Documento de Trabajo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Highway Franchising and Real Estate Values

It has become increasingly common to allocate highway franchises to the bidder that offers to charge the lowest toll. Often, building a highway increases the value of land held by a small group of developers, an effect that is more pronounced with lower tolls. We study the welfare implications of highway franchises that benefit large

Macroeconomic Management in Emerging Economies and The International Financial Architecture

In the last few years, and most recently with the crisis in Argentina, views about emerging markets and the international financial institutions have changed significantly. This paper reviews macroeconomic management in emerging economies and the role of the international financial institutions in helping to secure their stability. It discusses the role of macroeconomic policies, in

Does Competition Kill Relationships? Inside Investment Banking

An influential literature has emerged around the premise that there exists an uneasy tension between (1) bank-firm relationships that promote incentives for firm-specific investments by banks, and (2) competition between banks that can destroy such incentives. This paper studies the industrial organization of the investment banking market in order to shed light on how this