Documento de Trabajo

Using School Scholarships to Estimate the Effect of Government Subsidized Private Education on Academic Achievement in Chile

This paper estimates the impact of private education on low-income students in Chile. We attempt to reduce selection bias by using reduced-tuition paying, low-income students in private schools as the treatment group, based on our finding that these students were, to some extent, randomly selected out of the public school control group. Propensity score matching

What Drives Capital Structure? Evidence from Chilean Panel Data

There is an extensive literature on the determinants of capital structure for developed countries, but little has been said about emerging economies. This article analyzes the driving forces of capital structure in Chile for the period 1990-2002. We study aggregate leverage and interest-bearing liabilities in isolation for all firms, and firms segmented by economic sector.

Portfolio management implications of volatility shifts: Evidence from simulated data

Based on weekly data of the Dow Jones Country Titans, the CBT-municipal bond, spot and futures prices of commodities for the period 1992-2005, we analyze the implications for portfolio management of accounting for conditional heteroskedasticity and structural breaks in long-term volatility. In doing so, we first proceed to utilize the ICSS algorithm to detect volatility

Forecasting crude oil and natural gas spot prices by classification methods

In this article, we forecast crude oil and natural gas spot prices at a daily frequency based on two classification techniques: artificial neural networks (ANN) and support vector machines (SVM). As a benchmark, we utilize an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) specification. We evaluate out-of-sample forecast based on encompassing tests and mean-squared prediction error (MSPE).

Micro Efficiency and Aggregate Growth in Chile

Using plant-level data on Chilean manufacturing firms for the 1980-2001 period, we estimate and characterize disaggregate total factor productivity. We use these estimates to study the microeconomic sources of aggregate efficiency, a fundamental part of aggregate growth. By decomposing productivity dynamics into production reallocation and within plant efficiency changes, we find that reallocation accounted for

Copula-based measures of dependence structure in assets returns

Copula modeling has become an increasingly popular tool in finance to model assets returns dependency. In essence, copulas enable us to extract the dependence structure from the joint distribution function of a set of random variables and, at the same time, to separate the dependence structure from the univariate marginal behavior. In this study, based

Asimetrías en la Respuesta de los Precios de la Gasolina en Chile

Market Reforms and Efficiency Gains in Chile

Starting in the mid 1970s, Chile implemented a deep and comprehensive set of structural market reforms. In spite of the wide agreement there is with respect to the expected benefits these reforms should have on growth, little evidence has been provided to empirically establish and to quantify this connection. Using plant-level data on Chilean manufacturing

The Effects on Firm Borrowing Costs of Bank M&As

Over the past few decades, banking systems in both mature and emerging markets have experienced a wave of consolidations, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). These developments have raised a number of questions among researchers and policy makers. A key concern refers to whether bank mergers benefit or harm borrowers. The goal of this paper is

Cooperation and Network Formation

The present paper proposes a simple model for studying the interplay between self-enforcing cooperation and network formation. In particular, the model provides an answer to the ancient question of how cooperative behavior emerges in different communities and how the possibility of behaving cooperatively shapes the social structure of a community. In a sense, I provide

Patrones de Desarrollo Urbano: ¿Es Santiago Anómalo?

La evidencia internacional muestra que las políticas de desarrollo urbano tienen efectos significativos en el bienestar de los individuos. Pese a ello, en Chile estas políticas han sido generalmente diseñadas e implementadas de acuerdo a criterios arbitrarios y omitiendo evidencia empírica relevante. Su evaluación exige conocer las regularidades que caracterizan al desarrollo urbano. Estos hechos,

The International CAPM and a wavelet-based decomposition of Value at Risk

In this article, we formulate a time-scale decomposition of an international version of the CAPM that accounts for both market and exchange-rate risk. In addition, we derive an analytical formula for time-scale value at risk and marginal value at risk (VaR) of a portfolio. We apply our methodology to stock indices of seven emerging economies