During this first year of the PhD program at the University of Illinois, Guilherme successfully completed the program’s required coursework in Microeconomic Theory, Macroeconomic Theory and Econometric Analysis. Meanwhile, he also continued to provide research assistantship to the “Grupo de Avaliação de Políticas Públicas e Econômicas” (GAPPE) in projects related with Industrial Organization and Applied Microeconometrics. GAPPE is a research group dedicated to the evaluation of the social impacts of economic and public policies based in the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), in Recife – Brazil. Guilherme have mainly been involved with two projects addressing issues related to Brazil. Both of which have been developed in partnership with co-authors at GAPPE. The first project exploits the quasi-experiment induced by daylight saving time policy in Brazil to assess the impact of short-term sleep deprivation as a risk factor for diabetes mellitus, using regression-discontinuity techniques (abstract follows below). The second project, a report developed for the Audiovisual Secretary of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture (SAV – MinC), provides a thorough evaluation of the Brazilian market for cinema and audiovisual products and services, drawing assessments on its future performance using estimation techniques such as the BLP method of demand estimation.