Documento de Trabajo

La sustentabilidad ambiental del transporte urbano: El caso de Santiago de Chile

El sistema de transporte urbano genera una diversidad de impactos ambientales: en la calidad del aire a nivel local, sobre problemas ambientales globales, de ruido, de uso de recursos y otros. La forma en que las ciudades se organizan para enfrentar la creciente demanda de por viajes determinará su sustentabilidad ambiental, es decir si en

Auction Design for the Colombian Electricity Market

Colombia deregulated its electricity sector and created a new market for electricty in July 1995. The spot market price is determined by a daily auction among the producers. Though the auction is designed to foment price competition, water scarcity constraints and the relatively high utilization of production capacity at peak demand hours produce situations where

Infraestructure Franchising and Government Guarantees

Government guarantees for private infrastructure projects reduce the incentives of firms to perform efficiently, weaken the incentives to screen projects for white elephants, and shift government obligations to future periods. Thus the uses of guarantees needs to be limited, and they need to be carefully designed. Franchising schemes should in principle assign risk to the

Factores que inciden en el rendimiento escolar en Bolivia (Factors effecting school performance in Bolivia)

Mejorar la calidad educativa es una de las tareas prioritarias en América Latina y particularmente en países como Bolivia, donde la educación ha comenzado a ser un tema crucial en la agenda pública, especialmente a partir de 1994 cuando se implementa una nueva Reforma Educativa. El objetivo de este trabajo es examinar los factores que

Oferta laboral y seguro de desempleo: Estimaciones para la economía chilena.

El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar una estimación de oferta laboral para Chile, y luego, utilizar los resultados obtenidos para estimar el impacto de diferentes esquemas institucionales de seguro de desempleo sobre la decisión de trabajar de los individuos. En la primera parte del estudio se estiman dos modelos de oferta de trabajo, diferenciados

The Chilean Infrastructure Concessions Program: Evaluation, Lessons and Prospects for the Future

This paper describes and evaluates the Chilean infrastructure concessions program, which is one of the main economic innovations carried out by the center-left coalition of political parties that has governed Chile since the return to democracy in 1990. The main principles underlying the economics of franchising are discussed and used to evaluate the program, thereby

Poverty and Macroeconomic Policies: Chile 1987-1994

Poverty has declined substantially since 1987 in Chile. Has this reduction in poverty benefited all groups and regions? Are this specific sectors of the economy that have been left out of this reduction? These and other question are discussed in this paper. To do so, we characterize the poor in terms of education, employment, demographics

Liquidity Crises in Emerging Markets: Theory and Policy

We build a model of financial sector illiquidity in an open economy. Illiquidity –defined as a situation in which a country’s consolidated financial system has potential short-term obligations in foreign currency that exceed the amount of foreign currency it can have access to on short notice– can be associated with self fulfilling bank and/or currency

Inflation Stabilization and the Consumption of Durable Goods.

Exchange rate-based stabilizations in chronic-inflation countries have often been characterized by an initial consumption boom (which is most evident in the behavior of durable goods) followed by a later contraction. This paper provides an explanation for such a boom-recession cycle based on the timing of purchases of durable goods. The initial fall in inflation results

Desempeño escolar y elección de colegios: La experiencia chilena

Hoy en día existe una creciente preocupación sobre el tema de la calidad de la educación, derivada en parte del reconocimiento de sus efectos sobre la distribución del ingreso y el crecimiento económico. Sin embargo, la experiencia nos señala que este desafío es complejo. Tanto los países en desarrollo como los países desarrollados han, por

Protección a los consumidores en Chile: ¿Por qué tan poco y tan tarde?

Este artículo da a conocer las políticas de resguardo a los consumidores, para luego evaluar el grado de protección existente en Chile, tanto antes como después de la promulgación de la Ley del Consumidor de marzo de 1997. Se presentan dos estudios de casos que ilustran la situación de los derechos de los consumidores: el

Standards and Protection.

This paper examines the behavior of a country that imposes a minimum standard on a good produced both by a domestic firm and by a foreign competitor, and where the latter also supplies its own market. Production costs rise with the standard, and the foreign firm incurs a fixed setup cost if it produces at