Documento de Trabajo

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

La Productividad Científica de Economía y Administración en Chile. Un Análisis Comparativo

Este trabajo compara el volumen y la calidad de la productividad científica de las ciencias económicas y administrativas en Chile, con el resto de las disciplinas científicas a nivel nacional y con economía y administración y otras disciplinas a nivel internacional. Dado que la productividad científica no es homogénea entre las disciplinas, las comparaciones utilizan

Urban Air Quality and Human Health in Latin America and the Caribbean

Luis Cifuentes is a professor at Catholic University, Chile. Alan Krupnick is a Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF). Raúl O’Ryan is a professor at the University of Chile. Michael Toman is in the Environment Division of the Sustainable Development Department, IADB.This working paper is being published with the objective of contributing to

Transmisión eléctrica y la “ley corta”: por qué licitar es (mucho) mejor que regular (Electricity transmission and the short law: why offering for tender is [much] better than regulation)

Existen a lo menos dos procedimientos para fijar los peajes que deben pagar los usuarios de líneas de transmisión. Uno consiste en regularlos en un proceso estándar. El otro, adjudicar las líneas en licitaciones competitivas por menor peaje. En este trabajo mostramos que los peajes esperados son inambiguamente menores si las líneas se licitan. Las

Soft Budgets And Highway Franchising

First version: October, 2003This version: December, 2003  Latin American governments progressively substituted build–operate–and–transfer (BOT) contracts for government–provided highways during the nineties. Because under BOT a private franchise holder finances and operates the road in exchange for tolls, it is often claimed that BOT represents a privatization of highways. We argue that, as currently applied, the

The Credit Channel in an Emerging Economy

To date, there is no consensus about how frictions in the credit market affect the transmission of the monetary policy to the real economy. The traditional money channel states that when the Central Bank reduces its reserves, commercial banks are forced to reduce their demand for deposits. If prices are sticky, in the short-run a

Sunk Prices And Salesforce Competition

This work analyses those industries in which the role of salespersons is to poach clients from rival firms. This is done with a three-stage model where firms decide successively if they enter the market or not, what price to set, and how many salespersons they hire. It is assumed that each consumer is obliged to

Stock Markets Turmoil: Worldwide Effects of Middle East Conflicts

In this article, we analyze the impact of recent political conflicts in the Middle East on stock markets worldwide. In particular, we study how political instability––mainly due to the war in Iraq––has affected long-term volatility of stock markets. In doing so, we utilize two approaches to detecting structural breakpoints in volatility: Inclan and Tiao’s Iterative