Bruno A. Freitas

Doctoral researcher, Insper · Senior PPP & concessions consultant, Radar PPP

I study how political institutions shape strategic decisions and the performance of complex public contracts, using public-private partnerships as the primary laboratory — from adoption to renegotiation.

About

Research at the border of scholarship and practice

I am a doctoral researcher in Business Administration at Insper — research line Strategy in Public and Third-Sector Organizations (advisor: Sergio G. Lazzarini) — and a senior consultant in concessions and PPPs at Radar PPP. I am also a master's candidate in Public Policy at UFABC (research line Institutions, Society, and Democratic Governance; advisor: Adalberto M. M. de Azevedo). That dual vantage point is the point: cases from practice become research questions, and rigorous evidence informs how real contracts are designed and governed.

My identity as a researcher is defined by a problem rather than a single object of study: how do political institutions shape strategic decisions and the performance of complex public contracts? PPPs are the main laboratory, but the agenda extends naturally to concessions, procurement, and regulatory governance.

Working papers & work in progress

Selected work

Who Gets to Compete? Institutional Barriers to Entry and Competition in Brazilian Public-Private Partnership Auctions

Working paperPresented at MPSA 2026 · preprint forthcoming (SSRN)

How do institutional and regulatory barriers shape who bids in Brazilian PPP auctions — and what does that mean for competition?

The Effect of Political Ideology on Public-Private Partnership Contracts in Brazilian Municipalities: Evidence from Close Elections

Working paperPresented at MPSA, 2025 · from the master's dissertation

Using close municipal elections in a regression discontinuity design, it asks whether a mayor's party ideology shapes the adoption of PPP contracts.

Politics after Contracting: renegotiation and the political economy of long-term public contracts

In progressadvised by Sergio G. Lazzarini · to be presented at EGPA 2026

How politics shapes the renegotiation of long-term public contracts once they are signed.

Credible Nulls in Close-Election Regression Discontinuity Designs

Under reviewMethodological paper · pre-registered equivalence tests

On interpreting null results in close-election RDDs with pre-registered equivalence tests — when "no effect" is a finding, not a failure.

Measuring Party Ideology from Government Platforms with Large Language Models

In progressMethodological note · a public, DOI-minted corpus to follow

A methodological note using large language models to measure party ideology at scale from government platform texts.

A Reforma Gerencial e as Parcerias Público-Privadas no Brasil: a ideologia político-partidária importa?

Under reviewTheoretical essay (in Portuguese)

A theoretical essay (in Portuguese) asking whether partisan ideology matters for Brazil's managerial reform and its public-private partnerships.

A full list is on my ORCID and Google Scholar.

Research agenda

Five lines, one question

1Political ideology and the adoption & performance of PPPs

2Renegotiation and post-contractual politics

3Credible null results and causal inference (RDD)

4Measuring ideology at scale with LLMs

5State capacity and institutional barriers to entry

The contract life cycle — from adoption to renegotiation — is the connecting thread.

Presentations

Selected talks

European Group for Public Administration (EGPA), 2026

UpcomingPolitics after Contracting: renegotiation and the political economy of long-term public contracts

Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), 2026

ConferenceWho Gets to Compete? Institutional Barriers to Entry and Competition in Brazilian PPP Auctions

Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), 2025

ConferenceThe Effect of Political Ideology on PPP Contracts in Brazilian Municipalities: Evidence from Close Elections

Infracidades, 2025

ConferenceO efeito da ideologia partidária na celebração de contratos de PPP em municípios brasileiros (in Portuguese)

I Simpósio Discente do Campo de Públicas — PGPP-UFABC, 2024

SymposiumO efeito da ideologia partidária na celebração de contratos de PPP em municípios brasileiros (in Portuguese)

Open science

Open and reproducible

I am building a reusable open-science workflow — preregistering analyses on OSF, publishing exhibit-by-exhibit replication archives, and minting DOIs for shareable data. My tools are public:

replication-template — a single-command replication skeleton for a paper.
open-science-toolkit — R helpers, a pre-analysis-plan template, and a submission checklist.
research-portfolio — R and Stata scripts: data analysis, econometrics, and causal inference for policy evaluation (RDD, DiD, PSM, IV, synthetic control).
Prompts-Analise-Academica — a library of reusable prompts for the research workflow: critical article analysis, adversarial self-review, refereeing, and publication strategy.

When work touches PPP clients, a conflict-of-interest disclosure is included as a matter of course.

Writing for practice

Opinion & policy

Alongside academic work, I write for the infrastructure and public-policy community, translating evidence for the people who design and oversee contracts. Every piece is anchored in the research agenda and links back to the underlying paper whenever one exists.

Como os serviços públicos são oferecidos?

Politize!2021 · How public services are delivered — New Public Management, concessions, PPPs, and the third sector

Crise financeira de 2008: você sabe o que aconteceu?

Politize!2020 · A plain-language primer on the 2008 global financial crisis

Teaching

Teaching & talks for practitioners

Teaching interests: research methods and causal inference (regression discontinuity, difference-in-differences, instrumental variables); the economics and governance of public-private partnerships and concessions; and public management and administrative reform.

Available for guest lectures and workshops on PPPs and concessions, applied causal inference, and evidence-based contract governance.

Contact

Get in touch

Interested in collaborating on the political economy of public contracts, or in a practitioner's read on a PPP question? Write to brunoaf2@al.insper.edu.br.