Documento de Trabajo

A comparative analysis of market power mitigation measures. The case of Chile’s electricity industry

In a previous paper I found that the implementation of an unregulated wholesale electricity spot market in Chile would result in prices far above competitive levels as a consequence of the unilateral exercise of market power by the largest generators. In this paper I examine whether and how much market power could be mitigated by

Diagnosing Market Power in Chile’s Electricity Industry

Chile’s electricity market is modeled as a Cournot duopoly with a competitive fringe. Due to the importance of hydro-storage resources (62% of total generation in 2000) particular care was given to the hydro scheduling issue. The model was estimated over a 1-month planning horizon using real cost and load data for April 2000. I found

Extreme Value Theory and Value at Risk

Value at Risk (VaR) is a measure of the maximum potential change in value of a portfolio of financial assets with a given probability over a given time horizon. VaR became a key measure of market risk since the Basle Committee stated that banks should be able to cover losses on their trading portfolios over

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

Interest Rate Volatility and Nominalization

Most Latin American economies in the 1980’s and early 1990’s were burdened with extremely high inflation rates. Chile’s strategy to strengthen its financial market was to rely on inflation-linked securities. Indeed, indexation pervaded the whole economy for almost thirty years. However, the sharp decrease in the annual inflation rate over the last decade— from 26

Privatizing Highways in Latin America: is it Possible to Fix What Went Wrong?

This paper reviews the Latin American experience with highway privatization during the last decade. Based on evidence from Argentina, Colombia and Chile, we find that private financing of new highways freed up fewer public resources than expected because public funds were often diverted to bail out franchise holders. Furthermore, many of the standard benefits of

Spatial Peak-load Pricing

This article extends the traditional electricity peak-load pricing model to include transmission costs. In the context of a two-node, two-technology electric power system, where suppliers face inelastic demand, we show that when the marginal plant is located at the energy-importing center, generators located away from that center should pay the marginal capacity transmission cost; otherwise,

Una estimación del efecto distributivo de las bandas de precio, 1984-2000 (An estimate of the distributive effects of price bands, 1984-2000)

Entre 1984 y 2000 las bandas de precio del trigo, el azúcar y los aceites comestibles han generado transferencias netas desde los consumidores hacia los productores y el Gobierno, por un total de US$ 1.217 millones. Así, las bandas no sólo han estabilizado precios sino que los han sustentado siendo proteccionistas. Hay tres factores que

Extreme Value Theory: Value at Risk and Returns Dependence Around the World

This paper presents two applications of Extreme Value Theory (EVT) to financial markets: computation of value at risk and assets returns dependence under extreme events (i.e. tail dependence). We use a sample comprised of the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Our main findings are the following. First, on average, EVT gives the most

Transmisión eléctrica y la "ley corta": una estimación de la redistribución de peajes (Electricity transmission and the short law: an estimate of toll redistribution)

Este trabajo estima los peajes que le correspondería pagar a cada grupo de empresas de generación con cada una de las reglas de asignación que han sido propuestas en las sucesivas versiones de la ley corta, y los compara con aquellos que hubieran pagado con los contratos vigentes hasta marzo de 2002.El principal resultado del

Desafíos metodológicos de los sistemas de evaluación e incentivos en educación. El caso del SNED en Chile

En este trabajo se analizan los desafíos más importantes que enfrentan los sistemas de evaluación e incentivos, esto es, qué elementos considerar en la medición del desempeño del establecimiento escolar y cómo comparar entre establecimientos educacionales que atienden a una población de distinto nivel socioeconómico. Este análisis es fundamentalmente metodológico y se realiza respecto del

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