I was involved in a research project about Brazil that resulted in the paper, “How Different Is the Brazilian Political System? A Comparative Study,” coauthored with Luciano de Castro and Odilon Camara. This paper provides an up-to-date comparison of Brazil’s political system with that of 33 other countries. We show that Brazil is an outlier with respect to the number of effective parties, the total government budget allocated to the legislative branch, and the public funding allocated to political parties. Brazil is also unique in its electoral management body: it is the only country in our sample in which the judiciary both organizes and oversees the electoral process. We also find a positive correlation between total public funding and the total number of effective parties. Thanks to the support provided by the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies through the Werner Baer Fellowship, during the academic year 2021-22, I was able to mainly focus on the first-year courses of the Economics Ph.D. program. The core courses (Macroeconomic Theory, Microeconomic Theory, and Econometric Theory) have been extremely important and useful to improving my research skills. During the next few years of my Ph.D. program, I will continue to study relevant topics about the Brazilian economy.