This thesis is comprised of three empirical articles. The first article studies the long run development impacts of a colonization policy undertaken by public authorities in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. By the late 19th century, almost 30 settlement colonies were created across São Paulo, Neo Europes characterized as rural villages formed by small plots of land and populated by relatively higher-skilled European settlers. The unique features of this colonialism episode enable us to support empirically the view that settlement colonies fostered long run development of settled regions through improvements in early levels of human capital. The second article examines to what extent idiosyncratic weather patterns during the time in utero have affected infant health at birth and educational outcomes in the Semiarid Northeast Brazil.We build two parallel databases. The first one is a municipality by month of birth database that combines site-specific rainfall uctuations before birth with infant health and mortality rates. The second one combines the same weather outcomes with student level data on school attainment and achievement. We find statistically signifficant evidence that areas hit by negative rainfall uctuations experience higher incidence of low birth weight, preterm gestation and infant mortality rates. We also find that adverse rainfall uctuations when in utero are associated with lower academic test scores, higher incidence of delayed enrollment, dropout and grade repetition among young primary school students. The third article investigates whether and how armed conict among drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro s slums affect children s educational outcomes. We explore time and geographical variation in localized violent events in order to identify causal effects of exposure to violence on students achievement test scores and mobility across schools. We find that students from schools close to areas that experience more violence over time perform worse in standardized math exams, while no significant effect is found for language exams. Violence is also associated with higher grade repetition and dropout rates.