Proyectos

Vertical Integration and Sabotage in Regulated Industries

An essential facility produces “access,” an essential input used by a competitive downstream industry. The access charge is regulated. The essential facility can vertically integrate into the downstream segment and sabotage rivals increasing their costs.  We systematically study the vertical integration decision and the optimal level of sabotage. Contrary to most of the literature, we

Extremal Dependence in Exchange Markets

Exchanges rate markets exhibit correlation in the short run, but the issue is whether such correlation lingers over long periods of time, and under extreme events (i.e., either large appreciations or depreciations). In this paper, we analyze dependence between nominal exchange rates under extreme events for a sample of ten countries with dirty/free float regimes

Wealth Accumulation, Credit Card Borrowing, and Consuption-Income Comovement

The Privatization of Social Services in Chile: an Evaluation

We examine the privatization of Chilean social services that began in 1981. We conclude that the reform has had a positive impact by providing competition to public providers (health and education) and insulation from political capture (pension funds). The major lesson, however, is that the full benefits from privatization-cum-competition are slow to arrive and require

Strategies That Work When Property Rights Don

In many sectors property rights over knowledge and information are weak as they are embodied in employees, competitors can copy or customers can pirate. Yet comprehensive studies show that firms systematically invest in these assets. We offer a simple taxonomy of strategies that firms use to cope with weak property rights. We classify these strategies

Labor Market Distortions, Employment and Growth: The Recent Chilean Experience

The per capita growth rate of Chile from 1984 to 1997 was among the highest in the world. During recent years, however, per capita growth dropped significantly. This paper discusses the role of factor accumulation and the efficiency with which factors are used, measured as total factor productivity (TFP), to explain the evolution of output

Principios para Tarificar la Transmisión Eléctrica (Principals for the price fixing of electricity transmission)

El propósito de este artículo es establecer los principios económicos que deben regir el cálculo de las tarifas de transmisión de energía cuando se utiliza el modelo tradicional de peak-load pricing para tarificar la energía y la potencia. Los sistemas de transmisión cumplen tres funciones distintas: transportar energía, sustituir capacidad de generación y aumentar la

A Developing Country View on Liberalization of Tariff and Trade Barriers

The key issue of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is the following: What type of OMC rules would maximize the rate of development of developing countries? In this short note, we provide a short synthesis of developed countries disturbing trade barriers which affect negatively developing countries export growth. Also, we suggest some guidelines which would

Algunas Aplicaciones de Economía Ambiental en Chile (Some applications of environmental economics in Chile)

Idiosyncratic Productivity Shocks and Plant-Level Heterogeneity

Using plant-level data on Chilean manufacturing firms for the 1980-99 period, we estimate and characterize disaggregate total factor productivity. We show that idiosyncratic productivity shocks are a quantitatively relevant source of the observed heterogeneity in the behavior of plants. Both exit and input demand decisions are correlated with our estimates of plant level productivity. We

Comparaciones Internacionales de la Dotación de Profesionales y la Posición Relativa Chilena (International comparisons of teacher supply and the relative situation in Chile)

El objetivo de este trabajo es aportar evidencia comparativa internacional para contribuir a dilucidar el tópico sobre la existencia de un déficit o superávit de profesionales (y técnicos) en Chile. Si bien el aspecto cuantitativo de la dotación de profesionales (y técnicos) es relevante, uno de los resultados centrales de este artículo plantea que el

Competition in or for The Field: Which is Better?

In many circumstances, a principal, who wants prices to be as low as possible, must contract with agents who would like to charge the monopoly price. This paper compares a Demsetz auction, which awards an exclusive contract to the agent bidding the lowest price (competition for the field) with having two agents provide the good