at ipea.gov.br