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Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
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Improving food security through community participation: results from a randomized field experiment in rural Nicaragua
This paper evaluates a community based development program designed to promote climate-smart agriculture and improve food security in rural Nicaragua. Using a within-community randomized controlled trial, we estimate short- and medium-term impacts on agricultural practices, production, and welfare. The program combined productive asset transfers, technical assistance, and training delivered through local solidarity groups. Results show significant increases in the adoption of improved inputs—such as certified seeds, biofertilizers, and post-harvest technologies—along with higher maize and bean yields, greater crop diversification, and expanded participation in producer organizations. Beneficiaries also report better food security and higher satisfaction with their quality of life. Because randomization occurred within communities, spillovers likely make these estimates conservative. The findings suggest that community-based delivery can effectively scale up CSA practices and strengthen food security in vulnerable rural areas.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Cooperation and Competition: The Case of Innovation in the Telecommunications Sector
This paper proposes a novel framework for analyzing collaborative innovation that captures both competition and cooperation among firms, and examines the impact of private appropriation through IP rights licensing on firms’ incentives to innovate and on the overall outcome. I show that when developing technology together firms compete and cooperate, and that the intensity of each force depends on their technological similarity and business model. To study the net effect of these forces in equilibrium, I focus on the standardization of mobile telecommunications technologies and use a novel dataset on the development of 3G and 4G standards to estimate my model. I show that enforcing royalty-free clauses reduces the participation and contributions of firms, delaying the completion of the initial release of 4G by almost one year beyond the almost 3 years it took to develop.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Estimating Choice Models with Piecewise Smooth Objective Functions: Application to Joint Retirement
We study choice models with piecewise smooth objective functions and provide conditions under which introducing latent variables derived from regional components yields a censoredmodel– like representation. These latent variables can then be treated as potential outcomes, enabling tractable estimation via the stochastic EM algorithm. We illustrate the framework using two examples: responses to taxes and the (S, s) model. We further estimate a joint retirement decision model for European couples using an interdependent duration framework with our methods. The results provide empirical evidence of complementarities between spouses in the retirement process in Europe.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Performance Incentives and Managerial Practices: Experimental Evidence from Local Governments in Peru
This paper examines how public organizations respond to institutional incentive design by comparing an input-based contract with a mixed input- and outcome-based contract. Using a clustered randomized controlled trial across 539 rural municipalities in Peru, I study how these contracts shape managerial practices in the implementation of a national Home Visit Program. While the mixed incentive did not alter home-visit coverage, it produced clear shifts in managerial behavior: municipalities expanded their supervisory staff, rewarded Community Health Workers more frequently, and intensified monitoring of the anemia indicator tied to the contract. They also adopted more targeted innovations for children at risk of anemia, although broader processes, such as training and supervision intensity, remained largely unchanged.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Role of Geography and Gender in Telecommunications Standards Participation
Do meeting locations shape who influences telecom standards? Using quasi-random variation generated by 3GPP rules that rotate venues across cities, we study attendance at 2,241 working group meetings (1999–2018). In a gravity-style linear probability model, geographic distance and national borders sharply reduce individual participation, even after controlling for role, seniority, and inventive activity. Crucially, the distance penalty is substantially larger for women and cannot be explained by differences in experience or technical expertise. By contrast, participation by core firms and senior technical leaders is comparatively insensitive to travel frictions. These results show that, despite cheaper communication and abundant air connections, spatial barriers still govern access to standard-setting and can tilt representation in a key arena of innovation policy.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The structure of local bureaucracies in Mexico
This paper provides a systematic characterization of the organizational architecture of municipal governments in Mexico and how it varies with municipal size. Using detailed data from the National Census of Municipal Governments, the analysis documents patterns in the number of organizational units, staffing levels, sectoral specialization, and the allocation of budgetary and labor resources across functional areas. The results show that municipal bureaucracies expand initially through the creation of new units and, at later stages, through increased staffing within existing units, and that core functions such as public works, public services, and public security account for a large share of organizational resources. By describing these patterns, the paper helps address the scarcity of empirical evidence on the internal organization of the public sector and motivates further research on the relationship between organizational form and local state capacity.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Women’s representation and the governance of the commons
The study analyzes how the inclusion of women in community governance bodies affects the management of common resources. It takes advantage of the 2016 reform of Mexico's Agrarian Law, which imposed gender quotas on agrarian committees, to estimate causal effects using a staggered event design. With data from more than a decade (2012–2023), it finds that greater female participation reduces annual deforestation by approximately 6%, without affecting local economic activity. Furthermore, inclusion changes interaction with the state: applications for empowerment programs increase and those for production subsidies decrease, although approval rates fall in communities with more women, highlighting institutional barriers. In summary, the formal inclusion of women transforms the governance of shared resources, but structural obstacles persist.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Urban Planning and Local Development: Evidence from Brazil
This paper studies the effects of mandated urban planning introduced by Brazil’s 2001 City Statute, which required municipalities with at least 20,000 inhabitants to adopt a master plan. Exploiting this population threshold in a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and combining survey, fiscal, census, and satellite data, I show that having a master plan generated sustained improvements in housing and urban infrastructure by strengthening local state capacity. Municipalities expanded their set of urban planning and land management instruments beyond the master plan and increased investment in housing and urban infrastructure, financed through higher land-based revenues. State governments further supported these investments by conditioning earmarked transfers on plan adoption.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
How Do Climate Adaptation Policies Affect Deforestation? Evidence from a Large-Scale Water Policy
This paper examines the effects of a climate adaptation policy on production and environmental outcomes in the context of Brazil’s semiarid region, the country’s poorest and most drought prone region. The large-scale, low-cost water policy builds rainwater reservoirs designed to boost production and strengthen rural producers’ resilience. Using a difference-in-differences approach and linking property-level administrative data to high resolution satellite data, we find that cistern construction real locates land toward higher-productivity uses. Results indicate an increase in cropland area by 7.6% and higher-quality pasture area by 14.5%, while lower-quality pasture area decreases by 3.2%. Forest cover increases by 1.1%, consistent with a land saving effect driven by a reduction of lower-quality pasture. Effects hold across property sizes and are slightly larger in magnitude for small-sized properties. Our cost-benefit analysis reveals a positive aggregate return with each invested monetary unit generating 1.76 units of benefits, indicating that adaptation policies can also advance mitigation goals via forest preservation.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Women in Office: The Impact of Female Politicians on Gender-Based Violence Reporting
Gender-based violence in the U.S. is a silent epidemic. Twenty percent of women experience rape, yet only one in three reports it. Using FBI data and a regression discontinuity design, we examine the impact of female U.S. House Representatives on reported rapes and femicides. Our findings suggest an increase in reporting, rather than higher levels of violence. Our setting and additional analysis allow us to rule out policy channels. We argue that female politicians serve as role models, influencing reporting through symbolic and social pathways. Congressional speech data support this argument: female legislators advocate more against gender-based violence, and their speeches correlate with higher reporting in their districts.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Perceived Ability and School Choices: Experimental Evidence and Scale-up Effects
This paper explores an information intervention designed and implemented within a school assignment mechanism in Mexico City. Through a randomized experiment, we show that providing a subset of applicants with feedback about their academic performance can enhance sorting by skill across high school tracks. We embed the experimental variation into an empirical model of schooling choice and outcomes to assess the impact of the intervention for the overall population of applicants. Feedback provision is shown to increase the efficiency of the student school allocation, while congestion externalities are detrimental for the equity of downstream education outcomes.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Lasting Lessons: The Long-Term Impacts of School-Based Financial Education
This study experimentally examines the long-term effects of school-based financial education, analyzing data from nearly 60,000 individuals in Peru, seven years post-intervention. Treated students increased their total debt by 7.2% and average loan size by 7.8%, shifting from revolving to non-revolving credit. Borrowing terms improved slightly, and repayment performance remained unaffected despite increased borrowing. Formal employment and business formation remained unchanged. Impacts were equitable across sex and socioeconomic status, but higher performing students gained more in credit access. During the COVID-19 pandemic, financial education enhanced resilience by reducing reliance on revolving credit in favor of productive loans.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Lifting Each Other Up: How Cooperative Firms Foster Local Development
Do cooperative firms foster local economic development? This paper examines Mexico, assembling a new georeferenced panel dataset at the 10 × 10 km grid-cell level for 2015–2023. Across multiple research designs, we consistently find that cooperative presence boosts local development, measured by nightlight intensity. An event-study design shows persistent extensive-margin gains of 6–8% within four years of entry. To address selection concerns, we implement a shift–share IV strategy based on endogenous lagged-cooperative presence and plausibly exogenous sectoral growth shocks; the results imply that one additional cooperative increases nightlight density by about 2.7%.Complementary census evidence links cooperatives to higher schooling, home asset ownership, and decrease migration pressures. We also document stronger effects in Indigenous communities, where cooperatives have longer survival spells. Aggregate patterns suggest that cooperatives increase agricultural specialization but with clear productivity gains, while redistributive effects raise local disposable income and decrease poverty. These findings provide novel causal evidence that cooperatives can function as engines of inclusive local development.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Women, Motherhood, and Structural Transformation. Insights from Rural Latin America
Structural transformation—the shift from agriculture to industry and services—is key to economic development and can reshape labor market gender gaps. Yet little is known about how this process has unfolded in rural Latin America, where women face disadvantages from both gender and rurality. We document rural women’s labor market outcomes in 14 countries using harmonized household surveys, estimate motherhood effects using a pseudo-event study around first childbirth, and examine mechanisms using time-use data from Mexico. Despite educational gains, rural women still lag behind rural men and urban women in employment, hours, and earnings. While structural transformation has reduced informality and increased service and formal job participation, unpaid family work and precarious employment remain widespread among rural women. Motherhood further exacerbates disadvantages. Rural mothers face smaller employment drops than urban mothers but are increasingly pushed into unpaid work and low-skilled self-employment. Evidence from Mexico shows this stem less from childcare than from heavier household chores, home production, and limited access to labor-saving technologies. This paper provides the first evidence on how structural transformation interacts with motherhood in rural Latin America, showing that structural change alone cannot ensure inclusive opportunities for rural women.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Geography and Agricultural Productivity: The Case of Latin America and the Caribbean
This working paper quantifies the role of current land quality and geographic conditions as well as projected future climate change for agricultural productivity differences across and within Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. It combines geospatial data on potential yields by crop and grid-cell, with a spatial accounting framework. If LAC countries produced their crops in the locations, they produce them with potential yields rather than actual, the 18 percent aggregate yield deficit relative to the richest countries would be reversed to an 18 percent surplus. While there are considerable cross-country and within-country heterogeneity, overall LAC countries have favorable natural land productivity. With improved input application and cultivation practices most LAC countries can double agricultural productivity, with substantial structural change implications. Climate change will reduce average yields in most LAC countries, but because of its heterogeneous effects across regions, there is more scope for yield gains from the spatial reallocation of production than under current conditions.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Grados de ruralidad: una propuesta de medición para Argentina
Este trabajo contribuye a la medición de “grados de ruralidad” en Argentina. El trabajo propone un índice multidimensional relativo de ruralidad que integra la clasificación tradicional de áreas de INDEC con datos censales y estimaciones de distancias a centros poblados. Como ejercicios de robustez, se comparan los resultados con los obtenidos de luces en la noche e imágenes satelitales. Además de presentar mapas del grado de ruralidad para todo el territorio argentino, el trabajo ofrece una caracterización amplia de la población por categorías de ruralidad para el año 2022 y de los cambios en el período intercensal 2010-2022. Esta caracterización incorpora variables socioeconómicas clave, como ingresos familiares, que trascienden la información disponible en los censos. A través de una medición más granular de la ruralidad, el trabajo contribuye a una mejor caracterización de las necesidades y realidades de las poblaciones que habitan zonas aisladas y de transición.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Asymmetric Impact of Trade Shocks on Rural and Urban Areas: Evidence from Chile
This paper examines the causal effects of trade shocks on local labor markets (LLMs), with a focus on the rural–urban divide. In particular, it analyzes the impact of China’s integration into global trade on Chilean LLMs with varying degrees of rurality. The identification strategy exploits variation in pre-shock industrial specialization across LLMs and changes over time in global Chinese import penetration and industry-specific export demand. We study short-run effects (1996–2006) and medium run dynamics (through 2022). Urban LLMs, more exposed to import competition, experienced declines in income, increases in poverty and informality, and persistent schooling losses. Rural LLMs, linked to primary sectors benefiting from Chinese demand, saw sustained income growth and reductions in poverty and informality. These asymmetric effects likely contributed to narrowing regional disparities and underscore the importance of geographic exposure in shaping the distributional consequences of global trade integration.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Agricultural Distortions and International Migration
International migration is a recurrent phenomenon that has grown rapidly over the past two decades. This paper examines the role of agricultural distortions in shaping emigration patterns and influencing productivity and welfare in developing countries, using Guatemala as a case study. We develop a theoretical framework where household members can work in agriculture, non-agriculture, or emigrate, and calibrate the model combining detailed micro and aggregate data. Our model identifies two key channels through which agricultural distortions affect migration and productivity: a first channel where distortions increase emigration among more productive agents, reducing aggregate productivity, and a second channel where distortions drive factor misallocation, lowering incomes and increasing overall emigration.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Origins of Structural Transformation
The study examines how labor market shocks originating in non-agriculture affect the organization of agricultural production. Using data from Brazil between 1986 and 2017, it shows that the entry of large non-agricultural firms leads to persistent increases in local wages, declines in agricultural employment, and a shift toward more capital-intensive farming. Farms consolidate, the number of small operations declines, and mechanization increases. To study the magnitude of this reorganization, we develop a general equilibrium model which predicts that a reduction in entry costs in non-agriculture leads to labor reallocation out of agriculture, farm exit, and capital deepening. When we hold mechanization fixed, these adjustments are substantially attenuated, highlighting the role of endogenous technology adoption as an important amplification mechanism.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
¿Empleos verdes, empleos de mejor calidad? Una mirada desde los datos de PIAAC
Este estudio analiza las diferencias en la calidad del empleo entre ocupaciones verdes y no verdes utilizando datos de la encuesta PIAAC, con especial atención al ingreso salarial. El enfoque se centra en México, Chile y Ecuador, comparando sus patrones con los de países de la OCDE de ingresos altos y medios. Al controlar por habilidades cognitivas y otras variables, se identifican premios salariales en empleos verdes en América Latina y en países OCDE de ingresos medios, pero no en los de ingresos altos. Además, se abordan otras dimensiones de calidad laboral como automatización, formalidad, satisfacción y acceso a capacitación, reforzando la evidencia de beneficios asociados al empleo verde.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Does Increasing Public Spending in Health Improve Health? Lessons from a Constitutional Reform in Brazil
There is surprisingly scarce evidence regarding the extent to which and how government health expenditure affects health outcomes. Exploiting variation generated by Brazil’s 29th Constitutional Amendment, which mandated minimum thresholds for municipal spending on health, we examine the chain connecting government health spending to health inputs, production and outcomes, with a focus on infant mortality. We find relatively low average elasticities, but relevant heterogeneity in spending returns. Reductions in infant mortality are greater where baseline spending was lower, pointing to concave returns; where investments in infrastructure and personnel were complementary; and particularly where strong institutional and public management capabilities exist.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Embracing modernity pays: Cadastre modernization effects on local property tax collection
This paper investigates the impact of the Mexican cadastre modernization program on local property tax revenue. We evaluate a comprehensive modernization initiative, which began in 2010 and included guidelines, technical assistance, and subsidies for local cadastres. Using panel data from 2000 to 2019 and a Difference-in-Differences approach, we find that municipalities adopting the program saw a 10% increase in property tax revenue within five years, rising to 30% after eight years. This effect varies significantly with local state capacity and the coordinating institution implementing the program. The program significantly enhances the state of local cadastres over the long-term. Municipalities that adopt the program are more likely to invest in staff training, implement comprehensive cadastral management systems, and digitize their registries. Our results highlight the importance of local capacities and coordination in realizing the benefits of decentralization and modernization policies
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Internal Control as State Capacity
While previous research has thoroughly examined the consequences of external control on subnational governments, less is known about the drivers and consequences of internal control. This paper presents a series of findings on Brazilian municipalities’ internal control systems, leveraging administrative data and quasi-experimental designs. First, I use cross-sectional data to document that there remains significant variation in the resources, mandates, and actions of internal control systems. Second, I use panel data and a causal event study design to show that legal reforms of internal control systems lead to an increase in hires of internal controllers. Third, I show these legal reforms have downstream consequences in the control of patronage, leading to a reduction in the size of the municipal workforce, and a higher incidence of civil service contracts. Fourth, I show that randomized federal anti-corruption audits have significant effects on municipal control systems. Together, these findings highlight the relevance of local internal control institutions and call for further research on the causes and consequences of their strength.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Political Alignment and Inter-jurisdictional Cooperation in a Fragmented Political Landscape: Evidence from Mexico
We investigate the relationship between neighboring municipal authorities’ shared party affiliation and inter-jurisdictional cooperation agreements in Mexico. Exploiting a Regression Discontinuity Design in close municipal elections, we show that political alignment with neighboring municipalities translates into higher levels of inter-jurisdictional cooperation. Focusing particularly on crime prevention, we then document that cooperation has observable returns (homicide rates decline significantly) and that the difference in the probability of observing a cooperation agreement between same and different party mayors is larger when the returns to cooperation are higher.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Anatomy of Colombian Bureaucratic Hierarchies
The effective deployment of the bureaucracy is fundamental to government performance and economic development. We study the organizational architecture of the central administration for a large sample of municipal governments in Colombia. Our analysis yields four main findings. First, municipal population is the strongest predictor of the size of the local bureaucracy, but there is substantial variation in bureaucratic size even among municipalities with similar population or expenditure on public personnel. Second, while almost all municipal governments have employees at all hierarchical levels, the share of top managers monotonically decreases and the shares corresponding to lower layers grow as bureaucracies expand. However, only the largest bureaucracies achieve a pyramidal structure. Third, average wages monotonically increase with the hierarchical level, but they remain largely constant within levels for bureaucracies of different sizes. Fourth, larger shares of higher-level bureaucrats are robustly associated with municipal tax revenue per capita, conditional on bureaucratic size
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
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El uso de informantes sustitutos en encuestas y la medición (incorrecta) del ingreso laboral
Cuando las personas seleccionadas para una muestra están ausentes, muchas encuestas recurren a un tercero que las represente — otro miembro del hogar que tenga conocimiento. En este trabajo estudiamos la diferencia entre el ingreso laboral informado por uno mismo (auto reportado) y el informado por un representante en México. Utilizamos la estructura de panel de la encuesta nacional de empleo y comparamos el ingreso de un mismo trabajador cuando lo reporta él mismo frente a cuando lo reporta otro miembro del hogar. Encontramos que los salarios mensuales de los hombres son 6.1% más bajos cuando son reportados por un tercero. Para las mujeres, la brecha de reporte es mínima. Proporcionamos evidencia de que la discrepancia en el ingreso reportado de los trabajadores masculinos se debe a una asimetría de información dentro del hogar, en parte debido a que los hombres ocultan ingresos a sus familiares. Finalmente, estudiamos las implicancias de usar respuestas de terceros en las encuestas y encontramos que esto puede producir una subestimación de la brecha salarial de género en un 60%.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Money and lies: proxy respondents and the mismeasurement of income in surveys
When sampled individuals are not found at home, many surveys rely on a proxy respondent: another knowledgeable household member. We study the difference between self- and proxy-reported labor income in Mexico. We use the panel structure of the Mexican labor force survey and compare workers' income when they report it themselves to their income when another household member does the reporting. We find that the monthly wage of male workers is 6.1% lower when reported by a proxy. For female workers, the reporting gap is minute. We provide evidence that the gap in the reported income of male workers is due to asymmetry of information within the household, in part due to men hiding income from their relatives. Finally, we study the implications of using proxy respondents and find that it can lead to an underestimation of the gender wage gap by 60%.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Decentralizing Development: Evidence from Government Splits
Changes in political boundaries aimed at devolving power to local governments are common in many countries. We examine the economic consequences of redistricting through the creation of smaller government units. Exploiting reforms that led to sharp variations in the number of government units in Brazil, we show that voluntary redistricting increases the size of the public sector, public services delivery, and economic activity in new local governments over the long term. The gains in economic activity are not offset by losses elsewhere and are stronger in peripheral and remote backward areas neglected by their parent governments. We provide evidence that decentralizing decision-making power boosts local development in disadvantaged areas beyond simply gains in fiscal revenues.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Economic Effects of an Accelerated Electrification and Decarbonization Process in Latin America
This research analyzes the potential economic effects of accelerated electrification and decarbonization in selected Latin American countries. Using an economic equilibrium model, four scenarios were evaluated: 1) a Business-as-Usual (BAU) scenario, 2) a BAU scenario with increased electricity interconnections, 3) a green scenario with an emphasis on higher renewable energy growth rates, and 4) a green scenario integrating both higher energy growth rates and interconnection improvements. We aim to assess the impact of these strategies on significant economic indicators by comparing the optimal solutions of each scenario, and determine the difference in gains. Our approach prioritizes the complexities of the energy sector while underscoring economic factors, enabling the identification of necessary compensatory redistributions. The comparison of these scenarios will provide policymakers and stakeholders with valuable insights into the costs and benefits of transitioning to a more sustainable energy system in Latin America.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Effects of Renewable Energy Projects on Employment: Evidence from Brazil
This paper studies the employment impacts of renewable energy projects in Brazil. Between 2006 and 2017, Brazil’s solar capacity increased from 0.001 GW to 1.01 GW, and wind capacity increased from 0.233 GW to 12.4 GW. Using detailed employment information from the universe of formal workers in Brazil, we analyze whether the development of renewable energy projects impacts employment in the local municipalities. Solar energy projects appear to have no significant impact on local economic activity. In contrast, we find that when new wind energy projects come online, total employment in a municipality increases by 15.95 percent, and the number of firms in a municipality increases by 14.84 percent. The number of jobs in the electricity sector increases by as much as 74.33 percent, 51.72 percent in the construction sector, and 22.54 in transportation. The employment increases appear to stem from growth of existing firms and growth of new firms. The effects persist and are even larger when we consider only municipalities that have not experienced expansions in their electricity grid. Proxying land lease income with municipal tax revenues, we do not find evidence that the effects are driven by windfall income from land leases.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Electricity Pricing and the Energy Transition for Residential and Non-Residential Consumers
High electricity prices hinder efforts to decarbonize through electrification. In this paper, we demonstrate the inefficiencies of the retail electricity tariffs for both residential and non residential consumers in Colombia. We show the low take up for a 2012 policy in Colombia that reduced electricity prices for industrial users. As an alternative, we propose a novel tariff design that eliminates customer class distinctions, aligns prices with marginal costs, and introduces a fixed charge based on estimated willingness to pay. Using data for the entire population of electricity consumers in Colombia, we illustrate the tariff’s potential to eliminate existing distortions in electricity pricing across customer classes while limiting bill increases for low income households.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Intensidad energética y estructura económica
Reducir la intensidad energética, definida como la cantidad de energía utilizada para producir una unidad de producto, es una condición clave para lograr el desacople; esto es, crecimiento económico con reducción de emisiones. Usualmente, la intensidad energética está asociada a la eficiencia energética que, si bien es un factor determinante, no es el único. Por el contrario, dado que los sectores difieren en su nivel de intensidad, cambios en la estructura económica también generan efectos sobre el nivel agregado de intensidad energética. Este artículo aplica diferentes descomposiciones de la intensidad energética para explicar su evolución y nivel, separando el rol de la eficiencia energética del de la estructura económica. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que ambos componentes son claves para explicar los niveles y los cambios observados entre 2011 y 2017 en la intensidad energética para un conjunto de doce países de América Latina y el Caribe, en comparación con la OCDE.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Acceso y consumo de energía residencial en América Latina y el Caribe
Este trabajo estima el acceso de los hogares latinoamericanos a distintas fuentes de energía (modernas y no modernas), así también como el gasto asociado a su consumo. En particular, se estudia cómo difiere el acceso a lo largo de la distribución del ingreso, entre hogares residiendo en áreas urbanas y rurales y entre hogares localizados en distintas regiones de los respectivos países. En la medida de lo posible se presenta información para comienzos de siglo, comienzos de los 2010s y la información más reciente. Los resultados obtenidos indican que la región ha logrado avanzar bastante en la universalización del acceso a electricidad residencial, pero muestran que existe un largo camino a recorrer para garantizar el acceso a gas de red y gas licuado de petróleo. Asimismo, la evidencia presentada también señala que existen importantes diferencias, tanto entre países como al interior de ellos, en el acceso y utilización de las distintas fuentes de energía.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Desafíos regulatorios en la incorporación de energías renovables
La transición hacia una matriz energética libre de emisiones de gases invernadero presenta múltiples desafíos desde el punto regulatorio. Primero, será necesario proveer los incentivos para que haya capacidad de generación y transmisión suficiente para mantener un sistema confiable, lo que se hace más difícil debido a que la intermitencia de las tecnologías renovables aumenta la volatilidad de la generación y la hace más difícil predecir. Para esto, también es importante proveer incentivos para que el sistema opere de manera eficiente, para lo cual es necesario que los precios a los que se transan los distintos servicios reflejen el costo de producirlos. En el artículo se discuten los desafíos en estas dos líneas, y finalmente se discute brevemente el caso de algunos países en su transición energética.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Preventing underage alcohol use through changes in norms and risk perception: A randomized evaluation of two school-based prevention programs in Colombia
This study evaluates the short-term impact of two school-based inter ventions designed to prevent alcohol use among children in high-risk schools in Bogotá, Colombia. The programs aimed at increasing the perception of risk and modifying normative values and beliefs related to alcohol consumption among students as a mechanism to delay first-time alcohol use and reduce consumption among those already consuming alcohol. The two interventions varied in terms of the core curriculum strategy and the organization that implemented them. A stratified random assignment procedure was used to allocate 100 schools, with approximately 13.000 sixth-grade students, across three study arms (i.e., two treatment groups and a control group). The stu dents who received treatment were given the first intervention in sixth grade, followed by a second wave in seventh grade. The study results show that both programs were effective in affecting the perception of the risk of alcohol consumption and normative attitudes toward alco hol use in the desired direction. One of the main factors that explain these results is the increase in students’ objective knowledge about the harmful effects of alcohol consumption. However, there were no systematic effects on actual consumption as reported by students.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Difference-in-Differences in Equilibrium: Evidence from Placed-Based Policies
Violations of the stable unit treatment value assumption (SUTVA) are a common threat to identification of the effects of policies causing the resorting of agents between treated and untreated groups. We show that in such contexts the difference-in-differences estimator can be decomposed into three effects (autarky, resorting and contamination). We also show that demand and supply elasticities are “sufficient statistics” for the relative size of these effects and that there exist a trade-off in terms of heterogeneity between SUTVA and parallel trends assumption violations. We illustrate our argument by studying a large placed-based tax break for the construction of residential housing in Uruguay. First, we obtain a series of difference-in-differences estimates of the effect of the policy on housing prices and show that they differ considerably depending on the degree of heterogeneity between subsidized and unsubsidized areas. Consistent with our conceptual framework, prices fall substantially when comparing heterogeneous areas, and very little or not at all when comparing similar areas. Second, we estimate a structural model of supply and demand for neighborhoods that rationalizes those different estimates and allows us to recover the three effects as well as the welfare impact of the policy. Overall, we find that SUTVA violations account for 25% of the effect on subsidized areas and lead to a sizable underestimation (24 p.p.) of the incidence of the tax break on subsidized areas.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Medición de las necesidades refrigeración y calefacción en América Latina y el Caribe
Las temperaturas extremas afectan negativamente el aprendizaje, la productividad y la salud. La exposición de las poblaciones a las mismas adquiere especial relevancia debido al cambio climático. El presente trabajo presenta la distribución completa de las necesidades de calefacción y refrigeración presentes y futuras de la población y el territorio de América Latina y el Caribe. Si bien en la región predominan las necesidades de calefacción, dicha distribución completa permite identificar subpoblaciones y territorios con necesidades de refrigeración similares a las de los países fríos de Europa. La distribución completa futura de las necesidades de climatización según la senda socioeconómica compartida del IPCC (SSP2-4.5) revela incrementos del 25 % en el mediano plazo y del 50 % en el largo plazo en las necesidades de refrigeración en los países cálidos, que constituyen la mayoría. Por último, se utiliza la distribución completa de necesidades de refrigeración para estimar la posesión actual y futura de aires acondicionados para todos los países, dato esencial para prever el incremento en la demanda de electricidad y cuyo valor actual se encuentra disponible solo para la mitad de los países.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Sistemas de salud e Inequidades en Salud en América Latina
El presente documento describe medidas de desigualdad en el acceso a la atención sanitaria y en los resultados de salud en países de América Latina, utilizando métricas estandarizadas introducidas en un estudio relacionado (Bancalari et al., 2023). Se observa que los países con sistemas de salud tipo Beveridge tienden a presentar menores desigualdades en comparación con aquellos que adoptan sistemas Bismarckianos. Sin embargo, no se identifica un patrón definido en las desigualdades a lo largo de nuestra taxonomía, sugiriendo que variables no observadas del sistema de salud podrían influir más significativamente en las disparidades en salud y en la atención sanitaria que las características generales que definen nuestra clasificación de sistemas de salud. Finalmente, se analizan las diferencias en el uso de la atención sanitaria y los resultados de salud dentro de los países, en relación con el beneficio de los individuos de los subsistemas contributivos o no contributivos, y se evalúan los principales factores que explican estas diferencias mediante descomposiciones de Oaxaca.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Inequidades en Salud en América Latina y el Caribe: Salud Infantil, Adolescente, Reproductiva, Síndrome Metabólico y Salud Mental
Este estudio examina la desigualdad en salud en América Latina y el Caribe (LAC). En primer lugar, se describe cómo las transformaciones demográficas han modificado la carga de enfermedad en los últimos 30 años. Inicialmente dominada por problemas maternos, neonatales y transmisibles, la región enfrenta ahora un aumento de enfermedades cardiovasculares, cánceres, diabetes y trastornos de salud mental. Luego se documentan las marcadas disparidades en salud por condición socioeconómica. Los hallazgos subrayan que las desigualdades de salud en la infancia y adolescencia son más críticas que en la adultez, con diferencias notables en salud infantil según la riqueza del país y en algunos resultados de salud en adultos.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Opportunistic behavior and discrimination in the Mexican Solar PV market: An audit experiment
We conducted an audit experiment in which fictional households requested quotes for the purchase, installation, and interconnection of solar photovoltaic systems in four cities across Mexico. This allowed us to identify whether there was opportunistic behavior among local sellers and to quantify the extent of discrimination based on characteristics of residential users, such as gender, socioeconomic status, product knowledge, and access to external financing sources. The main findings indicate that women and customers with higher socioeconomic status not only face price discrimination but are also offered oversized systems. There is no evidence of such practices towards customers with prior product information or those who have secured external financing for the purchase.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Análisis de demanda de empleo verde a partir de información de vacantes para América Latina y el Caribe en el contexto de la transición energética
La transición verde representa una de las fuerzas de transformación más significativas del mercado laboral en los próximos años. Esta tendencia del mercado laboral asociada a la transición verde se ha enmarcado en el estudio sobre empleos verdes. Este capítulo analiza la incidencia de empleos verdes en cuatro países de América Latina utilizando información proveniente de portales de empleo. Los resultados muestran que los mercados laborales actuales presentan una baja incidencia de demanda por empleo con potencial verde o de ocupaciones nuevas y emergentes relacionados con la transición verde. Dichas ocupaciones se caracterizan por requerir altos niveles educativos y ofrecen una prima salarial significativa. Estos resultados destacan el principal desafío de la transición verde, que radica en la necesidad de implementar procesos de formación, al mismo tiempo que revelan oportunidades para la creación de empleos decentes en la región.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The non-green effects of “going green”: Local environmental and economic consequences of lithium extraction in Chile
In this paper, we analyze the local environmental and economic impacts of lithium extraction in the Atacama Salt Flat (ASF) inChile. We use satellite data to estimate the effects on vegetation at a resolution of 30m × 30m as well as on the local human populations at a resolution of 100m × 100m near the ASF. We compare changes over time in NDVI and human settlements and show how they are affected by exposure to lithium extraction. Our estimates suggest that an increase of 1 standard deviation in our measure of exposure to lithium extraction reduced vegetation in nearby areas by 0.09 standard deviations, and specifically inhuman settlements by 0.22 standard deviations. Also, human populations in the local villages were reduced by 0.04 standard deviations for 1 standard deviation closer to the ASF. Further, we show that the negative effect on NDVI was greater for thoselocations with higher levels of vegetation at baseline.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Impact of Solar Panel Installation on Electricity Consumption and Production
Since 2010, the Uruguayan government has fostered the instal lation of solar panels among households and firms to promotesmall-scale renewable electricity production. Under this policy, agents with solar panels are allowed to feed any electricity sur plus into the grid. We study the economic and environmental consequences of this policy. We collect a novel dataset on elec tricity extraction and injection into the grid at a household-firm level for the whole country. First, we find that installing a solarpanel reduces the electricity extracted from the grid. Second, we find that it increases the electricity injected into the grid. Third, we find that it reduces CO2 emissions between 0.35 and 0.03 kg per month and agent. Fourth, we find evidence of a rebound effect: electricity consumption after the solar panel installation increases between 20% and 26%, on average. Lastly, we propose an alternative policy that allows agents to store their electricity surplus in batteries instead of immediately injecting it into the grid. According to our model, the best time to inject electricity into the grid is around 9 PM, when fossil-fuel facilities satisfy most of the electricity demand. We leverage household and firm-level data to study the effect of a net-metering policy on electricity extraction and injection, showing what countries can expect from implementing such a policy.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Educational Mobility Across Three Generations in Latin American Countries
This paper presents new evidence on educational mobility across
three generations in six Latin American countries (LAC). Combining survey information with national census data we build a
data set with 50,000 triads of grandparents-parent-children born
between 1890 and 1990. We estimate a five mobility measures,
to show that (i) the empirical multi-generational persistence is
high in LAC; (ii) it is much larger than what Becker & Tomes
(1986) theoretical model predicts, with a bias that is twice as
large for LAC compared to developed countries; (iii) Clark’s
theory (2014) of high and sticky persistence provides a better approximation for describing mobility across multiple generations
in developing countries. We also uncover that while relative
measures suggest stagnant mobility across generations, there
are significant improvements according to non-linear measures
suggested by Asher, Novosad & Rafkin (2022). This result is
especially relevant for developing countries such as LAC, where
historical educational expansions have markedly benefited the
lower end of the schooling distribution.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Intergenerational transmission of teen childbearing in Latin America
Using DHS data for six Latin American countries, we estimate the relation between a mother’s teenage childbearing status and that of her daughter. Restricting the estimating sample to mother-daughter matches in the data leads to a large negative selection bias in the estimated effect because missing matches are non-random and affected by the teen childbearing status of mothers and daughters. We deal with this selection bias by developing a Maximum Likelihood estimation using all available data, including incomplete mother-daughter pairs, and allowing missing observations to be endogenous. Our results show that being the daughter of a teen mother increases the chances of being a teen mother between 8.7 and 26.2 percentage points (between 61 and 172%). We conclude that the prevalence of such high intergenerational transmission is at the core of persistent high teenage childbearing rates in Latin America and suggests alternative public policy fixes.
Latin America has experienced high rates of teen childbearing for decades. Using DHS data for six Latin American countries, we estimate the relation between a mother’s teenage childbearing status and that of her daughter. Restricting the estimating sample to mother-daughter matches in the data leads to a large negative selection bias in the estimated effect because missing matches are nonrandom and affected by the teen childbearing status of mothers and daughters. We deal with this selection bias by developing a maximum likelihood estimation using all available data, including incomplete mother-daughter pairs, and allowing missing observations to be endogenous. Our results show that being the daughter of a teen mother increases the chances of being a teen mother between 9.1 and 23.7 percent age points (75 and 123% relative to the mean incidence of teen childbearing). We conclude that the prevalence of such high intergenerational transmission is at the core of persistent high teenage childbearing rates in Latin America.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Rule–based civil service: evidence from a nationwide teacher reform in Mexico
This paper studies the effect of a civil service reform on the skills
profile of new teachers in Mexico. The reform mandated the use
of rule-based recruitment over discretionary hiring. Our results
show that the reform led to hiring teachers with higher cognitive
skills. We also show that an improvement in the bottom of the
skills distribution of new hires drove this change. Two channels
explain these effects. First, the reform decreased the prevalence
of discretionary hires, who tended to be drawn from the bot tom of the skills distribution. Second, the reform improved the
screening efficiency of rule-based hiring, making cognitive skills
more important determinants of hiring outcomes.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Inter-generational Persistence in the Ownership of Real Assets: Evidence from Latin America
We explore inter-generational mobility in assets ownership for Latin America. Our findings confirm the strong correlation between parents and offspring ownership, even after controlling for education and labor outcomes. Second, we provide evidence pointing to the role of inheritances, assortative mating, health shocks, lack of access to credit, and
the intergenerational transmission of personality traits, as potential mechanisms behind the high persistence. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to estimate inter-generational persistence in asset ownership and the mechanisms behind this phenomenon for Latin America, a highly unequal region.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Political Economy of Slum Growth: Evidence from Brazil
One-fourth of the world’s urban population lives in slums and the number of slum residents grew from 650 million in 1990 to 1 billion in 2018. Existing explanations for slum growth focus on rural-urban migration and poverty. While these factors are relevant for rapidly urbanizing low-income countries, slum growth is frequent in highly urbanized, middle-income countries in Latin America. This paper provides evidence from Brazil that local government actions can increase slum growth without changes in poverty or immigration. Using a regression discontinuity design in close elections, I find that victories by a center-left, pro-poor party in the 2000 municipal election strongly increased the share of households living in slums in 2010 compared to 2000. I explore the mechanisms behind this result with a novel panel of census tracts and data on municipalities’ policies, expenditures, and sociodemographics. A more permissive attitude towards the formation of new slums is the main candidate to explain the observed effect.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The unintended environmental effect of a climate change adaptation strategy: evidence from the Colombian coffee sector
Climate change is a major threat to agricultural productivity in developing countries. In this paper, we explore the unintended environmental effects of an adaptation policy that conditioned credit programs for the renewal of coffee crops on the use of pest-resistant varieties. We use the case of the Colombian coffee sector, which was severely affected by extreme rainfall events and pest proliferation from 2010–2011. In response, the National Federation of Coffee Growers (NFCG) changed its policy to protect farmers from future weather shocks by conditioning renewal credits to the use of pest-resistant seeds. We exploit the timing of the policy and a novel data set that includes coffee farms’ productive characteristics matched with satellite tree cover data to analyze its environmental effect. We find that conditioning renewal credits on a seed change decrease tree cover in treated coffee growers by 390 m2. If we extend this result to all treated farms in our sample, the total loss increases to 1,031 (10.31 million m2). We calculate that this average loss in tree coverage on treated farms translates into a release of 61,912 tons of carbon.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Greenflation: The cost of the green transition in small open economies
We propose a new model of a small open economy with efficient energy use to investigate the inflationary dynamics along the green transition. The model incorporates the production of green energy that substitutes exogenous brown energy sources in energy production. Production is characterized by low substitutability between resource and traditional inputs that firms can alter through directed input-saving technical change. We study transitional dynamics induced by exogenous increases of brown energy prices and/or changes in the brown energy taxation; green subsidies and green public investment. Increases in brown energy prices and taxes decrease the usage of brown energy but do not expand significantly the green sector, they simply improve energy efficiency use, surging firm’s marginal costs leading to greenflation and output losses. Public investment and subsidies effectively increase the usage of green energy. Green investment expands output and reduces green energy prices as it increases the productivity of the green sector. Subsidies imply a slower transition with small output costs and elevated green energy prices. We discuss the fiscal costs and welfare implications of the transition using different welfare metrics.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Illegal Migration and Weather Shocks: Evidence from Rural Mexico
We study the effect of weather shocks on legal and illegal migration from rural Mexico to the US. First, we find that shocks in the wet season on precipitation and temperature increase migration. The increment is entirely driven by illegal migrants. Second, we propose a mechanism to explain this result: the effect of weather on agricultural production. We find that shocks on precipitation and temperature decrease total harvested land and corn production. Third, we show that young and unwealthy workers are more sensitive to weather shocks. Lastly, we use climate projections to have a first glance on the impact that climate change will have on migration. We find that a shift of the size of climate change would double the number of illegal migrants. Since climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of weather shocks, our findings are increasingly relevant.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Deforestation, Institutions, and Property Rights: Evidence from land titling to indigenous peoples and local communities in Ecuador
Deforestation is a matter of pressing global concern, contributing to declining ecosystem services, biodiversity loss, and ultimately climate change through growing emissions. We evaluate the effect of assigning property rights to indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) in coastal Ecuador on deforestation and the role polycentric institutions play in policy effectiveness. Informed by a theoretical model, we employ causal methods to 1) evaluate changes in forest coverage for the first 12 years of policy adoption, and 2) evaluate the effect of the presence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on policy permanence. We find that assigning property rights to IPLCs significantly decreases mangrove deforestation and that the presence of NGOs funded by foreign aid significantly increases the probability of policy adoption and permanence. We assess the positive development implications of the policy concerning local fisheries provisioning and the role of international aid in achieving environmental outcomes. Our work highlights the importance of IPLCs and civil society as actors for sustainable land stewardship in future climate policy.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The role of unwanted childbirths on female wages and education
This paper documents how unwanted childbirths relate to women’s education and wages. Unwanted childbirths, especially early in life, can affect women’s education and labor market decisions. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I document that on average, mothers whose first childbirth was unwanted have lower levels of education, lower wages, and have their first childbirth at younger ages compared to the rest of the mothers. Results are stronger when using a self-reported question about unwantedness, compared with the definition that accounts for pregnancies while using contraception.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Comparing Protection Types in The Peruvian Amazon: Multiple-Use Protected Areas Did No Worse for Forests
Protected areas (PAs), which restrict economic activities, are the leading land and marine policy for ecosystem conservation. Most contexts feature different types of protection that vary in their stringency of management. Using spatially detailed panel data for 1986-2018, we estimate PAs’ impacts upon forests in the Peruvian Amazon. Which type of protection has greater impacts on the forest is ambiguous, theoretically, given potential for significant differences by type in siting and enforcement. We find that the less strict multiple-use PAs, that allow local livelihoods, do no worse for forests than strict PAs: each PA type holds off small loss spikes seen in unprotected forests; and multipleuse, if anything, do a bit better. This adds to evidence on the coexistence of private activities with conservation objectives.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Asymmetric Effects of Trade and FDI: The Role of Country Size and Bridge Multinational Production
Total gains from openness come through three channels: (i) trade, (ii) domestic multinational production (DMP), and (iii) bridge multinational production (BMP). We develop a quantitative theory to measure the effects of trade barriers and country size on the gains from openness through each of these channels. We show that these are sensitive to country size and larger in Europe than in South America. Country size is a crucial determinant of the contribution of each of these channels to the total gains from openness. DMP is more important in large countries, whereas the BMP channel is more important in small countries.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Lasting Scars: The Unequal Impacts of Unemployment in Latin America
We study the impact of the unemployment rate at the time of labor market entrance on the labor outcomes of individuals of different social origin in 18 Latin American countries. Higher unemployment increases the probability of being unemployed, decreases the likelihood of being a firm owner, and increases the chances of being a self-employed farmer. These effects persist even ten years after the start of the labor career and differ depending on the social origin of individuals. The effects on the chances of being unemployed are only observed for individuals of lower social origin. Higher unemployment rates at the beginning of their careers also make these individuals much less likely to have their own business compared to those of higher social origin. In contrast, the effect of early unemployment rates on the increased likelihood of being a farmer is more pronounced among individuals of high social origin.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Effect of Split-Ticket Voting Cost on Electoral Enfranchisement
The features of electoral systems can affect electoral outcomes even for fixed societal preferences. We analyze a quasi-experiment around a staggered change from a paper ballot to an electronic ballot system, which reduces the cost of split-ticket voting. A high cost to split the ticket favors straight-ticket voting, i.e., choosing the same party in all electoral races. If voters care the most about a single-seat race and if they are voting straighttickets, then the single-seat race drives the decision about which party to vote on all races. Therefore, strategic voting considerations on the single-seat race have spillovers to other races, negatively affecting small parties even in races with a proportional representation system. We show how the reduction in the cost to split the ticket increases the number of split-ticket votes and improves the performance of small parties in multiple-seat races. This results in higher political competition.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Long and Winding Roads: Roads, Inequality, and Growth in Colombia
We measure the impact on economic performance and land ownership inequality in municipalities of a large scale program of road network expansions and improvements that occurred in Colombia between 1993 to 2012. The treatment is measured as improvements in market access to incorporate network effects. We find that roads improve market access, and this increases both municipality GDP and land ownership inequality. We address endogeneity concerns by using two instruments. First, using detailed geographical information we create a least cost path counterfactual for the Colombian road networks linking important cities in 1938. We use this least cost path to calculate a counterfactual market access measure that is determined by exogenous topographic accidents. Next, we build an alternative market access measure which focuses on semi-random market access changes stemming from increased exposure to markets of smaller cities which were not determinant in defining the road network shape.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
See it to believe it. Experimental evidence on status consumption among the youth.
We ran a field experiment in which a 20-year-old chooses be-tween a socially visible and a non-socially visible good after a friend randomly received one of these goods or an unknown good. We find no differences in choices when the friend received the nonvisible good instead of the unknown one. However, decision-makers significantly changed their choices when their friend received the visible good. Consistent with choices driven by status concerns, those in a disadvantaged position consumed more and those in an advantaged position consumed less of the visible good. These findings constitute the first experimental evidence of Dusenberry’s demonstration effects.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Urban Transit Infrastructure: Spatial Mismatch and Labor Market Power
Does transit infrastructure reduce labor market power? This paper estimates the effects of a large subway expansion on local labor market outcomes in Santiago, Chile. Using a linked employer-employee dataset with spatial information, we estimate the effects of the network expansion on the most-affected workers and firms through a reduced-form analysis. We find changes in work locations and wages consistent with a reduction in firms’ labor market power around areas connected to the subway network after the expansion. We then lay out a quantitative spatial equilibrium model where firms behave as oligopsonies in the labor market to calculate the welfare gains from the transit infrastructure expansion. Our model allows us to decompose the welfare gains into i) the efficiency gains through improved matching between workers and firms and ii) the gains from reducing labor misallocation through labor market power responses. The model also provides a framework to analyze the distributional implications of the infrastructure expansion. We find that workers benefit as firm owners see reduced profits and that accounting for labor market power responses amplifies the welfare gains.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Transit Infrastructure and Couples’ Commuting Choices in General Equilibrium
What is the impact of improving the transit infrastructure on the gender earnings gap? How does family structure matter to un‐derstand the impact of new transit infrastructure? Recent mod‐els on spatial economics hinge on the assumption that house‐holds are comprised of a single type of person making commut‐ing and location choices. In reality, an important share of the pop‐ulation lives in households with more persons, whose commut‐ing choices might be interlinked through the household’s budget constraint. I set up and estimate a quantitative model of city structure featuring single and married households leveraging on the introduction of a Metro line and the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT) in Lima, Peru. My model delivers interdependent commut‐ing choices within dual‐earner households. This way, reduced commute times impact one partner’s commuting patterns not only by affecting her prospects, but also those of her spouse. I show that this mechanism is quantitatively important. If I ignore this mechanism, I would overestimate gains in real income by 11% and underestimate reductions in the gender earnings gap by 103%, leading to a switch in the sign of the impact of the Metro and the BRT.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Intra-bloc tariffs and preferential margins in trade agreements
We study how countries choose intra-bloc tariffs and preferential margins in Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). Our model indicates that countries should set systematically lower prefer-ential margins when the bloc takes the form of a free trade area, relative to a customs union. Moreover, in customs unions (but not necessarily in free trade areas) preferential margins should increase with the supply of partner countries and decrease with the level of preferential imports. These relationships reflect, re-spectively, the internalization of political-economy goals within the bloc and the desire to curb trade diversion. Using a sample that covers most PTAs formed by Latin American countries in the 1990s, we find empirical support for each of those predic-tions. These findings rationalize why governments often keep intra-bloc duties strictly positive. We show that this tends to worsen the welfare consequences of PTAs, and that requiring the elimination of internal tariffs would be socially desirable.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
How infrastructure shapes comparative advantage
This paper provides evidence that domestic trade costs are a source of comparative advantage. First, I build an international trade and internal geography model with transportation features and input-output linkages. Then, I simulate how a large road project, Ruta del Sol, impacts the comparative advantage of Colombia. This road improves access to global markets for heterogeneous regions. My results show that the project shifts the comparative advantage of Colombia towards manufacturing. Industry linkages reinforce this effect. Hence, I confirm that a country’s comparative advantage is shaped by domestic trade costs, in addition to classical determinants like endowments, technology, and institutions. Lastly, my results suggest that road infrastructure is key for the structural transformation of developing nations.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The effect of high dismissal protection on bureaucratic turnover and productivity
This paper studies the impact of high dismissal protection on bureaucratic turnover and productivity in the context of public school teachers in Chile. We take advantage of a law that required education administrators to grant a permanent contract to temporary teachers with a minimum seniority and implement a difference-in-differences strategy comparing eligible and ineligible teachers. We find that high dismissal protection reduces turnover by 25 percent in the first two years. The reduction is only statistically significant among teachers at the bottom and top of the distribution of baseline performance. We then examine the impact on teacher productivity and find a significant decline in the learning of students taught by teachers with low baseline performance. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that high dismissal protection can be a double-edged sword. It can help to retain high-performing employees, but at the cost of making it more difficult to separate and motivate low-performing employees.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Evaluating the Impact of Buenos Aires’s Metrobus on Within-City Spatial Sorting
How do improvements in the urban transport infrastructure affect the spatial sorting of residents with different levels of in-come and education within a city? What are the welfare effects of improving urban transit once we take into account these pat-terns of spatial sorting? In this paper, I study the effects of the construction of a bus rapid transit system (BRT) on the spatial reorganization of residents within the city of Buenos Aires, Ar-gentina. To do so, I leverage an individual level panel data set of more than two million residents with which I can describe intra-city migration patterns. I first find reduced form evidence that the construction of the BRT increased the spatial segregation between high and low-skilled residents within the city. I then develop a dynamic quantitative spatial equilibrium model of a city with heterogeneous workers that allows me to quantify the welfare effects of this BRT system while taking into account these spatial sorting patterns. With this quantitative framework, I can measure the average welfare gains for residents that were living near the BRT lines before these were built.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Roads illuminate development: Using nightlight luminosity to assess the impact of transport infrastructure
The research aims to evaluate the impact of paved major roads on economic growth at the municipal level in Bolivia, Paraguay and Ecuador. Due to the absence of municipal information, pub-licly available satellite data are used to construct a municipal panel dataset on a yearly basis from 2000 to 2013; particularly, nightlight luminosity is adopted as a proxy for economic activity. Methodologically, empirical evidence is obtained regarding the effect of having access to a paved major road on luminosity, as well as the elasticity between GDP and nightlight luminosity; both estimates are then linked to approximate economic growth in benefited municipalities. The findings suggest that, on aver-age, economic activity was 0.5% to 0.6% higher in municipalities that benefited from paved major roads than in municipalities that did not. The effects vary over time and are dependent on whether the benefited areas are located closer to the road or are part of a population center.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Tripping at the Finish Line Experimental Evidence on the Road of Misperceptions on Secondary School Completion
In Argentina, more than 90 percent of teenagers are enrolled in upper secondary school, but only 50 percent graduate on time. I conducted a field experiment in Salta, Argentina, to test if lack of information about how inputs translate into outputs may prevent students who attend classes until the last day of high school from getting their diploma. To measure the relative importance of this treatment, I conducted a returns-to-education information intervention in a separate treatment arm. Providing information about the probability of graduation conditional on current standing and discussing intermediate steps to translate effort during students’ senior year of high school into graduation raises timely high school graduation by 5 percentage points, a 10 percent increase relative to the control group. Poor-performing students at baseline respond most to the treatment. The returns-to-education arm increases graduation rates by 10 percentage points. Both treatments increase the probability of university en-rollment by 5 percentage points, more than 30 percent relative to the control group. Together, these findings indicate that inaccu-rate beliefs about own future performance explain a significant share of the “graduation gap.”
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Wealth in Latin America
This paper presents harmonized indicators for household wealth, its components, and its determinants (including intergenerational mobility) in four Latin American countries (Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay), using Spain as a comparison benchmark. It is based on recently-available microdata from financial surveys. The paper analyzes the relationship between wealth
indicators and sociodemographic characteristics of household heads (age, education, gender, marital status).
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Socioeconomic Gradients in Test Scores across Latin American and the Caribbean
In this paper we document gaps in math and reading achievement between children whose mothers have completed at least upper secondary education and those who have not, using test scores from third and sixth graders across multiple countries in LAC, in 2006 and 2013. There are substantial differences across countries in these gaps, and there are also differences in how they change over time. Interestingly, differences in these gaps are not correlated with differences in income inequality across countries. They are however strongly correlated with the levels of socio-economic segregation across schools in different countries.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Intergenerational earnings mobility and macroeconomic shocks: Evidence based on administrative records
This paper provides novel evidence on trends in intergenerational earnings mobility in a developing country and explores some transmission mechanisms associated with the characteristics of the labor market. Using a novel social security records database for Uruguay, we study the intergenerational earning ranking association from cohorts between 1966-1983. To explore intergenerational transmission mechanisms, we exploit the arguably exogenous variation induced by the 2002 macroeconomic crisis to analyse the impact of parental displacement from jobs on their children’s labor trajectories. First, we focus on the effect of the crisis on parents’ labor market performance. In a second stage, we use this information as a shock to identify the effect on children outcomes of a parent’s employment shock. Results suggest (i) heterogeneity on the degree of intergenerational earning mobility across birth cohorts; (ii) weak evidence of downward trend in relative mobility, (iii) intergenerational transmission of the shock produced by the 2002 crisis.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Size, Position and Length in Value Chains in Latin America
In this article, I develop a framework that divides global value chains into regional and extra-regional and studies the participation of Latin American countries in international fragmentation of production along 25 years of globalization. Measures of depth, position, and length are developed for each kind of value chain. Between 1990 and 2015 the engagement in activities related to international trade increased in every country in Latin America and the prevalent way of integration is in Extra-Regional Value Chains. While South America engages mostly in value chains as a source of value added transformed by others, Central America participates more as end of chains and Mexico switched its position to a net forward position in regional value chains. Finally, the article examines the relationship between participation and length of domestic segment of chains, finding that a deeper participation in Extra-regional Value Chains is associated with shortening of chains, but this relationship does not hold for Regional.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
What a difference a full day makes: Evidence from new schools in Fortaleza
Although longer school days are in increasing supply, a lack of consensus about their effectiveness persists. Motivated by this gap, this paper studies the effect of enrolling in a new set of full-time secondary schools in the city of Fortaleza, Brazil. For identification, enrollment is instrumented with the distance from the student’s graduating primary school to the closest fulltime school in operation at that time. The results show that enrollment in a full-time school increases lower-secondary-school graduation by 11 percentage points and math test scores by 0.22 standard deviations. These findings highlight the potential of full-time schools to significantly improve student outcomes.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Envejecimiento y cuidados: principales características para cinco países de América Latina
En este trabajo analizamos las características de los adultos mayores en situación de dependencia, las estrategias de cuidados y el perfil de las personas cuidadoras, para cinco países de América Latina: Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, El Salvador y Uruguay. La población en situación de dependencia funcional es mayoritariamente femenina y mayor de 75 años. El 20% de los adultos mayores reciben cuidado y este guarismo asciende a 60% entre quienes tienen dependencia funcional, siendo el cuidado informal familiar la principal estrategia de cuidado. Las cuidadoras informales son mayoritariamente mujeres, menores de 65 años y económicamente inactivas. Finalmente, la evaluación de diferentes políticas de cuidado a la vejez para el caso de Uruguay muestra que, tanto un subsidio, como la provisión pública del servicio, impactan positivamente en el empleo de cuidadoras informales. La provisión pública de cuidados es la política que tiene mayores impactos. A su vez, los efectos son mayores cuando se focalizan en hogares de menores recursos.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Expectations about Returns to Education. The Role of Parental and Youths’ Characteristics
Investing in human capital requires, among others, access and capacity to process information. This paper focuses on understanding the role of expected returns to education in determining schooling decisions. Using data for youths in seven countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, we find that expected returns to education are associated with schooling choices, particularly for tertiary education. However, expectations differ across individuals and in specific domains that public policies can address to reduce intra- and inter-generational transmission of poverty and inequality.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
La movilidad educativa intergeneracional en el siglo XX en América Latina y el Caribe
En este trabajo aportamos nuevas mediciones de movilidad educativa intergeneracional para América Latina y el Caribe a partir de datos censales armonizados para 22 países. Producimos estimaciones de medidas de movildiad absolutas y relativas para cohortes nacidas entre 1930 y 2010. Las medidas absolutas muestran que la región experimentó una alta movilidad en la parte inferior de la distribución, aunque ciertos grupos de la población (hombres, grupos étnicos minoritarios y residentes en áreas rurales) se encuentran más rezagados. Se observan menos progresos teniendo en cuenta medidas de movilidad relativa, sin presentarse patrones claros según género o lugar de residencia. Existe convergencia entre áreas geográficas al interior de los países en métricas de movilidad relativa, aunque los resultados son mixtos según la métrica de movilidad absoluta considerada. Se realizan ejercicios de robustez para descartar
sesgos por corresidencia y comparaciones con otras fuentes de información que permiten validar la fiabilidad de las métricas de movilidad calculadas a partir de censos.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Motherhood and the Allocation of Talent
In this paper we show that motherhood triggers changes in the allocation of talent in the labor market beyond the well-known effects on gender gaps in employment and earnings. We use an event study approach with retrospective data for 29 countries drawn from SHARE to assess the labor market responses to motherhood across “talent” groups, i.e. groups with different educational attainment, relative performance in math by the age of 10, and personality traits. We find that while even the most talented women—both in absolute terms and relative to their husbands—leave the labor market or uptake part-time jobs after the birth of the first child, all men, including the least talented,
stay employed. We also find that motherhood induces a negative selection of talents into self-employment. Although these results are observed in all 29 countries, there is some heterogeneity in the magnitude of the motherhood effects. We find larger motherhood effects in countries with more conservative social norms and, to a less extent, with weaker policies regarding worklife balance. Overall, our results suggest relevant changes in the allocation of talent caused by gender differences in nonmarket responsibilities that can have sizable impacts on aggregate market productivity.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Motherhood, Pregnancy or Marriage Effects
The existence of large child penalties on women’s labor market outcomes has been documented for multiple countries and time periods. In this paper, we assess to what extent marriage decisions and pregnancies (including those ending in non-live births), may explain partly these child penalties. Using data for 29 countries drawn from SHARE, we show that although marriage has a negative effect on women’s employment (3.3%), its magnitude is much smaller compared with the negative effect of a first child (23%). Moreover, we find that pregnancies that end in non-live births have non-statistically significant effects on employment in the following years, supporting the exogeneity
assumption underlying the identification in child penalty studies. These new results lend support to the hypothesis that child-rearing, rather than marriage or pregnancy, is responsible for women exiting the labor force upon motherhood.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Going subnational: wage differentials across levels of government in Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay
Workers at subnational governments play a prominent role in the delivery of public services in most countries. Yet, information about their remuneration is scarce. Using data for Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay, we document that national government employees earn on average higher wages than observationally
similar subnational employees; consequently, public-private sector wage gaps vary significantly by level of government. Then we use individual fixed-effects to estimate the wage premium to public sector employment (the wage gap net of selection effects) for Brazil and Mexico. We find that i) both national and subnational public employees receive a significant wage premium with respect to private sector employment; and ii) the difference between the national and subnational wage premiums is small in Brazil and null in Mexico.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Who attract the public sector compensation schemes?: evidence from Latin America
Compensation schemes tend to differ markedly between public and private sector jobs, which can affect the relative preferences of potential employees towards those jobs. We explore this through two informational experiments embedded within a large household survey in ten Latin American cities. We focus on two of the most relevant features of compensation schemes: the wage level and the existence of pay-for-performance. We find that the common characteristics of public sector contracts—i.e. flat wages, a negative wage gap with respect to the private sector in the upper end of the distribution, and a low prevalence of payfor- performance rules—diminishes the attractiveness of public employment among high-performing, high-ability individuals.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Spatial inequalities in educational opportunities: The role of public policies
This paper documents spatial patterns in intergenerational mobility at the top of the educational distribution and assess the role of public policies in increasing educational opportunities. Our analysis relies on novel administrative data of public university students in Uruguay’s, a small high income developing
country. We first document that the percentage of university students whose parents did not attain university increased 7 p.p between 2002 and 2020. Tough this imply a significant increase in intergenerational mobility spatial inequality still prevails. As a way to reduce this inequality of opportunities, the main public University started a campus expansion policy in 2008. We exploit the time and location variation in the implementation to provide causal evidence of its impact on total enrollment and the share of first-generation university students (mobility at the top). Results from the difference in differences analysis show that the policy was successful in increasing the number of students from localities and the share of students with parents that do not hold a university degree (3% increase) in those localities where
campuses opened but also in those 50 kms around. Our results suggest the important role of public policies in the reduction of inequality of opportunities and in increasing mobility at the top.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Movilidad ocupacional en América Latina
La persistencia de desigualdades entre generaciones representa un tópico de sumo interés para las sociedades. Mientras que la mayoría de este tipo de estudios se concentra en desigualdades educativas, en este trabajo presentamos un estudio de la movilidad ocupacional entre generaciones en América Latina para un periodo de 50 años utilizando información de encuestas de hogares armonizadas. Los resultados sugieren un elevado grado de correlación entre ocupaciones de padres e hijos. Más aún, mientras se ha demostrado que la movilidad intergeneracional educativa ha crecido durante el periodo analizado, la evolución de la movilidad ocupacional muestra una forma de U. Este hallazgo sugiere canales previamente no considerados
mediante los cuales la movilidad puede materializarse, como es el mercado laboral.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Surnames and Social Rank: Long-term Traits of Social Mobility in Colombia and Chile
In the last two years, Colombia and Chile have witnessed strong social protests, characterized by slogans against inequality and the lack of social mobility. In this study we propose a comparative study on social mobility and the persistence of structural social inequalities in both countries. We collect evidence on the level of social immobility and test if it is rooted in historical forms of social segregation in both countries. We base our analysis in surname based methods. We conclude that there are clear indications of a significant persistence of upward immobility of
the groups that were originally segregated during the colonial period: Afro-descendants (Colombia) and indigenous people (in both). Furthermore, we find that the downward social immobility of the elites shows an important persistence in both countries. However, in Chile the colonial elites (encomenderos and landowners) present greater persistence in their privileged status, while in Colombia those early elites seem to have converged more quickly to the mean. In both countries, there is a clear persistence of the elites of the second half of the 19th century in todays highest position of the social ladder.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Does it Matter Where You Grow up? Childhood Exposure Effects in Latin America and the Caribbean
I study whether the observed differences in intergenerational educational mobility across regions in Latin America and the Caribbean are due to the sorting of families or the effect of grow ing up in these different places. I exploit differences in the age of children at the time their families move across locations to isolate regional childhood exposure effects from sorting. I find a convergence rate of 3.5% per year of exposure between age 1 to 11, implying that children who move at the age of 1 would pick up 35% of the observed differences in mobility between origin and destination. These results are robust to using a speci fication that identifies the effect of place within households, the
use of only anomalously high migration outflows, instrument ing the choice of destination with historical migration, and a combination of both approaches.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Intergenerational mobility in education in Latin America
This document provides a comprehensive analysis of intergenerational mobility in Latin America, focusing on the association between parental education and the education of their children. It updates the estimates provided by Neidhöfer et al. (2018), and shows additional heterogeneities by country, cohort, gender, and city size. A positive trend in intergenerational mobility is found in most countries in the region. In particular, it is observed that
the upward mobility of children from the bottom of the distribution has been increasing for decades. This encouraging picture is seriously challenged by the educational disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Igualdad de oportunidades educativas: un indicador sencillo para América Latina
Este documento presenta estimaciones para América Latina de un indicador simple de igualdad de oportunidades educativas que mide el grado en que las variables de entorno familiar (ingreso y educación de los padres) dan cuenta del avance escolar de los niños y jóvenes. Se encuentra que el grado de igualdad de oportunidades es casi pleno entre los niños y se reduce de manera significativa entre los jóvenes de 13 a 19 años y todavía más entre los de 20 a 25 años. En términos históricos, el indicador refleja que el grado de igualdad de oportunidades se redujo/estancó en la década de 1990 y aumentó en las últimas dos décadas.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Bureaucratic turnover across levels of government
The incidence of patronage can vary widely across levels of gov ernment within a country. We show this in the context of Brazil, which has been the focus of most recent research on patronage. In particular, we find that bureaucratic turnover follows politi cal cycles among municipal employees, but not among state or federal level employees. This is not driven by differences across levels of government in the composition of the workforce or in the labor regimes used. Thus, the most likely explanation is differences in institutional quality. That pattern of institutional development, with central instances of government more pro fessionalized that local ones, mirrors historical experiences of civil service reform.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Family Rules: Nepotism in the Mexican Judiciary
We show that bureaucrats can exploit discretion in hiring decisions to engage in forms of favoritism that hinder organizational performance. We do this in the context of the Mexican federal judiciary. The arrival of a judge at a circuit results in the hiring of 0.05 relatives to key staff positions within the following year on average, a figure which is probably a lower bound of the overall effect. Moreover, we find that the appointment of relatives of judges to a court’s staff leads to a reduction in the court’s productivity, which indicates that such hires are motivated by rent-seeking rather than by efficiency purposes. Importantly for personnel policy, nepotistic hires are concentrated among judges who have been sanctioned for administrative offenses, those assigned to courts located in their state of birth, and those in higher-ranking positions.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Determinantes de los niveles de integración regional en las dos últimas décadas
La hipótesis principal del trabajo es que el mal desempeño de América Latina en términos de comercio intrarregional se explica por los altos niveles de costos comerciales. Se construyó una base de datos para el período 1995-2015, que abarca 112 países, para la agricultura y las manufacturas. Tiene la originalidad de contar con información sobre el comercio interno, requisito para la aplicación de técnicas tanto no paramétricas como paramétricas. El análisis descriptivo se ha realizado con
las primeras e ilustra la posición relativa en el ranking de costos comerciales intra- y extra-regionales de los países de interés. Muestra la escasa integración de los países sudamericanos, tanto dentro de la región como con el resto del mundo, especialmente en el sector manufacturero. Los resultados aportan evidencia a favor de la hipótesis central de que el pobre desempeño en términos de comercio intrarregional se explica por los bajos niveles de proximidad (altos niveles de costos de comercio). Aunque la región centroamericana es más heterogénea, tiene países más integrados tanto dentro de la región como con el resto del mundo, especialmente por su integración con las economías de América del Norte. En el análisis paramétrico, se estimó un modelo estructural de gravedad del comercio (MGEC) que incorpora un conjunto de variables para medir mecanismos alternativos de la influencia de la política comercial sobre los costos de comercio. A nivel agregado, el modelo MGEC muestra que las los caminos de liberalización del comercio han sido complementarios. Fundamentalmente la reducción de los aranceles NMF, la ampliación y profundización de los acuerdos plurilaterales existentes y la incorporación de nuevos acuerdos más profundos. Para América Latina, la heterogeneidad es la característica fundamental, desde el extremo proteccionista del MERCOSUR hasta el mayor desempeño de apertura de los países centroamericanos, y la CAN con un desempeño intermedio. Los costos de comercio regionales permanentes y/o estructurales también son elevados en América Latina. Esto revela una región geográficamente dispersa y mal conectada.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Inequality and Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean: New Data for and Old Question
The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between inequality and crime, with a focus on the Latin America and Caribbean region.We find a significant, positive, and robust association between these variables. The results persist if one instruments for inequality with historical variables in crime regressions, suggesting that a causal interpretation of the estimated effect is reasonable. Moreover, inequality is the only variable showing this robust regularity. Education levels, economic activity, income per capita, and poverty show weaker and unstable relationships with crime. The analysis of the distribution of crime victimization indicates that men and youth suffer more crime than women and the elderly. By socio-economic strata, high-income groups suffer more victimization relative to poorer groups in LAC countries, but the poor suffer more homicides.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
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Estrategia de contención del COVID-19 en el Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica (Ciudad de Buenos Aires)
En el marco de la pandemia de la COVID-19 el presente estudio busca brindar evidencia sobre la efectividad de una estrategia integral en la contención del virus implementada por el Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (Argentina) en barrios informales, poniendo el foco en el Barrio Mugica (Barrio 31). Aplicando metodologías cuasi experimentales que permiten estimar los cambios en la evolución de indicadores de salud (casos diarios, tasa de casos nuevos cada dos semanas, tasa de mortalidad cada dos semanas) se extraen tres hallazgos principales. En primer lugar, se observa que la estrategia temprana implementada en los barrios informales fue crítica para contener y disminuir el crecimiento de las curvas de contagio. En segundo lugar, la estrategia en asentamientos no siempre alcanzó los mismos resultados con la misma velocidad en todos los territorios. Esto podría indicar que no solo importa qué políticas se implementan, sino cómo se implementan. En tercer lugar, el análisis comparativo dentro del Barrio Mugica parece indicar que el tipo de vivienda no es un factor que afecte sustancialmente la probabilidad de ser testeado ni la positividad en los tests de COVID-19. A partir de estos análisis se desprenden cinco lecciones aprendidas: (i) invertir en generar redes al interior de los barrios informales tiene grandes rendimientos; (ii) es clave actuar rápido ante la emergencia y tener
flexibilidad al momento de accionar; (iii) testar, aislar y seguir a los contactos estrechos es efectivo en el control de la pandemia; (iv) para atender a las brechas de desarrollo estructurales no hay que perder de vista el largo plazo; y (v) el mayor desafío es cómo escalar la estrategia integral en la ciudad formal.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Waits and Delays in Road Freight Transport
This paper studies waits and delays in the trucking industry of a developing country: Colombia. We follow 186,000 longhaul trips over 926 routes between 2015 and 2019, using GPS devices located in trucks. We find that waits, rather than periods when the truck is moving, are the largest drivers of travelntimes: on average, trucks spend 38% of their travel time movingn between origin and destination, 38% parked at the side of the road, and 24% parked before or after the trip. Furthermore, waiting time accounts for 82% of the variation in travel times
across trips, whereas moving time only explains 18%. Overall, the cost of waits amounts to 46% of freight rates, whereas the cost of delays amounts to 7%. Most of the cost of delays is generated during waits, rather than when the truck is moving.
Shipper, carrier, truck and driver characteristics, as well as the
day of the week and the hour of the day in which loading and
unloading occurs, explain 35% of the variation in waiting times
across trips. There are large potential gains from reducing waiting
times and delays through capacity building and optimization.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Misallocated Talent: Teen Pregnancy, Education and Job Sorting in Colombia
Policy makers and international organizations often argue that teenage pregnancy affects girls’ life trajectories by, for example, limiting their employment opportunities. These concerns are amplified in regions with high teen pregnancy rates such as Latin America. We use a unique dataset from Colombia that allows us to instrument for early motherhood with the age at menarche. We find that teen pregnancy reduces school attainment and increases the number of children ever born. However, when considering eight indicators of labor supply, including labor force participation, type of job and occupation while accounting for multiple hypothesis testing, we find that much (if not all) of the negative effects on labor supply attributed to teen motherhood are due to selection. Our findings weaken the claim that early motherhood leads to a path of low-quality employment or a misallocation of talent due to job sorting. We discuss the role that family network and co-residence plays as a mechanism to buffer the effects of early motherhood on labor supply.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Bimodal Transport Infrastructure and Regional Development: Evidence from Argentina, 1960 - 1991
We estimate the impact of railroad and road infrastructure on local economic development through the study of massive transport infrastructure changes in Argentina. Following a World Bank study, 10,000 kilometers of railroads were closed and 18,000 kilometers of paved roads were built between 1960 and 1991. Our empirical strategy relies on instrumental variables that exploit a discontinuity in how experts chose railroad segments to be studied for closure and hypothetical networks connecting main cities. We show that conventional IV estimates can be misleading when omitting potential substitution of different transport modes. We find that dismantling railroads had a negative impact on population and industrial production, and shifted the distribution of labor away from agriculture. On the other
hand, we find weak evidence of roads construction having a positive impact on the share of employment in manufacturing and non-tradable industries, but no impacts on total population nor industrial production.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Learning About Opportunity: Spillovers of Elite School Admissions in Peru
This paper studies how the admission of a student to an elite school changes the schooling outcomes of younger cohorts in the student’s origin school in Peru. Using a sharp regression discontinuity design, the analysis finds that the admission of an older schoolmate increases the probability that students in origin schools will apply and gain admission to the same elite school system. The effect is concentrated among students whose parents have low education levels, which indicates a process of information diffusion. Furthermore, there is a slightly positive effect on the learning achievement of potential applicants and no negative effect on the learning of students who are ineligible to apply. Overall, the findings show that selective schools can have effects that go beyond their own students and indicate that role models can be an effective mechanism for increasing the demand from high-achieving, low-income students for high-quality education.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Motherhood and flexible jobs: Evidence from Latin American countries
We study the causal effect of motherhood on labour market outcomes in Latin America by adopting an event study approach around the birth of the first child based on panel data from national household surveys for Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. Our main contributions are: (i) providing new and comparable evidence on the effects of motherhood on labour outcomes in developing countries; (ii) exploring the possible mechanisms driving these outcomes; (iii) discussing the potential links between these outcomes and the prevailing gender norms and family policies in the region. We find that motherhood reduces women’s labour supply in the extensive and intensive margins
and influences female occupational structure towards flexible occupations—part-time work, self-employment, and informal jobs—needed for family–work balance. Furthermore, countries with more conservative gender norms and less generous family policies are associated with larger differences between mothers’ and non-mothers’ labour market outcomes.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Savings Groups Reduce Vulberability but have Mixed Effect on Financial Inclusion
This paper evaluates the impact of the introduction of savings groups on poverty, vulnerability, and financial inclusion outcomes in rural Peru. Using a cluster randomized control trial and relying on both survey and administrative records, we investigate
the impact of savings groups over a two year period. We find that savings groups channel expensive investments such as housing improvements and reduce households’ vulnerability to idiosyncratic shocks, particularly among households in poorer districts. The treatment also induces changes in households’
labor allocation choices: access to savings groups increases female labor market participation and, in poorer areas, it fosters greater specialization in agricultural activities. Access to savings groups also leads to a four-percentage point increase in access to credit among women, mainly driven by access to the group’s loans. However, the introduction of savings groups has no impact on the likelihood to use formal financial services. On
the contrary, it discourages access to loans from formal financial institutions and microfinance lenders among the unbanked.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Local shocks in labor markets: competition and information flow among peers
We present causal evidence of the effect of local labor supply shocks on labor outcomes of young job seekers in a developing country. We study a large-scale internship program in Argentina that randomly alters job seekers’ local labor environment. Exposure to areas with high program saturation results in adverse effects on labor market outcomes following program completion, while having a nearby individual who participated in the program improves labor outcomes. These results are compatible with the coexistence of a mechanism of transmission of valuable labor market information among peers and a competition mechanism.
Keywords: Local labor market shocks, Labor market frictions, Spacial frictions, Information frictions, Networks, Externalities, Displacement effects
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Gender Gaps in Labor Informality: The Motherhood Effect
We estimate the short- and long-run labor market impacts of parenthood in a developing country, Chile, based on an eventstudy approach around the birth of the first child. We assess mechanisms behind these effects based on a model economy and find that: (i) informal jobs’ flexible working hours prevent some women from leaving the labor market upon motherhood, (ii) improving the quality of social protection of formal jobs tempers this increase in informality. Our results suggest that mothers find in informal jobs the flexibility needed for family-work balance, although it comes at the cost of deteriorating their labor market prospects.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Will you marry me, later? Age-of-marriage laws and child marriage in Mexico
We provide empirical evidence on the impact of raising the minimum age of marriage to 18 years old on child marriage, early motherhood, and school enrollment in Mexico. Using a difference-in-differences model that takes advantage of the staggered adoption of this reform across states, we show that banning child marriage leads to a large and statistically significant reduction in the number of registered child marriages. However, we find no effect on school attendance or early fertility rates. We provide evidence that the mechanism behind these results is the substitution of formal marriage for informal unions. These findings suggest that when informal unions are a viable option for young couples, raising the minimum age of marriage is not enough to prevent early unions and their negative consequences.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Conflicting Incentives: Government Financial Aid, Vocational-to-University Track Change and Graduates’ Wages in Chile
Although literature on education economic returns is not un- common, research focusing in vocational students is quite scarce. This paper addresses labor market outcomes of vocational high schools’ students and their trajectories in the two possible paths in the Chilean higher education system: college education or vocational higher education. Using OLS regressions, we find that vocational high school education is associated with higher relative wages compared with students from regular or academic high schools. Moreover, when students follow tertiary education, higher relative wages are expected both for students from vocational and general high schools, specially for the latter. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) on two different discontinuity rules in the allocation of financial aid, we found that vocational high school students that continue in vocational higher education have neutral to positive wage impact of pursuing higher education. However, these students face a negative wage impact when they are induced to follow college higher education.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Heterogeneous effects of automation: How are young workers affected by a changing labor market?
We study the effect of automation on labor market outcomes with a focus on young workers and the case of Chile. We develop an index of routine task content of each occupation and follow two approaches. First we study the effect of automation on labor markets at the local level. Then we focus on mobility across occupations. We find that young workers are more easily displaced by automation than older workers of similar characteristics. This effect is concentrated on young workers in the age group 18-22. Young workers in the age group 23- 29 do not suffer unemployment significantly, but instead their employment participation decreases in occupations with high routine task content, reflecting mobility towards more flexible occupations. Wages fall in occupations with high routine task content, indicating that there is a decrease in demand for workers performing these tasks.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Skills and selection into teaching: Evidence from Latin America
This paper documents a novel stylized fact: many teachers in Latin America have very low levels of cognitive skills. This skills deficit is the result of both low levels of competencies among the population and a gap between the average skill level of teachers and the rest of the tertiary-educated population (i.e., a teacher skills gap). Furthermore, we observe that individuals with a teaching degree have lower average skills than individuals with other tertiary degrees, and that this gap is larger than the teacher skills gap. This difference is mainly explained by the selection into teaching of graduates from non-teaching degrees. Finally, we show that even controlling for cognitive skills, teachers have lower monthly wages than other professionals, and provide direct evidence that this gap is increasing in skills.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Brecha de habilidades de los jóvenes en el mercado laboral colombiano
La brecha de habilidades entre la oferta y la demanda laboral explica parcialmente la desfavorable situación laboral de los jóvenes. Este estudio mide el desajuste entre las habilidades que requiere la demanda de trabajo y las habilidades que ofrecen los trabajadores jóvenes en Colombia para el período 2016-2019. Con datos del Sistema de Información del Servicio de Empleo, identificamos las habilidades, competencias y capacidades que exige la demanda y las contrastamos con las que los trabajadores describen en sus hojas de vida. Utilizamos la ontología ESCO para estimar la distancia entre cada pareja de habilidades. Adicionalmente, clasificamos las ocupaciones, y sus habilidades, con distinto potencial de automatización, para que los trabajadores puedan reconocer aquellas con mayor y menor riesgo a desaparecer en el futuro. Encontramos un mayor desajuste de habilidades específicas y en los años de educación para jóvenes en sectores altamente automatizables. Sin embargo, el desajuste de habilidades transversales es muy bajo para este grupo de jóvenes. Esto indica que, dado que los empleadores no encuentran trabajadores con el conocimiento específico requerido, sustituyen esos requisitos con habilidades más generales que son suficientes para realizar de manera adecuada el trabajo que se demanda en el sistema de intermediación laboral colombiano.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Life expectancy at retirement and income levels in Chile
We document that life expectancies at the age of retirement differ significantly by income levels and gender in Chile. Using a sample of over 500 thousand workers that retired under the annuity system, we find that, conditional on reaching retirement age, there is a three-year difference in life expectancy between the lower and higher income groups. Differences are similar for men and women. We also find that as income per capita in Chile expanded over the past three decades, poverty levels have decreased quite markedly among pensioners. The evidence on income distribution is less clear cut. While income inequality is lower for the new generations, it increases after retirement within each generation as the poor die younger than the rich workers. Gender differences are also noteworthy. First, income among women is less unequal than that of men at retirement age and afterwards. Second, income inequality among retired men progressively worsens over time, while among women it remains stagnant over time. Our results have important im- plications for welfare projections, the allocation of health subsidies among pensioners, and the structure and management of the reserves required to life-insurance companies.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Jobs’ amenability is not enough: The role of household inputs for safe work under social distancing in Latin American cities
The recent literature has emphasized the role of occupations in quantifying the amount of telework possible under social distancing measures during the COVID-19 outbreak. However, telework requires not only a teleworkable occupation but also household inputs related to basic infrastructure (Internet connection and other housing services) and time availability. We use a recent household survey that includes rich information for large urban areas in eleven Latin American countries and we find that these household inputs are not available for more vulnerable workers. This introduces additional sources of in- equality in the possibility of working from home, aside from those imposed by occupations, as well as it reinforces the association between economic development and the share of tele- workable jobs. We also analyze the profiles of workers in jobs that imply a higher exposure to the virus (high personal-proximity jobs), and we find important additional sources of inequality. In particular, workers in jobs of higher exposure to the COVID-19 also have other health risks, implying that this type of inequality should be carefully taken into account when designing deconfinement measures.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Self-Selection into Corruption: Evidence from the Lab
We study whether the existence of opportunities to extract rents in a job affects the type of individuals who are attracted to it. We design a laboratory experiment in which individuals choose between two contracts, each offering a payment in return for performing a task, and we experimentally introduce the possibility of graft in one of the contracts. First, we find that the corruptible contract attracts less honest individuals and repels the more honest ones, thus changing the composition of the group that chooses that contract to the detriment of integrity. Second, we observe extensive graft when the opportunity is introduced. Using a double randomization strategy to disentangle pure incentives and selection effects, we find that selection is the fundamental driver of graft in our context.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
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My (Running) Mate, the Mayor: Political Ties and Access to Public Jobs in Ecuador
We show that local politicians’ probability of being employed by a municipality increases when they have a strong party connection to its mayor. Using a regression discontinuity design, we compare the employment outcomes of individuals connected to the winner vis-à-vis those connected to the runner-up in close mayoral races in Ecuador. Among candidates to local councils who lose their bid, the probability of getting a job in the municipality increases tenfold when their own party’s mayoral nominee is elected. Importantly, the effect is concentrated among low-ranking positions, which reveals that this is the result of political patronage.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Optimal age-dependent taxation in emerging markets: A quantitative assessment
This paper studies the design and welfare implications of an optimal age-dependent taxation scheme for an emerging economy. The setting is an overlapping generations economy with uninsured productivity risk, partially insured occupational risk (unemployment and informality by exclusion), stochastic retirement, and stochastic access to the pension fund. We calibrate this model for Ecuador and find that the optimal tax scheme provides a payroll tax exemption up to age 35, thereafter becoming hump-shaped with a maximum tax rate of 50% at age 50. The progressive tax levied on labor income implies an initial marginal tax rate of 5% that increases linearly to a top marginal tax rate of 35%. This tax scheme produces a welfare gain of 2.9% measured in compensated equivalent units and reduces wealth inequality by 5.8%. For comparison, in a model built and calibrated for the US economy (no informality, higher productivity and longevity risk, and full coverage of the social security system), the optimal payroll tax implies a zero tax rate up to age 27, becoming hump-shaped thereafter with a maximum tax rate of 56.2% at age 46.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Efectos de un accidente ferroviario sobre la demanda del servicio: El caso de la tragedia de Once en Argentina
Este trabajo evalúa el impacto de un accidente ferroviario, conocido como la “Tragedia de Once”, sobre la demanda de viajes del servicio afectado en Argentina. Debido a que el accidente no puede considerarse como un choque exógeno, para identificar el efecto causal de la tragedia se utiliza la metodología de Control Sintético. Específicamente se considera una combinación de diferentes ramales para construir un control sintético que simule en características relevantes el ramal afectado, antes de que sucediera el accidente. Los resultados indican que para los dos años posteriores al accidente la evolución de los boletos vendidos por tren corrido es en promedio entre 53 puntos porcentuales (pp) y 59 pp menor que el control sintético. El efecto identificado comienza a reducirse a partir de 19 meses luego del accidente, hasta desaparecer luego de 28 meses. Además, debido a que el ramal afectado pudo haber sufrido una reducción en el pago del boleto, al utilizar como grupo de control ramales más comparables en términos de evasión, se encuentra que el efecto se reduce a -21 pp. Este trabajo se destaca por su aporte original a la literatura, ya que a la fecha no se han encontrado antecedentes sobre evaluaciones de impacto vinculadas a accidentes ferroviarios en Argentina.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
More to Live for: Health Investment Responses to Expected Retirement Wealth in Chile
A poorly understood but important way that economic conditions influence health is through the incentives that they create for health investments. In this paper, we study how individuals’ current health investments respond to changes in expected future wealth, focusing on Chile’s 1981 public pension. We compile detailed administrative pension data linked to a rich household panel survey, and we then exploit discrete breaks in the reform’s impact on expected pension wealth across cohorts of Chileans using a fuzzy regression kink design to estimate how health behavior, preventive health care use, and chronic disease diagnoses respond to changes in expected pension wealth. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we find that greater expected pension wealth increases the use of medical services –and in turn, the detection of chronic diseases. More generally, our results provide new empirical evidence of forward-looking behavior consistent with the life-cycle and permanent income hypotheses.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Value of Free Health Insurance Schemes in Developing Countries
Brazil began the implementation of SUS (Universal Health Insurance) in 1988. To the extent that SUS broke the link between employment contract and health insurance, it may have changed the incentives for individuals to participate in the labor market and in which sector to work (formal or informal). Our goal is to study the labor market impacts of SUS. We do so by structurally estimating a labor market model that allows us to address three main questions (i) How much of the increase in informality in Brazil is due to the introduction of non-contributory health insurance? (ii) How much do individuals value health insurance? And (iii) What are the welfare impacts of increases in the value of non-contributory health insurance? The model is fitted to Brazilian employment data and used to simulate changes in welfare, employment, informality and wages of different noncontributory health insurance policies.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Human Capital and Financial Development: Firm-Level Interactions and Macroeconomic Implications
Capital-skill complementarity in production implies non-trivial interactions between availability of human capital and financial constraints. Firms that are constrained in their access to finance hire a lower proportion of skilled workers than unconstrained firms. On the other hand, higher wages of skilled workers reduce firms’ desired capital intensity and thus loosen their effective financial constraints. We build a dynamic occupational choice model to quantify how a lack of human capital and financial frictions, as well as the joint effect of both restrictions interact to explain cross-country differences in aggregate output per capita, productivity, average firm size and college premia. We calibrate our model to US data, and we vary financial frictions and educational attainment as observed across countries. We find that the joint effect of both restrictions is up to 50 percent larger compared to the sum of the individual effects. In countries with a negligible share of tertiary educated workers, financial development has small effects on aggregate output.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Perceptions of Police Corruption in Medellín
Conventional wisdom holds that police corruption is a scourge across Latin America, undermining citizens’ trust in and collaboration with police officers. We find that this does not describe police-community relations in Medellín. Using original survey data in Medellín, we find perceptions of police corruption are only weakly correlated with perceptions of police quality along other dimensions. This finding echoes evidence from qualitative field notes from more than 400 police-community meetings, where citizens seldom voiced concerns about police corruption, but often voiced concerns about other aspects of police performance.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Economic Preferences of Cooperative Managers
A growing body of research has been investigating the role of management practices and managerial behaviour in conventional private firms and public sector organizations. However, little is known about managers’ behavioural profile in noninvestorowned firms. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive behavioural characterization of managers employed in cooperatives. We gathered incentive-compatible measures of risk preferences, time preferences, reciprocity, altruism, and trust from 196 Uruguayan managers (half of them employed in worker cooperatives) and 92 first-year undergraduate students. To do this, we conducted a high-stakes lab-in-thefield experiment in which participants played a series of online experimental games and made incentivised decisions.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Kickbacks and limits on campaign donations
How do campaign contribution limits alter the influence of donors over elected officials? We propose a model to explore this question and test its implications using data from Colombian municipalities. Using a regression discontinuity design that exploits institutional rules determining contribution limits based on population thresholds, we find that looser campaign limits reduce the number of donors per candidate and increase the average donations received by the winner of the election.
Moreover, we document that donors who contributed to the winner of the election are more likely to receive contracts from the supported candidate upon taking office. These patterns suggest that looser campaign limits increase the influence of fewer individuals in campaigns. A higher influence of donors over elected officials is reflected by the fact that looser limits are associated with more kickbacks for each donor, which are awarded in a more discretionary way.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Government transparency and political clientelism: Evidence from randomized anti-corruption audits in Brazil
Political clientelism is considered a fundamental reason why politicians are not accountable and responsive to their constituencies. In this working paper, we study whether transparency initiatives – more specifically, top-down anti-corruption audits – can reduce the incidence of vote-buying and political clientelism in the context of Brazil’s municipal government anti-corruption program. This program selected municipalities at random to audit municipal finances, which allows for causal inference. We combine the audit program data for a sample of municipalities in the country’s Northeast region with a dedicated longitudinal survey we conducted in 2011-2013 of a large representative sample of impoverished rural households. This enables us to estimate short and long-term effects of the government anti corruption audits on subsequent levels of vote-buying and political clientelism.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Inside the revolving door: campaign finance, lobbying meetings and public contracts. An investigation for Argentina
This paper explores the relationship between political influence activities by interest groups and benefits obtained in the form of public contracts. We propose an electoral competition model where interest groups make ex-ante campaign contributions to candidates and ex-post lobbying contributions (efforts). Campaign contributions are useful to bias the election result although an aggressive campaign fight encourages interest groups to concentrate in lobbying activities. Using a novel and unique dataset at the individual level, we find that lobbying meetings are positively correlated with public contract amount and the probability of obtaining a contract. This result holds when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. Campaign contributions are not significantly related to either public contract amount or the probability of winning contracts.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Criminal Dominance and Campaign Concentration
There are many journalistic and anecdotal accounts about the prevalence of electoral corrals in Brazil, geographic areas where brokers, politicians, or community leaders influence residents to vote for a specific candidate. In this paper, I investigate one particular type of suspected electoral corral: the favela, urban slum. This analysis focuses on the 1000+ favelas in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I explore whether or not vote share is indeed more concentrated in urban slums, and then whether or not vote concentration is related to criminal dominance. I contend that politicians in Rio de Janeiro have incentives to work with criminal groups in order to get more votes, and that finding a way to access these electoral corrals may be an election-winning strategy. Using novel, geospatial data and introducing a new text dataset on criminal dominance in Rio de Janeiro, I show that vote concentration is indeed more concentrated in urban slums and, within these slums, even more concentrated in slums that have steady criminal dominance from one election to the next.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Political connections and misallocation of procurement contracts: evidence from Ecuador
This paper uses detailed ownership information of private firms in Ecuador and the identity of bureaucrats to document the effects of political connections on firm size and the allocation of government contracts. Reduced-form estimates show a significant positive effect of political connection on sales, assets, debt, and costs. Using contract-level data, we find that politically connected firms enjoy higher probability of winning discretionary contracts and charge higher prices for homogeneous goods and services than unconnected firms. Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate a political connection premium of 475 million USD per year in overpricing. Further analysis from production function estimates suggest that politically connected firms are less efficient than unconnected ones. This translates into a 1.5 to 3.5 percent excess cost of provision.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Distribución espacial del empleo formal en la ciudad autónoma de buenos aires: un diagnóstico a partir de registros administrativos
A partir de información geográfica detallada del universo de establecimientos productivos y del empleo registrado en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires este trabajo documenta la localización del empleo en la ciudad en el año 2017 y los patrones diferenciales existentes entre sectores de actividad, grupos etarios, sexo y salarios. El análisis muestra que la ciudad es de carácter fuertemente monocéntrico, concentrando la mitad del empleo en menos de un quinto de su superficie en el área que rodea el punto de mayor densidad de empleo, y que esta concentración del empleo está correlacionada positivamente con el nivel salarial. La distribución del empleo presenta patrones heterogéneos por sector: los sectores de manufacturas y de servicios públicos, transporte y comunicaciones se encuentran sobrerrepresentados en las zonas periféricas, mientras que el sector de servicios a empresas presenta el mayor grado de concentración, situado alrededor del punto de mayor densidad de empleo. Estos patrones diferenciales por sector repercuten en diferencias en la localización del empleo por grupos demográficos.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Estimating the nature of political corruption: evidence from a policy experiment in Brazil
This paper proposes a test to estimate the nature of political corruption in developing countries: embezzlement by self enriching politicians versus corruption that originates as a quid-pro-quo from campaign contributions. If politicians decide whether to be corrupt rationally, then increasing the punishment for corrupt practices or the probability of getting caught should reduce corrupt practices (Becker, 1968). If corruption is a response of politicians to firms that finance their campaigns, an increase in punishment should yield not only a reduction in corruption but also a reduction in the demand for projects that are corruptible, such as projects on infrastructure. We test these explanations for corrupt practices using a randomized policy experiment in Brazil. We exploit the fact that some municipalities were randomly chosen to have their probability of being audited increased and we analyze public data of block grants. We find a significant decrease in the resources requested by the mayors to execute projects in infrastructure. This effect is stronger if the municipality has been audited in the past, evidence that mayors respond to credible policies. Moreover, this effect is larger if the mayor’s campaign was strongly financed by construction companies. Finally, treated mayors have their performance in subsequent elections worsened and get less financed by construction companies after the experiment happened. In sum, our findings suggest that mayors are committed to campaign contributors and respond to larger probability of audits by reducing the amount of resources requested for infrastructure projects.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Impact evaluation of innovation policy in Brazil
This paper aims to assess the innovation policy in Brazil after the edition of the innovation law, in 2004, and the fiscal subsidies to innovation law, in 2005. We use data from the Brazilian Innovation Survey and from the Annual Industrial Survey to measure the effect of the use of policy instruments on private R&D disbursements and on productivity. The report finds a positive effect of the innovation policy on private R&D when all instruments are pooled together, that is, innovation policy resources may be viewed as complementary to private resources and may be viewed as successful in fostering innovative effort. When separate instruments are analyzed, we find that direct intervention instruments such as credit for R&D investments and economic grants work very well. The effect of fiscal subsidies is not straightforward, however. It seems to increase the probability to perform R&D disbursements but does not have effect on the intensity of these disbursements. Other instruments such as credit for the acquisition of equipment and machinery and credit for the enhancement of university-industry linkages do not perform well. Policy instruments had an overall positive impact on labor productivity. Most instruments have maintained a positive and significant impact on productivity over all equations, with the sole exception of risk capital.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Del dato administrativo de firmas al dato estadístico: desafíos a vencer en América Latina
El diseño, la implementación y la evaluación de las políticas públicas para el fomento de la productividad requieren cada vez más información estadística oportuna y de calidad. En los últimos veinte años, y especialmente en países desarrollados, los registros administrativos han contribuido a satisfacer esta demanda creciente de datos. En América Latina, en cambio, esto es mucho más incipiente. Sin embargo, varios países de la región están actualmente empleando registros que capturan la dinámica de la producción, el empleo, el comercio internacional y la innovación como fuentes para la producción de estadísticas útiles para la formulación de políticas de productividad. Este documento analiza las barreras que enfrentan varios países en América Latina para expandir de manera adecuada el uso de estas fuentes administrativas, y lo hace desde una perspectiva práctica.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Measuring the size and growth of cities using nighttime light
This paper uses high-resolution images of nighttime luminosity to estimate a globally comparable measure of the size of metropolitan areas around the world for the years 2000 and 2010. We apply recently-proposed methodologies that correct the known problems of available nighttime luminosity data including blurring, instability of lit pixels overtime and the reduced comparability of night light images across satellites and across time. We then develop a protocol that isolates stable nighttime light pixels that constitute urban footprint, including low luminosity urban settlements such as slums, and excluding confounding phenomena such as highway illumination. When analyzed together with existing geo-referenced population datasets, our measure of urban footprint, can be used to compute city densities for the entire world. After characterizing some basic stylized facts regarding the distribution of urban sprawl, urban population and population density across world regions, we offer an application of our measure to the study of the size distribution of cities, including test of the Zipf's Law and Gibrat's Law.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Motherhood and the missing women in the labor market
Motherhood currently stands out as a key determinant of the gender gap in labor market outcomes. Studies identifying the effect of children have mostly focused in Europe and the US. These results may not be extrapolated to developing countries with different institutional settings and cultural norms. In this paper we estimate the impact of becoming a mother on various labor outcomes in Chile. Following an event-study methodology we show that motherhood implies a drastic reduction in earnings, explained by a drop in labor supply, both in the extensive and intensive margins. These changes persist even ten years after the first child is born. No child penalties are found for fathers, neither in the short nor in the long run. The results for mothers are driven by a decline in formal employment, leading to an increase in informality rates among them. Finally, we find that effects are stronger for less educated mothers, indicating that education is a buffer for this type of child penalty. Our results suggest that mothers find in the informal sector the flexibility to cope with both family and labor responsibilities, although at the cost of resigning contributory social protection and reducing on-the-job skills accumulation.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Microdatos para el estudio de la productividad en América Latina
La creciente disponibilidad de microdatos empresariales ha permitido a los investigadores indagar sobre el papel que la heterogeneidad entre las empresas o establecimientos productivos juega para explicar la productividad agregada de una economía. Sin embargo, los procedimientos restrictivos de acceso a este tipo de datos, y las diferencias metodológicas en la construcción de las bases de datos de distintos países, suelen obligar a los investigadores a enfocar estas indagaciones en un solo país y un sector específico. En este documento caracterizamos diversos momentos de la distribución de productividad y su evolución a través de establecimientos de un sector, así como sus consecuencias sobre la productividad agregada de la economía, para un grupo de países de América Latina. Para lidiar con la imposibilidad de reunir las bases de datos de los distintos países bajo la tutela de un solo investigador, así como con las dificultades de comparación a través de países, empleamos el enfoque denominado análisis de microdatos distribuido (Bartelsman, Haltiwanger y Scarpetta 2009). Esta aproximación unifica el análisis de resultados generados separadamente, pero con una metodología uniforme, para cada uno de los distintos países. Comparado con el estudio original de Bartelsman, Haltiwanger y Scarpetta, que también incluyó varios países de América Latina, este documento caracteriza un conjunto más amplio de dimensiones de la distribución de productividad, y tanto para productividad medida como producto por trabajador, como para productividad total de factores, PTF. Cubre también, cuando es posible, el sector de servicios. Para lograr esta mayor cobertura acudimos a información administrativa.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Quality Regulation and Competition: Evidence from Pharmaceutical Markets
We study the equilibrium effects of quality regulation on market outcomes by exploiting the staggered phase-in of bioequivalence requirements for generic drugs in Chile. While the objective of the regulation was to increase the perceived quality of generics to reduce vertical differentiation and enhance price competition, we find mostly adverse effects. Even if a large number of drugs obtained the quality certification mandated by the regulation, we estimate that the number of drugs in the market decreased by 13% as a result of the policy. Moreover, we find that prices increased on average by 13% as well as no significant effects on the market share of generics. These adverse effects were mostly concentrated in molecules with small market size. Put together, our results suggest that the intended effects of the regulation on competition through increased (perceived) quality of generics were overturned by adverse competitive effects arising from the costs of complying with the regulation.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Money can buy me life. The Effect of a Basic Pension on Mortality: a Regression Discontinuity Design
This paper estimates the effect of a permanent income increase for the elderly on their health outcomes. Our regression discontinuity design exploits an eligibility cutoff in a Chilean basic pension program that grants monthly payments of 40 percent of the minimum wage to pensionless retirees. Four years after applying pension, recipients are 2.5 percentage points less likely to die, with lower incidence of respiratory and circulatory diseases. The effect is concentrated on pension recipients living without working-age relatives, who have more children if living with recipients. This seems explained by pre-existing income transfers from working-age relatives to retirees, which cease when payments begin. Results suggest that increasing income for older individuals could reduce health inequalities across income groups, and mitigate the inter-generational transmission of poverty by alleviating the financial burden imposed on younger relatives.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Predicting Individual Wellbeing Through Test Scores: Evidence from a National Assessment in Mexico
We construct two longitudinal datasets that record students’ test scores in a national standardized exam in Mexico and track students from the end of primary (Grade 6) to the end of lower (Grade 9) and upper (Grade 12) secondary school, then to university and labor market participation up to two years after graduation from upper secondary. Our results show that test scores are a strong predictor of future education and labor market outcomes. Using a large sample of twins in our data, we show that the relationship between Grade 6 test scores and future education outcomes goes beyond family background. Finally, we exploit the within-individual correlation between subject test scores and find evidence that this standardized assessment captures in a meaningful way the specific skills that it is designed to measure. These results show that, despite their limitations, large-scale standardized tests can capture skills that are important for future individual wellbeing.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
La violencia de género en América Latina: diagnóstico, determinantes y opciones de política
En los últimos años, se ha generado una demanda desde la sociedad civil y los gobiernos de América Latina para identificar los determinantes y las opciones de políticas que permitan reducir la violencia contra la mujer. En este trabajo se busca progresar en ambos sentidos. Luego de revisar los principales modelos teóricos, se observa que la mayoría de estudios utiliza el modelo de negociación al interior del hogar el cual predice que los factores que aumenten el poder de negociación de la mujer (ej., ingreso, educación, legislación) reducen la prevalencia de la violencia contra ella. Se muestra que dichos enfoques se pueden ampliar incluyendo fallas de mercado (ej. asimetría de información) así como las recientes contribuciones desde la economía del comportamiento. Ambas amplían el conjunto de herramientas para el diseño de políticas para reducir la violencia contra la mujer. En cuanto a los datos, se muestra la baja calidad y cobertura de los registros administrativos en la región y cómo el uso de encuestas de hogares puede servir para tener una mejor estimación de la incidencia de esta violencia. Sin embargo, recientes estudios que utilizan métodos experimentales muestran que el subreporte de la prevalencia de violencia contra la mujer no es aleatorio lo cual dificulta la identificación del papel de los factores de riesgo para reducir la violencia. El reporte incluye un análisis de lo avanzado en ese campo y cómo se pueden diseñar políticas efectivas a partir de estos hallazgos (y limitaciones).
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Measuring Imperfect Competition in Product and Labor Markets. An Empirical Analysis using Firm-level Production Data
In this paper, we develop a simple theoretical model that allows us to disentangle empirically the extent of imperfect competition in product and labor markets using plant-level production data. The model assumes profit-maximizing producers that face upward-sloping labor supply and downward-sloping product demand curves. We derive a reduced-form formula for the ratio between markdowns and markups based on DeLoecker and Warzynski (2012). We use production function estimation techniques to estimate output elasticities and construct a measure of combined market power. We separate product and labor market power by estimating firm-level labor supply elasticities instrumenting wages with intermediate inputs. Our results suggest that both markets exhibit imperfect competition, but variation across industries is driven by the ease of firms to set prices above marginal costs. On average, manufacturing plants charge prices 78% higher than marginal costs, and pay wages 11% less than marginal revenue productivity of labor. We find a negative correlation between product and labor market power and more elastic labor supply curves for unskilled workers. Moreover, we obtain a positive correlation between firms’ product market power and productivity, size and exporter status, and a negative correlation of these measures with labor market power. In the last part, we estimate the relative gains of eliminating market power dispersion on allocative efficiency using the model by Hsieh and Klenow (2009). We find that market power dispersion in product markets is more important on TFP than labor markets, and that the negative correlation between the two measures of market power corrects in 7% the economic distortion derived from market power dispersion.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Determinants of Slum Formation: The Role of Local Politics and Policies
One-third of the developing world’s population lives in urban slums and the absolute number of slum residents grew from 650 million in 1990 to 863 million in 2012. Although negative impacts of slum living conditions on several dimensions of slum residents’ lives are well documented, much less research exists on why slums emerge and grow in the first place. This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of local political conditions and slum policies on slum growth. Using a regression discontinuity design in close municipal elections in Brazil, I show that victories by a center-left, pro-poor party led to both more slum upgrading policies and a higher share of slum housing. I further show evidence indicating that the pro-slum incentive effect from slum upgrading policies was the main mechanism behind this party’s effect on slum growth. By highlighting the relevance of local institutional conditions for understanding where slums are more likely to grow, these findings innovate over traditional explanations based on the role of rural-urban migration and rapid urban economic growth. This paper’s evidence on the potential incentive effect of slum upgrading policies on slum growth does not imply that slums upgrading efforts should stop. Given the solid evidence on the positive impacts of slum upgrading programs on the lives of the poor, these programs should continue to develop, and governments should consider, for example, complementing slum upgrading efforts with policies expanding the supply of non-slum housing.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Who benefits when inertia is reduced? Competition, quality and returns to skill in health care markets
Increased competition may lead to incentives for firms to increase quality by incorporating higher quality inputs. This is particularly relevant in health care markets, since the supply of high quality physicians is relatively inelastic in the short run. Therefore, an increase in the relative demand for high-quality physicians could lead to an increase in their relative wages without increasing their total hours of work. Using a policy change in the Uruguayan health care system, I assess the effects of increased competition via lock-in reductions on a market for inputs. I leverage the facts that insurance companies, hospitals and physician services are completely vertically integrated in Uruguay and that in 2009 the government generated an exogenous change in the regulated mobility regime, increasing the competition in the market and providing incentives to increase quality. I combine administrative records on wages and hours of work in all hospitals for all specialists with data on the scores that specialists obtained in the test they must take to be admitted into the medical specialty graduate school, which I use as an exogenous measure of their quality. Consistent with the idea of an inelastic relative supply in the short run, I show that the increased competition shifted the relative demand for high-quality medical specialists, increasing the returns to skill. I do not find strong evidence of an increase in quality, approximated as relative hours of high-skill versus low-skill physicians
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Prácticas laborales como mecanismo para mejorar la empleabilidad de los jóvenes: Lecciones para el caso argentino
El desempleo y la informalidad son más altos para los jóvenes que para los adultos. Las causas detrás de este problema se relacionan con las barreras al primer acceso al mercado del trabajo y pueden clasificarse en dos grandes grupos: 1) aquellas vinculadas con habilidades que los empleadores valoran y los jóvenes no tienen; 2) imperfecciones informativas relacionadas al primer contacto con el mundo laboral. Distintas políticas públicas intentan reducir estas barreras, entre ellas las prácticas laborales. Este trabajo revisa la racionalidad de los sistemas de prácticas o pasantías y también la evidencia empírica sobre su funcionamiento, tanto en países de similar nivel de desarrollo al de Argentina como en países más desarrollados. Por último, se presenta un ejemplo de un programa de prácticas laborales que lleva varios años de vigencia en Argentina: el Programa Primer Paso (PPP), de la provincia de Córdoba. Mientras la evidencia internacional sobre la efectividad de prácticas laborales para jóvenes no es concluyente y difiere de acuerdo con las especificidades de las intervenciones y los contextos analizados, una evaluación de impacto del PPP muestra efectos positivos sobre la empleabilidad de los jóvenes en el corto, mediano y largo plazos. A pesar de estos resultados positivos, los desafíos de escalabilidad de este tipo de programas son grandes, tanto por las dificultades en su gestión como por los posibles efectos de equilibrio general que su extensión en cobertura podría generar.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Occupational Choice and Investments in Human Capital in Informal Economies
Countries di er greatly in their levels of schooling and also in their rates of entrepreneurship. At the same time, the share of the so-called \shadow economy" -informal economic activities- is very large in some countries and very small in others. This paper explores some key channels that connect these three phenomena. In particular, it focuses on assessing whether the extent to which rms can hide from tax authorities -i.e., operate in the informal economy- may a ect the incentives of individuals to invest in human capital and also distort their occupational choices.
The cross country data shows that the levels of educational attainment, rates of entrepreneurship and the level of informality are connected. First, across countries there is a positive association between rates of entrepreneurship and the sizes of the informal sector. Second, the di erence in the skill premium received by entrepreneurs and workers is negligible for economies with low levels of informality, while it becomes positive and increasing for more informal economies. Third, in more informal economies the fraction of high-skilled individuals that choose to become entrepreneurs is larger. Moreover, the share of the labor force that is skilled and the size of the informal economy are related in a non-linear way: for low levels of informality the share of skilled individuals rst decreases but then it rapidly stabilizes for countries with su ciently large informal sectors.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The impact of the minimum wage on the destruction and creation of products
We study the impact of changes in the legal minimum wage on the creation and destruction of products at the firm level. This can be a relevant way for increasing firm productivity and for explaining why the raises in the minimum wage may have minor effects on employment. Our identification strategy exploits as a quasi-experiment a large and 3-year predetermined increase in minimum wages during 1998-2000 in Chile and the differences in products exposure to these changes. Our main results indicate that increases in the minimum wage raise the destruction of products that are more unskilled labor–intensive and that augments the introduction of products that are more intensive in skilled workers. The impact is economically relevant. An annual nominal increase of about 10% in the minimum wage as occurred in this period increases the probability of dropping unskilled labor products in 5 percentage points and reduce the probability of creating unskilled labor products in 3.3 percentage points. Our results are robust to sample selection issues, to the introduction of controls for potential confounding factors and to the consideration of
alternative definitions of exposure.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Starting on the right track? The effects of rst job experience on short and long term labor market outcomes
For young job seekers barriers to labor market entry are high, especially in developing countries were information frictions are large. Can first job experience impact such barriers and have perdurable effects? This paper exploits a large-scale youth employment program in Argentina that randomly allocated 12-months wage subsidizes to investigate what were the effects of (relatively) high quality entry-level jobs on short and long terms labor market outcomes of the youth. Short and long term (4.5 years after) outcomes are measured with data gathered both from administrative registries and a follow-up survey. Working in a formal firm caused large short and long run gains in the probability of formal employment, as well as a fall in unemployment. The random assignment design also allows to implement a saturation approach to measure displacement effects, which, if anything, we found to be positive over not beneficiaries. We explore alternative mechanisms that could produce all these impacts of real world first job experience, and we find evidence favoring a reduction in informational barriers over alternative explanations, like on-the-job skills development.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Evaluación de políticas públicas de apoyo a la innovación sobre la productividad de las empresas manufactureras y de servicios en Colombia
La presente investigación tiene como objetivo analizar el efecto de los instrumentos de apoyo público a la innovación sobre el desempeño productivo y la inversión en innovación de las empresas manufactureras y de servicios en Colombia. El estudio se concentra en analizar el impacto sobre la productividad y la intensidad del gasto en innovación de los instrumentos que financian proyectos bajo las modalidades de cofinanciación y crédito otorgados por entidades gubernamentales que tienen mayor peso en definición de políticas y la financiación de la innovación en Colombia. En la estimación se utiliza una combinación de registros administrativos y resultados de encuestas de innovación para identificar los beneficiarios de los programas. Para estimar el impacto de los programas se utiliza el método de diferencias en diferencias en combinación con el procedimiento de Propensity Score Matching. La evidencia empírica aportada sugiere que las firmas manufactureras y de servicios que han recibido fondos públicos para innovar obtuvieron mejoras significativas en productividad y realizan un mayor esfuerzo en actividades de investigación y desarrollo, con respecto a las empresas que no participan en esos programas.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Capital Controls and Firm Performance: The Effects of the Chilean Encaje
This paper studies the effects of the capital controls imposed by Chile between 1991 and 1998,
i.e. the Chilean encaje, on firms' production, investment and exporting decisions. We use a
general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms and financial constraints to illustrate the
mechanism by which capital controls on inflows affect firm-level dynamics and international trade.
We find that capital controls on inflows depress the local economy due to the credit restriction,
reducing aggregate production, investment and domestic sales. This reduced level of domestic
activity increases the firm's incentives to export, increasing both the level of exports and the share
of exporters. Most of these effects are exacerbated for firms in more capital-intensive sectors.
Using data from the Chilean Encuesta Nacional Industrial Anual (ENIA) we empirically
corroborate the conclusions and insights of the theoretical model.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Growing Together: Assessing Equity and Effciency in an Early-Life Health Program in Chile
We estimate the impact of participation in Chile Crece Contigo (ChCC), Chile’s flagship earlylife health and social welfare program, on neonatal health outcomes. We use administrative birth data matched to social benefits usage, and the staggered program roll-out, to identify the impact of participation. We find that this targeted social program had significant effects on birth weight (approximately 10 grams) and other early life human capital measures. These benefits are largest among the most socially vulnerable groups, however shift outcomes toward the middle of the distribution of health at birth. We show that program is efficient when compared to other successful neonatal health programs around the world, and find some evidence to suggest that maternal nutrition components and increased links to the social safety net are important mechanisms of action.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Corruption, Custom Reform and Firm Growth: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Colombia
Customs are often prone to corruption because it concentrates a lot of discretionary power in the hand of custom agents who take decisions with high economic stakes for the firms, providing an opportunity for custom agents to extract a rent from the firms. Communication technologies offer the possibility to limit this discretionary power by reducing direct interactions between firms and custom agents. Combining firm level panel data on about 6,000 manufacturing firms with custom level data, we assess the effects on firm level outcomes of a computerization of import transactions that occurred sequentially in the 26 Colombian customs between 2000 and 2005. We apply a triple difference strategy that makes use of the variation between customs, time and the firms' exposure to the reform, based on whether it was an importing firm before it started. We find large effects of the computerization of the custom on the growth of importing firms' inputs, investments and value added. We also provide evidence of a large increase of imports declared, taxes collected, and a reduction in corruption cases following the custom reform.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Poor Little Children: The Socioeconomic Gap in Parental Responses to School Disadvantage
In this paper, we study how parents react to a widely-used school policy that puts some children at a learning disadvantage. Specifically, we first document that, in line with findings in other countries, younger children in Spain perform significantly worse at school than their older peers and – key to causal interpretation – that for children born in winter this effect is not due to birth seasonality. Furthermore, the age of school entry effect is significantly greater among children from disadvantaged families. To understand why, we analyze detailed data on parental investment and find that college-educated parents increase their time investment and choose schools with better inputs when their children are the youngest at school entry, while non-college-educated parents do not.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Input-output linkages and sector-specific distortions in the Latin American development problem
In this paper, I analyze the Latin American development problem using a model with input-output linkages, sectorial productivity gaps, and sector-specific distortions. I provide a characterization of the sectorial linkages and distortions in the region, and quantify the gains in aggregate output of closing productivity gaps and eliminating distortions. I provide policy design recommendations for the region by identifying the sectors where opportunities areas for policy improvement are present.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Employment in Brazil
During the economic boom of the early 2000s, most Latin American countries increased their minimum wages. In Brazil, the real minimum wage increased by upwards of 60 percent from 2003 through 2012. In this paper, we take advantage of administrative data to explore whether the minimum wage resulted in negative employment impacts in Brazil's formal sector. We explore different measures of the incidence of the minimum wage across states and examine various empirical specifications, yet find no significant disemployment impacts associated with this policy. On the other hand, we find significant negative impacts in microregions which were less exposed to the commodities boom. Since empirical strategies relying on incidence measures are inherently limited, we additionally exploit the introduction of a 2000 law which allowed states to implement regional wage floors. While these floors vary in scope and size, we find that the five states which implemented this policy included provisions directly targeting workers in the accommodation and restaurant sector. As a result, we adapt Dube, Lester and Reich's (2010) empirical strategy to Brazil and estimate the impact of these floors on employment in this sector by exploiting variation in microregions straddling state borders. As in our initial estimates, we find no significant negative employment impacts arising from the wage floors, indicating that during the early 2000s, the minimum wage did not result in negative employment impacts in Brazil's formal sector. Nonetheless, we caution that this result may not hold in a recessionary context, as shown in our commodity boom-incidence results.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Causes and Consequences of the Spatial Organization of Agriculture in Brazil
Why are there vast differences in agricultural activity across space? How do these differences shape the aggregate impact of agricultural shocks? To address these questions, I build a quantitative general equilibrium model that accounts for rich spatial differences in agriculture and use comprehensive county-level data from Brazil to estimate the model. I find that differences in natural advantages and factor intensities are key causes of the spatial patterns of agricultural specialization but that differences in trade costs across crops play a minor role. In addition, I study two major shocks in Brazilian agriculture: the adaptation of soybeans to tropical regions and the rise in the Chinese demand for commodities. The results show that general equilibrium effects substantially shaped the returns to agricultural research, the impact of tropical soybeans on urbanization, and the gains from trade with China.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Financial Frictions, Trade, and Misallocation
We investigate the extent to which financial frictions shape the aggregate effects of a trade liberalization through their impact on aggregate total factor productivity (TFP) and capital misallocation. We study a small open economy populated with heterogeneous entrepreneurs who differ in their productivity and are subject to financing constraints. Individuals choose whether to be workers or entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs choose whether to export or not. We show how financial frictions distort these decisions and aggregate TFP. We calibrate the model to match key features of Chilean plant-level data and use it to quantify the TFP losses due to misallocation. We then investigate how the presence of financial constraints affects the output and TFP gains from trade liberalization. We find that lowering trade barriers has a stronger positive effect in less financially developed economies. The higher profits that result from trade liberalizations allow firms to accumulate assets and relax their credit constraint, which is particularly valuable in economies where firms are severely constrained.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Life-cycle Growth of Plants in Colombia: Fundamentals vs. Distortions
We take advantage of rich microdata on Colombian manufacturing establishments to decompose growth over an establishment’s life cycle into that attributable to fundamental sources of idiosyncratic growth ̶ physical productivity, demand shocks (firm appeal), and input prices ̶ and distortions that weaken the link between those fundamentals and actual growth. We accomplish this using data on quantities and prices for individual products for each manufacturing establishment. Pooling all ages, measured fundamentals explain around 75% of the variability of output relative to birth level, with the remaining 25% explained by distortions and other unobserved factors. Demand shocks and TFPQ are equally important in the explained part, while input prices play a more minor role. Distortions explain more than 50% of the variance in growth up to age seven, but their contribution falls to less than 25% by around age 20. For the fraction explained by fundamentals, early life growth variation is explained by TFPQ with demand and input prices playing a minor role. But demand is the crucial factor in variation in long-run growth, with a contribution that surpases that of TFPQ and unobserved factors by around age 15. In the 2000s compared to the 1980s, two decades separated by a wave of deep structural reforms, the contribution of TFPQ to the variance in life cycle growth grows by around 6 p.p , compensated by a lesser role for input prices and, interestingly, distortions.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Education, signaling and the allocation of entrepreneurial skills
We assess the allocative importance of education when workers can choose to self-employ. To do so, we build a model combining educational choices with the labor market and selfemployment. Education can increase workers' human capital and may signal their ability as well. Both roles can be more important for working in a firm than for self-employment. We show that when education performs worse its signaling role, firms cannot distinguish high and low productivity workers, and there is a higher proportion of workers that allocate in less productive activities as self-employed. This option further reduces incentives to educate, given that education is less valuable for a worker if self-employed. Lowering the cost of education increases the number of educated workers, but does not solve the signaling problem, and could generate stronger misallocation.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
What explains output recoveries in developing and emerging market economies after the global financial crisis?
This paper presents a systematic assessment of the macroeconomic factors associated with differences in GDP dynamics in emerging markets in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. We implement a Bayesian Model Averaging approach to explore the drivers of economic resilience – measured by the output recoveries for a group of 40 emerging economies after 2008, which allows us to account for the uncertainty in the model selection of the relevant variables. Out of a large group of variables used in the literature on balance of payments crises and early warning indicators, we find that a reduced set of variables is systematically associated with output dynamics after the crisis. Countries with overvalued currencies, current account deficits and larger external liabilities before the global financial crisis exhibit systematically weaker output recoveries afterwards. These findings are robust to different definitions of output recovery, the distribution of priors and exclusion of potential outliers. There is also some evidence, but less systematic, that de facto financial openness, links to European banks, and trade openness had a negative impact on output recoveries.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Rules vs. Discretion in Public Service: Teacher Hiring in Mexico
In this paper, I use a unique empirical setting that allows me to compare the performance of teachers hired in a discretionary process led by the teachers’ union in Mexico with the performance of those hired on the basis of a screening rule (test scores on a standardized exam). My results show that the discretionary hires perform considerably worse than the rulebased hires (as measured by value added to student achievement). The evidence presented here shows the impact of personnel selection mechanisms on the quality of public service delivery.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Taking One for the Team: Shocks at Destination and Households' Supply of Migrants
We study how unemployment shocks in the United States affect Mexican households’ migration decisions. We emphasize households at origin (as op-posed to individuals) as the decisionmaking units for migration decisions. We show that negative changes in US labor market conditions, which are diffused by household members at destination to those at origin, lead to heterogeneous migration responses by Mexican households that have members abroad. We argue that this heterogeneous response is driven by the relative magnitudes of income and substitution effects after a negative employment shock in the United States. While the income effect dominates the substitution effect for poor households, the opposite holds for richer households. These results also inform the literature on selection patterns in international migration, which suggests a new channel through which negative shocks in the host economy negatively affect the skill composition of subsequent migrants.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
On the middle 70%. The impact of fiscal policy on the emerging middle class in Latin America using Commitment to Equity
This paper analyzes the effects of indirect and direct taxes, as well as monetary and in-kind transfers on the income distribution in nine Latin American countries applying the CEQ methodology and using household and expenditure microdata around 2010. In particular, we focus on the effect of fiscal policies on two groups of the emerging middle class: the vulnerable and the middle class. We find that while the vulnerable tend to be net receivers in fiscal terms, especially when including in-kind transfers, the middle class seems to be mainly a net payer. This might be aggravated by the perception of a relatively low quality of in-kind transfers, notably in education and health-care services. We provide some evidence based on subjective surveys pointing in this direction.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Trade Integration in Colombia: A Dynamic General Equilibrium Study with New Exporter Dynamics
We study Colombia’s trade integration over a 30 year period through the lens of GE model in which non-exporters have access to a risky exporting technology and exporters must invest in accumulating a better exporting technology. Our model is calibrated to match the producer and exporter lifecycles and yields a novel estimate of the various costs of exporting. We find the upfront costs of starting to export are much lower than in previous analyses but that this technology is quite risky in that most firms that incur the cost do not end up with an export opportunity. We also find that for existing exporters, expanding exports requires sustained export-specific investments. We then examine the transition following Colombia’s 89-91 trade reform. We show that the relationship between the firm-level export intensity and aggregate export intensity disciplines the changes in technology and policy accounting for this integration. We find that a common decline in tariffs can account for about 75 percent of the growth in exports as a share of manufacturing sales. We attribute the remaining 25 percent to an increase in the success of investments in export market access. About 10 percent of the increase in trade is accounted for by the endogenous accumulation of an improved exporting technology by existing exporters. These changes in policy and exporting technology boost welfare by about 7.1 percent. The transition following the reforms is characterized by an overshooting of output and consumption, with consumption peaking 15 years after the policy. Further tariff reductions are expected to increase welfare another 6.2 percent.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Crecimiento verde en el sector energético y sus efectos en el desempeño económico general: desarrollo y aplicación de un modelo híbrido para Colombia
El cambio climático es uno de los mayores retos de la actualidad, siendo un tema de primera línea para los países y gobiernos comprometidos con generar políticas, materializadas en estrategias de desarrollo compatible con el clima. En este contexto, se requieren el surgimiento de nuevas formas de conocimiento, que brinden una perspectiva amplia sobre las consecuencias de la toma de decisiones en los diferentes planos del desarrollo, tomando en cuenta la realidad macro y micro para cada país; para este segundo tipo de escala, y asociado al tema del cambio climático, el sector energético se encuentra en un punto neurálgico, en tanto este/éste es la base para el crecimiento de la economía, pero, a su vez se constituye en el origen de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI). En pos de ofrecer un cuadro de la economía y la influencia del sector de generación eléctrica (así como su relación), en un escenario de incorporación de energías no convencionales dentro de la matriz energética nacional para Colombia, se crea y corre un modelo de equilibrio general de naturaleza híbrida, que permite evaluar el efecto de medidas de política enfocadas a la reducción de emisiones de GEI sobre la matriz energética y el impacto sobre variables macroeconómicas. Primordialmente, los resultados de la política de cuota de penetración de energéticos renovables, exponen que se puede incrementar la actividad económica al fomentar la inversión, hay una entrada de energéticos renovables en la matriz energética, no obstante, estos sustituyen la generación hídrica y se mantiene la participación térmica, y, en lo que atañe a la dimensión ambiental, la reducción de GEI no es destacada a menos que se incorpore un precio al carbono sobre los hidrocarburos. En este último caso, se cumple el objetivo ambiental y hay un efecto positivo sobre la economía dependiendo qué usos se les dará el valor recaudado.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Effect of the Increasing Demand for Elite Schools on Stratification
I use detailed applications data to document a case in which, contrary to prevailing concerns, increasing school stratification by ability co-existed with stable stratification by family income: Mexico City public high schools. To understand this puzzle, I develop a model that shows that the effect of an overall increase in the demand for elite schools on school stratification by family income is a horse race between the correlations of family income and ability, and family income and demand. My empirical analysis reveals an initial (and decreasing) demand gap by family income that explains the observed stability in stratification.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Public financial support and innovation in Colombian manufacturing firms
We evaluate the impact of public financial support, both subsidies and credit, on different types of innovation in Colombian industry. We compare it with the effects of financing innovation with own resources and with private loans, and analyze the issue of crowding-out, for different classes of innovation. To control for potential selection bias, we apply Propensity Score Matching (PSM) techniques to a sample of 9173 manufacturing firms for the period 2011-2012, combining data from two available sources (Development and Technological Innovation Survey –EDIT6- and Annual Manufacturing Survey –EAM-). Results show that public financial support has a significant positive effect on products new for the international market and on process innovations. We further find that allocation of own resources of the firm to innovation activities has a positive effect on a wide variety of forms of innovation. Notwithstanding, its impact is substantially smaller than that of public funding in the cases of products new for the international market and on new processes. Commercial loans for innovation activities have no significant effects on either product or process innovations. Finally, we find that public funding increases the probability of allocating own resources to finance innovation activities, but reduces the probability of using private external sources.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Are Taxes Credits Effective in Developing Countries? The Recent Uruguayan Experience
Investment promotion through tax incentives has been a key component of the growth strategies pursued in Uruguay by the last three administrations. A new regime was established, regulated by the Executive Decree 455, which caused the main channel for subsidizing investment to undergo a major overhaul. This regime immediately generated a battery of researchable questions about its effectiveness and efficiency. Using a big dataset, first put together for this study from firm-level administrative records kept by the tax collection and pensions institutes between 2005 and 2011, we test the hypotheses of significant and positive effects of obtaining a tax credit through the new regime on investment and employment outcomes. A matched differences-in-differences strategy confirms that the promotion regime introduced in 2008 had a statistically significant effect on the firms’ rate of investment (around 11%); while effects on employment growth rate are more ambiguous. These findings are buttressed by several robustness tests. Further probing uncovers heterogeneity along the promotion timeline, with the greatest effect on the rate of investment occurring in the projects’ first year.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Capital Specificity, the Distribution of Marginal Products and Aggregate Productivity
This paper studies the role of capital specificity and investment irreversibility on the distribution of marginal products of capital and aggregate TFP. We use a methodology new to the misallocation literature, based on the study of “mobility” across quantiles of a distribution. In a panel of Peruvian firms, we show that persistent dispersion in marginal products is explained to an important extent by the persistence of low marginal products. That is, by unproductive firms that take a long time to downsize. Using a quantitative general-equilibrium model of firm dynamics with idiosyncratic shocks, calibrated to match key features of our data, we argue that the persistence of low marginal products suggests that irreversibility frictions are large. Moreover, it is inconsistent with theories of misallocation based only on financing constraints.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Characterizing Fuel Choices and Fuelwood Use for Residential Heating and Cooking in Urban Areas of Central-Southern Chile: the Role of Prices, Income, and the Availability of Energy Sources and Technology
This paper analyzes empirically the determinants of fuel choices and intensity of fuelwood use for residential heating and cooking in central-southern Chile. By using information from a sample of 2,761 households in nine urban areas, we first investigate households’ choices of the main fuel used for heating by means of multinomial models. Then we examine the intensity of fuelwood use through fractional probit models; these models allow analyzing interdependence of fuel use by households while taking account of households’ individual heterogeneity. Results indicate that households’ fuel choices are mainly driven by monetary incentives such as income and fuel prices. In contrast, while there is a component of fuelwood use that cannot be influenced by energy policies such as meteorological conditions across the country, there is a number of characteristics that influence the share households’ energy production that is generated by fuelwood. Factors range from socioeconomic characteristics to households’ perceptions regarding the link between air pollution and use of fuelwood in the county of residence. The knowledge of these factors brings an opportunity for the design of future policy interventions aimed at incentivizing the adoption of cleaner devices.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Public-infraestructure and energy-subsidy policies, energy access by the poor and long-term macroeconomic performance
This paper presents the main set-up and long-run results from a simple deterministic version of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of a small open economy in Kawamura (2017). The model assumes two types of households, one poor and the other non-poor. There are two types of energy used as both GDP input and consumption goods, one using a fossil-based resource (with a given international price) and another that uses public capital and that represents a non-standard, "clean" (i.e., non-fossil based) energy source. The paper reports the results from two types of policy makers. The .rst type corresponds to a benevolent and perfectly-committed government that sets complete plans of taxes, subsidies and public investment policies, including public infrastructure. The second type of policy maker is a politician that wins elections occurring in every period. Such politician implements policies promised at the electoral stage. This second policy-making process assumes that the politician can commit to policies only for the period in which she wins elections. The paper shows that a necessary condition for obtaining long-run growth in public capital, private capital, GDP and clean energy is that the international price of the resource increases steadily through time. Thus, both types of policy makers react to such increase by also steadily increasing the public investment.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Distributed Photovoltaic Power Generation: Possibilities, Benefits, and Challenges for a Widespread Application in the Mexican Residential Sector
Mexico plans to implement a national program to support the adoption of distributed photovoltaic generation (DPVG) among qualified households. The main objectives of such a program would be to reduce the burden of the substantial federal energy subsidy and increase the share of renewable energy sources used to generate electricity. In this paper we assess the current conditions under which the Mexican residential electricity sector operates, and quantify the potential effects that the massive adoption of DPV systems would have on household expenditure and welfare, subsidy reduction, pollution and water resource usage. Based on the positive results in terms of both economic and environmental effects, our paper provides a significant support for further design and implementation of a DPVG program.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The distortionary effect of size and factor dependent policies: The role of factor substitutability in measuring the impact of a child-care subsidy policy in Chile
In an effort to increase female labor participation in Chile, firms with more than 19 women must pay for childcare for the children of their female employees. We evaluate the effects of such policy using a model that features firm heterogeneity and three factors of production: women, men and capital. In our model the policy misallocates resources, driving firms to stop hiring once they are close to the threshold, depressing female participation and wages. We calibrate the model to the Chilean economy, and analyze via counterfactuals the effects of removing this distortion. First, we find that the policy reduces female labor participation by 1%, and wages by 2%. Second, the policy redistributes welfare from men to women, increasing female welfare by 0.05%. Third, we suggest alternatives policies that would be more successful at increasing female labor participation. For example, financing childcare with a tax on profits would increase female labor participation by 4%, with similar welfare consequences as the policy in place.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Measuring the Cost of Congestion in Highly Congested City: Bogotá
We provide a novel approach to estimate the deadweight loss of congestion. We implement it for road travel in the city of Bogotá using information from a travel survey and counterfactual travel data generated from Google Maps. For the supply of travel, we find that the elasticity of the time cost of travel per unit of distance with respect to the number of travelers is on average about 0.06. It is close to zero at low levels of traffic, then reaches a maximum magnitude of about 0.20 as traffic builds up and becomes small again at high levels of traffic. This finding is in sharp contrast with extant results for specific road segments. We explain it by the existence of local streets which remain relatively uncongested and put a floor on the time cost of travel. On the demand side, we estimate an elasticity of the number of travelers with respect to the time cost of travel of 0.40. Although road travel is costly in Bogotá, these findings imply a small daily deadweight loss from congestion, equal to less than 1% of a day’s wage.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Benefits to Elite Schools and the Expected Returns to Education: Evidence from Mexico City
We exploit data on the future earnings students at high school completion expect to receive with and without a college education, together with information on learning achievement and college outcomes, to study the benefits from admission into a system of elite public high schools in Mexico City. Using data for the centralized allocation of students into schools and an adapted regression discontinuity design strategy, we estimate that elite school admission increases the future earnings and returns students expect from a college education. These gains in earnings expectations seem to reflect improvement in actual earnings opportunities, as admission to this elite school system also enhances learning achievement and college graduation outcomes. This provides evidence of the earnings benefits from attending elite schools.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Informality and Productivity: The Role of Unemployment Insurance Schemes
We study the design of optimal unemployment protection schemes to evaluate its impact on labor markets, welfare and productivity. We consider a life-cycle economies with formal and informal labor markets, unobservable effort to find and keep formal jobs, and unobservable heterogeneities across worker to find better formal jobs. We analyze the first best allocation to compare with the allocations stemming from the implementation of two alternative schemes: (i) a simple unemployment insurance system with a defined profile of unemployment benefits; (ii) an unemployment insurance saving account scheme parameterized by a replacement rate, an initial contribution to the saving account, a minimum level of savings at which the payment is suspended, and a maximum level of savings at which the contributions are suspended. Our quantitative analysis makes clear that both schemes can have a significant impact on welfare and productivity. Two additional lessons can be learned. First, no scheme is necessarily better in both economies. Second, a reform that implements an scheme that it is welfare improving does not necessarily boost productivity and viceversa.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Public expenditures and debt at the subnational level: Evidence of fiscal smoothing from Argentina
This paper uses the particular features of the tax-sharing regime Coparticipación Federal de Impuestos and the fact that some provinces earn hydrocarbon royalties to investigate public expenditures and debt at the subnational level in Argentina.We obtain that facing a one peso increase in intergovernmental transfers, provinces spend on average 36 cents in public expenditures with no changes in public debt. On the other hand, when royalties increase one peso, 59 cents are used to pay back public debt while public expenditures are not affected. These results, which are robust to many different specifications of the basic regressions, suggest a non-negligeable expenditure/debt smoothing behavior of Argentine provinces.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
El Fenómeno de los NiNis en América Latina
En los últimos años, y en todos los países de la región, se ha ido incrementando la preocupación por la situación de los jóvenes que ni se encuentran insertos en el sistema educativo ni se han integrado al mercado laboral (los llamados “NiNis”). El crecimiento de dicha preocupación podría considerarse sorpresivo, en la medida que en los años recientes la mayoría de los países de la región disfrutó de notables mejoras socioeconómicas: mercados laborales más dinámicos e inclusivos, reducciones en las tasas de pobreza y desigualdad, crecimiento de la matrícula escolar, etc. El aporte de este trabajo es un análisis empírico detallado de las características de los NiNis y de las posibles razones detrás del creciente interés que despierta este fenómeno. Los resultados muestran que varios aspectos de la situación de los jóvenes en la región pueden estar contribuyendo a dicho interés: 1) la reducción en la incidencia porcentual del fenómeno NiNi entre 1992-2014 fue relativamente pequeña e insuficiente para provocar una caída significativa en el número absoluto de NiNis en el período; 2) en los últimos años (desde 2008) parece existir un estancamiento en el porcentaje de NiNis; y 3) la composición de los NiNis se ha ido modificando en el tiempo, siendo en la actualidad mayor la participación en este grupo de los varones, los que pueden definirse como los NiNis “más visibles”.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Inequality, Crime, and the Long Run Legacy of Slavery
This paper investigates the relationship between economic inequality and crime in Colombian municipalities. Following recent scholarly research that suggests that the legacy of slavery is largely manifest in persistent levels of economic inequality, we instrument economic inequality with a census-based measure of the proportion of slaves in each municipality before the abolition of slavery in the 19 century. We also explore the robustness of our estimates to relaxing the exclusion restriction, as the slavery instrument is only plausibly exogenous. We document a strong association between inequality and both violent and property crime rates at the municipal level. Our estimates are robust to including traditional determinants of crime (like population density, the proportion of young males, the average education level, the quality of law enforcement institutions, and the overall economic activity), as well as current ethnic differences and geographic characteristics that may be correlated both with the slave economy and with crime.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Effect of Socio-Economic Stratification on House Value in Bogotá
This paper investigates the impact of urban fiscal policies on housing value. We use a focalization system in Bogotá where certain subsidies and taxes are targeted based on a classification of houses according to external conditions and urban surroundings (socioeconomic stratification). We use a regression discontinuity design, and a rich dataset on cadastre appraisal and housing characteristics, to assess whether a higher tax burden affects the property value. Our results suggest that the usual (negative) capitalization effect is compensated by other channels. We show evidence that as stratum increases, investment on the house maintenance improve.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Internet and Labor Income: Places and Activities in Colombia
Despite the literature in the richest countries about the positive correlation between Internet and income, there is still an open question about the utility of this technology the developing world. This paper uses Propensity Score Matching and includes demographic and industry characteristics, which is the best possible way to control for the productivity of each worker. The matching model meets a broad common support, close gaps between control and treated individual after matching and holding the results for different matching techniques. The results present a positive and statistically significant correlation between Internet and income in Colombia. The key contribution of this paper is to show that the lowest wage premium for using Internet is in the middle of the skill distribution, as in the developed world. Nonetheless, Colombia differs to these countries in the tales of the skill distribution because the highest wage premium is for the lowest skill workers.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
High-skilled workers´ segregation and productivity in Latin American cities
The aim of this work is to study the relationship between high-skilled workers’ segregation and productivity in Latin American cities. This relationship is not clear at first sight. On the one hand high-skilled workers’ spatial concentration would take advantage of agglomeration economies and cause positive spillovers amongst the most advantaged that could compensate productivity losses due the existence of low-skilled workers ghettos. On the other hand, it would be the case that those spillovers are not enough for compensating the worse-off groups’ productivity losses, and hence the aggregated productivity would be negatively affected. We calculate this group segregation for a group of Latin American countries’ most important cities. We found a negative and significant relationship amongst cities’ productivity and high-skilled workers segregation. However, we found evidence of a quadratic relationship between segregation and productivity
as well.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Exploring the Potential of Machine Learning for Automatic Slum Identification from VHE Imagery
Slum identification in urban settlements is a crucial step in the process of formulation of propoor policies. However, the use of conventional methods for slums detection such as field surveys may result time consuming and costly. This paper explores the possibility of implementing a low-cost standardized method for slum detection. We use spectral, texture and structural features extracted from very high spatial resolution imagery as input data and evaluate the capability of three machine learning algorithms (Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine and Random Forest) to classify urban areas as slum or no-slum. Using data from Buenos Aires (Argentina), Medellin (Colombia), and Recife (Brazil), we found that Support Vector Machine with radial basis kernel deliver the best performance (over 0.81). We also found that singularities within cities preclude the use of a unified classification model.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Moving Citizens and Deterring Criminals: Innovation in Public Transport Facilities
This paper explores the relationship between urban public transportation innovation and crime. In 2004, the city of Medellin in Colombia developed an innovative public transportation system based on cable cars (Metrocable) to reach dense, isolated and dangerous neighborhoods. Using Spatial Difference in Difference approaches and a rich dataset at spatial analytical level, using max-p modeling, we explore the effects of the Metrocable on crime and its mechanisms. We find a significant impact on homicides reduction in the treated neighborhoods, especially in the medium run. Homicides decreased around 41% more than the general crime reduction in the city between 2004 and 2006, and by 49% between 2004 and 2012. We explore two mechanisms through which this intervention may affect the level of criminality, one is reducing the travel costs and improving accessibility to the rest of the city for low-income population (socioeconomic mechanism); the other is the increasing of the probability of apprehension for potential and active o enders (deterrent mechanism).
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Valuation of Public Amenities and Differences in Quality of Life among Latin American Cities
We use a life satisfaction approach for the valuation of public goods and amenities in Latin American cities. We apply a homogenous database of seventeen cities gathered by the Development Bank of Latin America CAF. Using the estimated monetary value for several public goods and neighborhood amenities we construct a city level quality of life index. We find that access to electricity, access to running water and security are the three largest valued urban characteristics in terms of life satisfaction and housing satisfaction. The monetary equivalent valuations represent more than duplicating the household per capita income. Lacking access to them has a tremendous impact on quality of life. We also show that although richer households have more access, public good and amenities are a source for reductions in quality of life disparities.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
What is the Role of Urban Growth on Inequality, and Segregation? The Case of Urban Argentina´s Urban Agglomerations
We analyze the relationship between urban sprawl and changing patterns of inequality and segregation in metropolitan areas of Argentina. The existing literature has endeavored to study the determinants of the expansion of cities, but less attention has been placed in understanding the effects of this sprawl on the livelihood of the people that live in them. Understanding whether different patterns of urban extension determine both segregation and inequality is extremely relevant in the context of fast growing urban agglomerates of Latin American countries. Among other findings, we provide evidence that there is segregation of the poor and not of the rich in all urban agglomerates but in Greater Buenos Aires, where segregation of the affluent, not the poor, prevails in the areas of greater informal urban expansion, measured by the extension of informal settlements. Yet, not all the patterns of urban development and built-up growth have the same effect. More leapfrog appears to explain greater segregation -particularly of the poor- while both infill and extension are positively related to more homogeneous urban agglomerations. This means that the most disadvantaged are more evenly distributed in agglomerations that have not seen much of their sprawl due to discontinue urban expansion of their borders. Finally, we also find a positive association between more unequal municipalities and greater slum expansions. The causality of this relationship is unclear and further analysis could be promising. It might be the case that more unequal municipalities allow for institutional environments in which slums can grow faster. Or it might well be that places which have experienced more accelerated slum growth have become more unequal because of the arrival of new families that accentuates such disparities.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
A Taxonomy of Colombia’s Informal Labor Market
A taxonomy of the informal labor market is extremely important to understand and handle informality, particularly in a country as Colombia where this phenomenon is large and heterogeneous. As we will argue in this paper, it is possible to identify four different types of informality, according to the reasons to be informal: low productivity of the worker (subsistence informality), barriers to formality (induced informality), choice (voluntary informality) and both choice and low productivity (mixed informality). The policy recommendations to handle informality varies according to the target type of informality. While induced informality might be reduced by the removal of formal employment barriers or by the implementation of active policies to reduce segregation in society, structural informality requires other kinds of policies, such as a focus on improving educational outcomes. Similarly, in the case of voluntary informality, providing economic incentives to formalize and controlling informality might be more effective, whereas mixed informality is more related to wrong incentives created by social benefits. In this paper we propose a methodology to identify the four types of informality to the case of Colombia that follows what we did in Fernandez et al. (2016) but with greater emphasis on the education level. Although the correspondence is far from perfect, we show that in general terms, informal workers with primary education or less can be classified in the Subsistence informality group, informal workers with secondary education can be included in the Induced informality group, informal workers with tertiary education or more can be treated as Voluntary informal workers and informal workers with middle school education can cover mixed informality. Hence, the policy recommendations to handle informality among each education group are different.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The impact of lowering the payroll tax on informality in Colombia
The Colombian government recently reformed the tax law by reducing payroll contributions from 29.5% to 16% and substituting them with a profit tax. The law was passed in December 2012, and two years later the informality rate in the 13 main metropolitan areas diminished from 56% to 51% in December 2014 (using the legal definition of informality). In the whole survey the reduction was a little less pronounced, going from 68% to 64%. This period was also characterized by high, yet also diminishing growth rates; changes in the tax rates, and increasing real minimum wages. It is of the most interest to know how much of this reduction was due to the tax reform. This paper performs this task using a Matching and Difference in Differences methodology. According to the results, the tax reform reduced the informality rate, of the workers affected by the reform in the 13 main metropolitan areas, between 4,3 and 6,8 p.p. which translated in a reduction of the informality rate between 2,0 and 3,1 p.p. given that the treated population was only 45% of the working population of the country in 2012. The impact over the whole survey was between 4,1 and 6,7 which translates into 1,2 to 2,2 p.p. impact on the informality rate of the whole country. Similar results were found using the firm definition of informality. The reform affected mostly salaried workers and employers, males between 25 and 50 years old and workers with low levels of education.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Slum Growth in Brazilian Cities
I study slum growth in contemporary urbanization processes by estimating a spatial equilibrium model with houses with and without basic water and sanitation services in Brazilian cities between 1991 and 2010. Slum growth results from households moving to cities following higher wages (elasticity of 1.7), this movement impacting cities’ serviced housing rents much more (elasticity of 0.4) than unserviced ones (elasticity of 0.1), and these rent changes impacting households’ location decisions more for serviced (elasticity of -0.5) than for unserviced houses (elasticity of -0.4). I show that the effect of urban economic growth on cities’ slum incidence
depends critically on what happens in other cities. When a few cities grow, they experience higher slum incidence because they are the focus for migrants coming from rural areas and less dynamic cities. When all cities grow, slum incidence declines in all cities as a result of two forces. First, each individual city faces less housing demand pressure as migration between cities becomes more balanced and rural migrants flow to all cities. Second, generalized economic growth improves households’ incomes nation-wide, allowing households to switch to higher quality non-slum housing. In terms of common slum policies, I show that the effects of
slum repression on any individual city are mild and decrease with the number of other cities repressing slums. If all cities repress slums by making unserviced housing 20% more expensive, this lowers aggregate urbanization by 0.4% and low income households’ welfare by 1.1%. On the other hand, a generalized slum upgrading policy turning 10% of cities’ 1991 unserviced housing stock into serviced housing, increases aggregate urbanization by 1.1%, low income households’ welfare by 4.0%, and high income households’ welfare by 3.6%.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
City Size, Distance and Formal Employment Creation
Cities thrive through the diversity of their occupants because the availability of complementary skills enables firms in the formal sector to grow, delivering increasingly sophisticated products and services. The appearance of new industries is path dependent in that new economic activities build on existing strengths, leading cities to both diversify and specialize in distinct areas. Hence, the location of necessary capabilities, and in particular the distance between firms and people with the skills they need, is key to the success of urban agglomerations. Using data for Colombia, this paper assesses the extent to which cities benefit from skills and capabilities available in their surrounding catchment areas. Without assuming a priori a definition for cities, we sequentially agglomerate the 96 urban municipalities larger than 50,000 people based on commuting time. We show that a level of agglomeration equivalent to between 45 and 75 minutes of commuting time, corresponding to between 62 and 43 cities, maximizes the impact that the availability of skills has on the ability of agglomerations to generate formal employment. Smaller urban municipalities stand to gain more in the process of agglomeration. A range of policy implications are discussed.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Integrating Early-life Shocks and Human Capital Investments on Children´s Education
This study investigates how early-life conditions interact with subsequent human capital investments to influence future educational outcomes. To provide causal evidence, we exploit two sources of exogenous variation: i) variation in early-life environments resulting from a child's exposure to extreme rainfall and drought shocks in early-life; and ii), variation in subsequent investments resulting from the availability of conditional cash transfers (CCT) that promote investments in children's health and education. Using Colombian administrative data, we combine a natural experiment with a regression discontinuity design using the CCT assignment rule. Results show that, although the CCT has an overall positive impact on children's educational outcomes, it does not have a differential effect on children exposed to early-life shocks; however, the overall effect of the program is large enough to mitigate the negative impact of the weather shock. These findings have important policy implications as they provide evidence of the role of social policies in closing gaps generated by early-life trauma.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Housing Subsidies, Labor Supply and Household Welfare. Experimental Evidence from Argentina
We study the impact of a social housing policy program implemented in Argentina, exploiting the random assignment rule to identify the policy's causal effect on labor market and other socio-economic outcomes. In particular, this paper evaluates an intervention that combines access to quality housing at a heavily subsidized cost, the granting of property rights, and relocation in a suburb of Rosario, Argentina's third largest city. In a preliminary analysis, based on administrative social security records, we find that the policy generates a reduction in registered employment by more than 7 percentage points, especially for women and beneficiaries over 50 years of age. We went further and conducted a purposely-designed household survey among a sample of beneficiaries in order to understand the underlying mechanisms and welfare implications of these results. All in all, our analysis points to the existence of an income effect and confirms the registered fall in formal employment and labor force participation. We do not find an increase in informalization, although beneficiaries' perceived access to local job opportunities are signicantly reduced.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Rural Property Tax Revenue in the Face of Economic Concentration and Political Competition: Evidence from Colombia
We study the relationship between two sources of political power and property tax revenues in contemporary rural Colombia. First, de jure political power is the extent to which local political elites can capture the public administration for their own benefit. Second, de facto political power is the extent to which economically powerful landowners can influence policy. Using a panel of municipalities, we show that places with either high economic or high political concentration raise more taxes, but places with both high political and economic concentration perform worse.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Habilidades no cognitivas en América Latina. Una medición desde pruebas estandarizadas.
Medir habilidades es complejo, pues son inobservables. Este problema es particularmente importante en la medición de habilidades no cognitivas, donde usualmente se emplean métodos basados en el auto-reporte. Como alternativa superadora, este trabajo extrae medidas de habilidades no cognitivas directamente de la nota de los estudiantes en las pruebas PISA. Los resultados muestran un rezago de América Latina en ambos tipos de habilidades. Además, este trabajo encuentra brechas en las habilidades no cognitivas de acuerdo al género de los estudiantes (las mujeres presentan mayores niveles) para la gran mayoría de los países, mientras que los resultados de las brechas por tipo de escuela no son concluyentes.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Income Segregation and Urban Spatial Structure: Evidence from Brazil
We estimate the effect of urban spatial structure on income segregation in Brazilian cities between 2000 and 2010. Our results show that, first, local density conditions increase income segregation: the effect is higher in monocentric cities and smaller in polycentric ones. Second, the degree of monocentricity-polycentricity also affects segregation: while a higher concentration of jobs in and around the CBD decreases segregation in monocentric cities, a higher employment concentration in and around subcenters located far from the CBD decreases segregation in polycentric cities. Third, results are heterogeneous according to city size: local density does not increase segregation in small (monocentric) cities, it increases segregation in medium size cities, and it decreases segregation in large (polycentric) cities. Finally, results also differ between income groups: while local density conditions increase the segregation of the poor, a more polycentric configuration reduces the segregation of the rich.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Moving “away" from Opportunities?: Homeownership and Employment
Homeownership is promoted by the majority of OECD member countries. Nevertheless, the impact that owning a house can have on employment levels is not fully understood. In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of homeownership on employment using a regression discontinuity design that exploits an arbitrary threshold arising from a voucher-based homeownership program in Chile. We establish that homeownership decreases employment by between 3.85 and 5.33 percentage points. These results contrast with previous nonexperimental literature, which has often found a positive effect of homeownership on labor market outcomes. Our findings are primarily the result of individuals not entering the labor market, rather than workers being motivated to leave their job. We also find that families receiving a house through this program are neither more nor less likely to move to another labor market, contrary to what was proposed by previous theoretical papers. A likely mechanism driving the effect is that families moving into their own house under this program tend to see an increase in their monthly unearned income and in their housework obligations, which raises the minimum wage for which they are willing to work.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Education, Signaling and Mismatch
We assess the importance education as a signal of workers skills and the e¤ects of poor signaling quality on labor market outcomes. We do so by merging a frictional labor market model with a signaling setup where there is a privately observed idiosyncratic component in the cost of education. Given that highly skilled workers cannot correctly signal their abilities, their wages will be lower and they will not be matched to the "right" vacancies, or may be unemployed. Skilled workers will then have lower incentives to move to high productivity markets. Furthermore, fewer vacancies will be created in labor markets where skills matter, and incentives for workers to invest in education will be lower. Overall, an economy where education is a noisier signal generates lower educational attainment, higher unemployment and lower productivity. In addition, we provide evidence suggesting that education plays a poor signaling role in Latin American countries. We then calibrate our model using Peruvian data, and through a quantitative exercise we show that this mechanism could be relevant to explain the relatively bad performance of labor markets in Latin American countries.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
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The Effect of the Kangaroo Mother Care Program (KMC) on Wages: A structural Model
In this paper we analyze the relationship between skills and some outcomes later in life for a population of premature children. Pretreatment skills and characteristics are good predictors of childhood and adulthood skills and outcomes. Income per capita and parents education at birth are positively correlated with home environment at 6 and 12 months of corrected age. Moreover, parents education and the proportion of workers at home are correlated with the number of preschool years attended by children. Interestingly, health indicators taken during the first year of life are critical factors for decision to enroll into a university, to obtain better results in math scores and earn larger wages.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Economic Shocks and Crime: Evidence from the Crash of Ponzi Schemes
In November 2008, Colombian authorities dismantled a network of Ponzi schemes, making hundreds of thousands of investors lose tens of millions of dollars throughout the country. Using original data on the geographical incidence of the Ponzi schemes, this paper estimates the impact of their break down on crime. We find that the crash of Ponzi schemes differentially exacerbated crime in affected districts. Confirming the intuition of the standard economic model of crime, this effect is only present in places with relatively weak judicial and law enforcement institutions, and with little access to consumption smoothing mechanisms such as microcredit. In addition, we show that, with the exception of economically-motivated felonies such as robbery, violent crime is not affected by the negative shock.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Understanding the Math Gender Gap in Latin American Countries
This paper documents that the math gender gap in Latin America is larger than in other developing or developed countries and that such gap do not decrease after controlling for individual, family and school characteristics. Using individual variation across eight Latin American countries for which PISA collected a very rich set of questions related to mathematics in 2012, we then analyze the role played by alternative (yet potentially complementary) socialization theories in explaining the math gender gap. We only find evidence that differential parents’ expectations on math for girls’ and boys’ career and differential girls’ and boys’ own perception of math self-efficiency, self-concept, and anxiety matter, as they are associated with between 8 and 30 percent of the math gender gap. Second, pooling 2006 to 2012 PISA waves and exploiting time and cross-country variation, we explore the influence of societal factors on the math gender gap in eleven Latin American countries, finding that those Latin American countries with greater gender-equality in both the labor market and tertiary education, as well as higher economic development in the country, have a smaller math gender gap.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Don’t blame the Messenger. A Field Experiment on Delivery Methods for Increasing Tax Compliance
The effect of different delivery mechanisms for increasing tax compliance has not been evaluated so far. This study conducts a field experiment in Colombia that varies the way the National Tax Agency contacts taxpayers on payments due for income, value added, and wealth taxes. More than 20,000 were randomly assigned to a control or one of three delivery mechanisms. Results indicate large and highly significant effects, as well as sizable differences across delivery methods. A personal visit by an inspector is more effective than a letter or an email, conditional on delivery; which has several relevant academic and policy implications.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The Effect of Schooling on Skills and Knowledge in Latin America. Evidence from PISA
In this paper we estimate the causal effect of an extra year of schooling on mathematics skills and knowledge for the eight Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay) that participated in PISA 2012. To that end we exploit exogenous variation in students’ birthdates around the school entry cutoff date using a Regression Discontinuity (RD) design. The size of this effect may indicate the extent to which the curriculum being taught in schools at the age of 15 contributes to build the abilities needed to meet the challenges of adult life. We apply both sharp and fuzzy RD approaches to take into account the possibility of imperfect enforcement of school entry rules. Our estimates suggest strong effects of an extra year of schooling on PISA test scores for 15-year-old students, with direct implications in terms of their skills and knowledge. We compare these results to that from high-performing countries.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Peer Effects in the Development of Capabilities in Adolescence
We estimate peer effects in cognitive, non-cognitive and health-related outcomes in a sample of Uruguayan high-school students. Our identification strategy is based on two features of the data: (i) parents are not able to choose their child’s class within the school of their choice, and (ii) we observe outcomes over two points in time. We use school and grade fixed effects to avoid confounding peer influence with selection and exploit the longitudinal nature of the data to address Manski’s (1993) reflection problem. We find small but statistically significant peer effects in academic grades (cognitive ability), in having shoplifted, being involved in a fight, and self-satisfaction (proxies for non-cognitive abilities) and in symptoms of depression. The size of the peer effects in non-cognitive and cognitive skills are of similar magnitude. We also find that popular students are less likely to be influenced by peers in terms of cognitive outcomes and that peer effects in non-normative behavior (shoplifting) and depression are milder for students with higher levels of household education.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Early Impacts of College Aid
We analyze the impact of an expansion in government-guaranteed credit for higher education in Chile on a sample of elementary and high school students. Using students who had an alternative source of funding as a control group, and administrative records before and after the reform, we present evidence that students most likely to attend college in a future are affected in different ways. First, we show that parents of students who ex ante were more likely to be credit restricted became more likely after the reform to state that their child would end up completing college. Second, we find that relaxing credit restrictions reduces the probability of dropping out of high school, specific among top students originally enrolled in low-performance schools and low-performance students attending better schools. Third, we find that the reform led to an increase in educational sorting. Best students switch to better schools while lowperformance students go to lower-ranked schools. This sorting helps to explain why we observe a decrease (increase) in GPA and an increase (decrease) in grade repetition among better (worse) students. Then, for a sample of students that were in transition from elementary to secondary school, we show that good students are more likely to enroll in a college-oriented track. Finally, using household data and birth records aggregated at the municipal level, we find, consistent with previous findings, a reduction in teen pregnancy.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Political constraints and state capacity: Evidence from a land allocation program in Mexico
In this paper we contribute to the understanding of the politics of state building. We emphasize that incumbent clientelistic parties might have incentives to sustain state fragility when politically challenged. We develop a theoretical model of the politics of state strengthening, and test its implications exploiting a unique policy program from Mexico. Incumbent clientelistic parties have a comparative advantage in clientelism as opposed to in public good provision. Investments in state capacity –conceived as a reduction of the cost of providing public goods– consequently undermine their comparative advantage. Therefore, when politically challenged by opponents, clientelistic incumbents may oppose to invest in state capacity. To test this hypothesis, we exploit a unique land allocation program in Mexico. When granting land to communities, the government decided whether to locate them close or far from municipality heads, thus affecting its future ability to provide public goods. Our empirical design uses the distance of the newly allocated land from municipality heads as a measure of local state capacity choice, and exploits a national shock that threatened the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)’s hegemony in the early 1960s but had different intensity across the various Mexican municipalities. Our difference-in-differences estimates corroborate that the PRI allocated land farther away from municipality heads in places where it expected more political contestation.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
En busca de lo inobservable: incorporando habilidades en un modelo à la Mincer
En este trabajo se busca replicar el modelo básico de Jacob Mincer (1974), con el objeto de encontrar un mejor estimador del efecto de la educación sobre los ingresos, controlando no solo por variables observables sino también por habilidades cognitivas y rasgos de personalidad. Al incorporar estas habilidades en el modelo se busca distinguir el efecto productividad del posible rol de señalización que la educación podría tener en el mercado laboral. Para llevar a cabo este análisis se utiliza la encuesta CAF 2014, la cual se distingue por cubrir una gran cantidad de ciudades latinoamericanas e incluir medidas de habilidades cognitivas y no cognitivas de las personas, además de las típicas variables sociodemográficas y relacionadas al mercado laboral. En líneas generales, y tal como se esperaba, el hecho de controlar la función de ingresos por habilidades cognitivas y no cognitivas redujo efectivamente los coeficientes de educación, pero en una magnitud relativamente pequeña. Así, en base a los resultados obtenidos podría decirse que el efecto señalización no es particularmente fuerte. Por su parte, la incorporación de variables vinculadas al mercado laboral generó una caída relativamente mayor en los coeficientes, sobre todo en los correspondientes a la educación media alta y alta. Esto podría estar sugiriendo cierto nivel de segmentación en los mercados laborales donde, por ejemplo, algunos sectores emplean a personas con mayor educación que otros. Por último, la educación del padre sí importa en la determinación de los salarios (no así el de la madre). En todos los casos es importante recordar que estos coeficientes son correlaciones estadísticas y no miden causalidad.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
La importancia del servicio civil en el desarrollo de capacidades estatales en América Latina
El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el vínculo entre el Servicio Civil y la capacidad del sector público de implementar políticas. Para ello, examina la relación del Servicio Civil con (1) la institucionalidad formal de los regímenes políticos democráticos (principalmente, las Constituciones, las leyes de empleo público y sus principios rectores; (2) la existencia de una planificación estratégica (a) que vincule aquello que se decide en el ámbito del régimen político con lo que se ejecuta en la Administración Pública (reglas de acceso versus reglas de ejercicio del gobierno democrático) y (b) que alinee los objetivos de la organización con los de los recursos humanos; (3) las características de la Administración Pública Central; (4) la forma en que se gestiona a los Recursos Humanos dentro de las organizaciones de la administración pública y, por último; (5) los perfiles de los Recursos Humanos que integran dichas organizaciones, con especial atención al segmento que las conduce. Estos elementos se ilustrarán con cuatro casos de reforma del Servicio Civil en América Latina que permitan capturar diversas experiencias en los gobiernos de la región. Se presentan tanto reformas exitosas como desafíos no resueltos, con vistas a identificar posibles vías de acción en distintas áreas. El objetivo es mostrar que, cada caso, puede encontrar tanto trabas como soluciones en los cinco niveles analíticos propuestos.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Los efectos de un programa de transferencias de ingresos en la ciudad de Buenos Aires
Las transferencias condicionadas de ingreso, ampliamente extendidas en América Latina, afectan decisiones económicas de sus beneficiarios y tienen impactos sobre distintas dimensiones de su bienestar. En este trabajo, estimamos los efectos de corto plazo sobre niños y adultos del programa Ciudadanía Porteña (CP), implementado por el Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires en 2006, a través del método de propensity score matching. Respecto al cumplimiento de las condicionalidades, encontramos que CP logra aumentar la asistencia escolar y la probabilidad de que los niños hayan consultado un médico en el último año. En línea con la literatura, aunque no se encuentra que CP afecte la participación laboral, sí hay evidencia de impactos en el margen intensivo de la oferta laboral. Específicamente, CP reduce la cantidad de horas semanales de trabajo y los ingresos laborales. Analizando impactos heterogéneos, los resultados muestran que estos efectos son significativos para hombres e individuos jefes de hogar. Si bien el beneficio no está asociado a la condición de informalidad laboral, la probabilidad de trabajar en el sector formal también se ve negativamente afectada. Además, examinamos impactos colaterales deseables sobre las mujeres beneficiarias. Los resultados sugieren que CP aumenta la probabilidad de que las beneficiarias realicen controles ginecológicos preventivos.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Losing health insurance when young: Impacts on usage of medical services and health
In this study we exploit a regulation in Colombia that exogenously changes health insurance coverage of young adult dependents, specifically those turning 18 years old, to analyze the effects of losing health insurance coverage on their health service usage and health status. We assess this effect using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) and data from the Encuesta Nacional de Calidad de Vida for Colombia from 2010 to 2013. Losing coverage implies an increase in the cost of some medical services which may reduce their consumption (i.e. preventive services). Additionally, since under Colombian regulations, emergency department (ED) visits cannot be denied to anyone, regardless of health insurance status, uninsured young adults tend to use this service more instead of regular medical services (such as preventive healthcare or visits to physicians or specialists). We find, consistent with the change in relative prices, that losing health insurance when turning 18 years old increases the visits to the ED, reduces preventive care visits with a physician, and reduces the usage of other medical services. These results imply a substitution of cheaper medical services for more expensive ones when individuals turn 18 years old in Colombia.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Un análisis de la criminalidad urbana en Colombia
Este trabajo hace una descripción detallada de las principales cifras de criminalidad de Bogotá, Medellín, Cali y Barranquilla – que abarcan el 30% de la población de Colombia – utilizando los datos de la Policía Nacional a nivel de evento. Cada dato cuenta con información de fecha y hora exacta así como localización geográfica precisa, lo cual permite hacer el primer análisis espacial de estos datos a nivel de segmento de vía. Utilizando la información (revisada) para los años 2012 y 2013, se identifican en cada ciudad los “puntos calientes”, que son microespacios que concentran una proporción muy grande del crimen. El total de los homicidios ocurridos en Bogotá entre 2012 y 2013 ocurrieron apenas en 1,2% de los segmentos de vía de la ciudad, en Medellín esta cifra es 3,2%, en Cali 3,8% y en Barranquilla 1,9%. Un índice de crimen que agrega homicidio, lesiones personales, hurto de vehículos, hurto a personas y tráfico, producción o porte de estupefacientes, ponderando la incidencia de cada tipo de crimen por la pena promedio estipulada en el Código Penal, también muestra niveles de concentración espacial significativos: en Bogotá, el 3,5% de los segmentos de vía concentran el 50% de la incidencia de crimen agregado, en Medellín, apenas 2,5% de los segmentos, en Cali 3,8% de los segmentos y en Barranquilla 4,6% de los segmentos concentran el 50% de todos los crímenes estudiados. Este análisis espacial detallado puede servir de base para el diseño de estrategias de patrullaje policial focalizado geográficamente, tal y como se ha ensayado en países avanzados.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Crime Perceptions and Reality in Latin America
We show that perceptions of insecurity are strongly correlated with victimization at the individual level and suggest that the reason this relationship is usually not uncovered in simple cross country studies is that they fail to consider observable differences across individuals who may face different perceptions of insecurity as well as different probabilities of victimization. Our findings are consistent with a model where individuals rank crime relative to other problems depending on whether they have developed coping mechanisms to attenuate the impact of crime on their wellbeing, the implication is that the weight individuals' place on crime depends more on changes in actual crime than on its level. We do not claim to establish a causal relationship between victimization and perception, but we raise the bar for claims of the absence of a correlation.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Domestic Violence and Divorce Law: When Divorce Threats Become Credible
This paper investigates whether lowering the cost of divorce can reduce domestic violence. The cost of divorce influences the bargaining position of spouses, and thus, their behavior within the marriage. This study takes advantage of a large and unexpected reform of the divorce regime in Spain, which allowed for unilateral and no-fault divorce, and eliminated the pre-existing 1-year mandatory separation period, to estimate the causal effects. This reform dramatically reduced the cost of exiting a partnership for married couples, but not for unmarried ones, which favors a differencein-differences identification strategy. This study analyzes several measures of spousal conflict, ranging from self-reported spousal abuse and technical definitions of spousal violence based on recorded behavior, to more extreme measures of well-being such as partner homicide. Results suggest a decline of 27-36 percent in spousal conflict and around 30 percent in extreme partner violence as a consequence of the reform. Moreover, spousal violence has been found to decrease among couples who remain married after the legal modification, which suggests an important role for changes in bargaining within the marriage when divorce becomes a more credible (cheaper) option. The results are not driven by selection and are robust to a variety of checks.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
El empleo público en América Latina. Evidencia de las encuestas de hogares
El objetivo de este trabajo es aportar evidencia sobre el empleo público en América Latina durante las últimas dos décadas (período 1992-2012). Éste es un trabajo descriptivo que provee un panorama del empleo público en América Latina sobre la base de microdatos homogeneizados de las encuestas de hogares de los países de la región en las últimas dos décadas. Además de ofrecer un diagnóstico del empleo bajo la órbita estatal, y compararlo con el empleo privado, el estudio sugiere varias preguntas de comportamiento potencialmente interesantes.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Gobierno electrónico y capacidades estatales en América Latina y el Caribe. Estudio exploratorio en centros urbanos y agencias tributarias nacionales
El trabajo tiene como finalidad identificar las herramientas con las que cuentan las administraciones gubernamentales de América Latina en materia de gobierno electrónico, a través del relevamiento de variables que dan cuenta de los niveles de presencia, información y transacción que brindan los portales de gobierno (páginas web oficiales) de los 125 centros urbanos de mayor peso sociodemográfico, en 25 países de la región. Asimismo, el documento despliega ésta misma metodología de relevamiento para efectuar el análisis comparado de los portales web de los Entes y Agencias de Recaudación Tributaria de los Estados Nacionales que forman parte de la muestra. Por último, el paper analiza las condiciones institucionales, sociales, económicas y de infraestructura que favorecen el desarrollo e implementación de tecnologías de información y comunicación (TICs) dentro de la órbita estatal, con el propósito de generar evidencia empírica sobre el perfil del gobierno electrónico en materia de provisión de bienes y servicios públicos a la ciudadanía.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Government Spending Efficiency in Latin America: A Frontier Approach
Government spending efficiency in providing education and health is evaluated across countries of the world, with a special emphasis on Latin American countries. Using stochastic frontier and data envelopment analysis, it is found that important inefficiencies are at hand. Those inefficiencies are only partly explained by environmental factors such as education of the adult population and GDP per head.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
State Capabilities in Colombian Municipalities: Measurements and Determinants
This paper constructs a comprehensive set of State Capacity indicators for Colombian municipalities, focusing in four basic governmental capabilities: fiscal, financial, physical and operational. First, a group of relevant variables was selected from a vast array of sources and classified into these four categories. Second, synthetic indicators were constructed using Principal Component Analysis (six in total as operational capabilities were further divided into three subcategories). These indicators allow us to study differential effects of a wide scope of potential determinants and controls upon each component. Such determinants included geographical features, natural resources, internal conflict, local political competition and early indigenous presence and immigration Controls included present income per capita and population density. This interdisciplinary variable selection provides a holistic explanation of State Capabilities related to public service delivery in Colombian municipalities.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Pax Monopolista and Crime: The Case of the Emergence of the Primeiro Comando da Capital in São Paulo
This paper documents a rare phenomenon: the consequence of the dominance of a single criminal gang in the city of São Paulo, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). Using unique data to identify entry in geographically well-delimited areas – the Favelas - we explore the timing of the expansion of geographical dominance to estimate the causal impact of its dominance on property and violent crime. Pax Monopolista caused a reduction in violent crime but no impact on property crime.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Electoral Consequences of Violent Crime: Evidence from Venezuela
To what extent to do voters hold political incumbents accountable for policy outcomes? This paper considers retrospective voting in the context of violent crime. Using a novel panel data set on county -and neighborhood- level homicide incidence and vote shares in Venezuela, I nd that, relative to other policy outcomes such as cash transfers, voters are generally unresponsive to changes in homicide incidence. However, responsiveness varies with the type of election and with the nature of local crime control institutions (which change within municipality over time). Noting the role of external shocks (for example, from drug enforcement activities in neighboring Colombia) in producing violence in Venezuela, I interpret these results as evidence that voters (correctly) view homicide outcomes as weak signals of incumbent political quality. Theresults are therefore consistent with rational retrospective models of voting behavior.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Endogenous Taxation in Ongoing Internal Conflict: The Case of Colombia
Recent empirical evidence at the cross-country and subnational levels suggests that internal conflicts harm state capacity and tax performance. On the face of it this is odd: internal conflict should create strong incentives for governments to develop the fiscal capacity necessary to assert full control over their territory, just as sociological theories argue external conflict did. We argue that one reason for the pattern is that internal conflict enables groups with de facto power to capture local political and economic institutions. We test this mechanism in the case of Colombia using data on tax performance and institutions in each of Colombia’s 1,120 municipalities. We show that municipalities most affected by internal conflict have tax institutions consistent with the preferences of the parties engaging in violence. Those suffering right-wing violence feature higher total property tax revenues and more land formalization. Municipalities with substantial left-wing guerrilla violence collected less tax revenue and saw less land formalization. These outcomes translate into differential level of social investment and social outcomes. Our findings provide the first concrete evidence that internal armed conflict helps interest groups capture municipal institutions for their own private benefit.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Crime Protection Investment Spillovers: Theory and Evidence from the City of Buenos Aires
This paper studies spillover effects among potential crime victims from investment in observable protection technologies. Criminals and potential victims interact in a frictional market for offenses. Externalities within the two market sides arise as trading externalities, and their sign and size depend on the equilibrium changes in victimization probabilities. I explore the issue empirically using household-level geo-referenced data from the City of Buenos Aires. The City exhibits a significant level of spatial clustering of burglary protection investment. More importantly, investment by neighbors is shown to significantly affect individual households' investment decisions. In order to achieve identification, I exploit within-neighborhood variation in close neighbors' protection investment status as induced by their knowledge of crimes suffered by friends, relatives, acquaintances or others, occurred sufficiently far away. Indeed, information about others' victimization experiences is found to significantly increase the protection investment of neighbors, and can thus be used as a source of exogenous variation for the latter under relatively weak assumptions. Instrumental variable estimates show neighbors' investment in CCTV cameras and alarms to significantly increase a given household's propensity to invest in the same technology. No effect is found instead for special door locks, bars or outdoor lighting. Taken all together, results implicitly suggest the supply of criminals in the city to be relatively inelastic with respect to the intensity of protection in the average location, or perceived to be so by potential victims.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Deterrence and reciprocity effects on tax compliance: experimental evidence from Venezuela
A recent debate on tax compliance asks whether enforcement mechanisms can be complemented, or even substituted by appeals to the taxpayer’s tax morality: his or her intrinsic willingness to pay taxes, motivated by purely ethical reasons, or a feeling of reciprocity towards the government that provides public goods and services of varying quality. We evaluate this hypothesis by tracking the local business tax compliance of over 6,000 firms in a major municipality in Caracas, which we randomly assigned to a control of no stimulus, or to one of five treatment arms that received letters from the local tax administrator with different types of messages regarding tax compliance. We find that an enforcement message has the largest compliance effect, while moral suasion appears less effective. However, differences between letter types have impacts that cannot be statistically distinguished from each other, which we interpret as an effect of being contacted by the tax authority by written communication, regardless of the content. This is most likely to matter for firms unaccustomed to contact with the government –small firms– which are also those for which we find economically large effects.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Drug battles and school achievement: evidence from Rio de Janeiro's favelas
This paper examines the effects of armed conflicts between drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro's favelas on student achievement. To identify the causal effect of violence on education, we explore variation in violence that occurs across time and space when gangs battle over territories. The evidence indicates that these battles are triggered by factors often exogenous to local socioeconomic conditions, such as the imprisonment or release of a gang leader, betrayals and revenge. Within-school estimates indicate that students from schools exposed to violence score less in math exams. The effect of violence increases with conflict intensity, duration, and proximity to exam dates; and decreases with the distance between the school and the conflict location. There is no evidence that the effect of violence persists for more than one year. Finally, we find that school supply is an important mechanism driving the achievement results; armed conflicts are significantly associated with higher teacher absenteeism, principal turnover, and temporary school closings.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
From maize to haze: agricultural shocks and growth of the mexican drug sector
We examine how commodity price shocks experienced by rural producers affect the drug trade in Mexico. Our analysis exploits exogenous movements in the Mexican maize price stemming from weather conditions in U.S. maize-growing regions, as well as export flows of other major maize producers. Using data on over 2200 municipios spanning 1990- 2010, we show that lower prices differentially increased the cultivation of both marijuana and opium poppies in municipios more climatically suited to growing maize. This increase was accompanied by differentially lower rural wages, suggesting that households planted more drug crops in response to the decreased income generating potential of maize farming. We also find impacts on downstream drug-trade outcomes, including the operations of drug cartels and killings perpetrated by these criminal groups. Our findings demonstrate that maize price changes contributed to the burgeoning drug trade in Mexico, and point to the violent consequences of an expanding drug sector.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Institutions, sectorial dynamics and foreign direct investment in Latin America: a new emerging reality
Despite uncertainties in the global economy, Latin American countries have attracted a significant amount of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in recent years. Investing in Latin America is now a central pillar of many international corporations’ and developed countries’ economic strategies. North American, Asian, and European firms have stakes in Latin America’s natural resources, telecommunications, and financial sectors. Analyzing data of FDI in 19 Latin American countries from 1995 to 2011, using a panel model, this paper investigates the link between the improving performance of specific sectors of the economy and the attraction of FDI. It focuses on sectorial dynamics, such as the growth of non-tradable sectors as well as the growth of natural resources based sectors, and explores the connection with both international and domestic institutions.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Job training, selection and self discovery
We randomly assign 1250 unemployed men and women to be invited once or twice to a specific-skills training program offered by a large multinational firm as part of its social responsibility efforts. Individuals with the lowest opportunity cost self-select into attending the program, which implies that the ability distribution of those invited but not registered, from which we draw our second group of invitees, is truncated from below. The impact of the first invitation is to decrease labor market participation, whereas the second invitation increases participation. We suggest that the program helps participants learn their own type (through interactions with other students), which is relatively low on average for the first group and relatively high for the second. Firstinvite treatments declare themselves to be less prepared for the job market relative to controls whereas second-invites feel better prepared as a result of the program. Socialization and selection effects may be important for job training programs.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Police reform, training and crime: experimental evidence from colombia's plan cuadrantes
The Plan Nacional de Vigilancia Comunitaria por Cuadrantes (PNVCC) is a new police patrolling program introduced in the eight major cities of Colombia in 2010 by the National Police. The strategy divides the largest cities into small geographical areas (cuadrantes), assigns six policemen to each, establishes a new patrolling protocol involving more community contact, and holds officers accountable for crime in their assigned area. The plan warranted a comprehensive training program for over 9,000 police officers aimed at improving interpersonal skills and implementation of the new patrolling protocols. By staggering the training schedule between three randomly chosen cohorts of police stations, we generate experimental variation in the exposure to training and in the effective implementation of the new police protocols induced by the Plan Cuadrantes. Comparing the 4 months immediately after training with the same months from the previous year, we find a significant reduction in several types of crime attributable to the training program, ranging from around .13 of a standard deviation for homicides to .18 of a standard deviation for brawls. These impacts are driven by very large effects in high crime areas and very small -or zero- effects in low crime neighborhoods. Once we take into account the high spatial concentration of crime, the estimated effects account for an overall reduction in the number of homicides of about 22%. We suggest that the training program affected crime by increasing the patrol police’s sense of accountability to the population and also possibly through higher police motivation. Large efficiency gains in public service provision may be attainable with relatively inexpensive interventions that bring public servants closer to their clients.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The effect of property division laws on divorce and labor supply: evidence from Spain
I study how the relative bargaining position of spouses affects the incidence of marital dissolution and the labor supply decision of intact couples. I identify exogenous variation in bargaining position within the household by exploiting a natural experiment in Spain where different regions have different rules to divide marital property in case of divorce. I benefit from two law changes to the separation of property regime in Catalonia, with opposite expected effects on the bargaining position of spouses. I found that a reform that unexpectedly improved the position of the wife within the marriage increased the divorce rate in around 13 percent in the short run, and although this effect seemed to dissipate over time, it remained positive one decade afterwards. For intact couples, I find that the same reform caused a reduction in female labor supply of between 0.6 and 2.5 hours per week, and also a reduction in their probability of employment of 2 percent. Moreover, when the previous improvement in wives' bargaining position was undone by a reform to the scope of marital contracts, female labor supply reacted in the opposite way, with an increase in hours worked and the probability of employment.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The pharmacological channel revisited: alcohol sales restrictions and crime in Bogotá
Our goal in this paper is twofold: First, evaluate the impact on crime of the restriction of latenight alcohol sales in Bogotá; and second, quantify the causal effect of problematic alcohol consumption on different crime categories. Using a control group strategy, we explore timeseries and cross-block variation in the restriction to measure its causal effects on several crime categories. We find that the restriction reduced deaths and injuries in car accidents and batteries, compatible with the pharmacological impact of alcohol consumption on crime (Goldstein, 1985). Our results are stronger in areas where the restriction was actually binding (e.g., in blocks with presence of liquor stores) and are highly heterogeneous depending on the number of liquor stores that were restricted at the block level. Finally, we measure the impact of the restriction on alcohol consumption (the first-stage, or mechanism), and quantify the causal pharmacological impact of alcohol consumption on crime using the restriction as an instrument for problematic alcohol consumption (the second stage). We find that alcohol consumption causes deaths and injuries in car accidents and batteries. More precisely, our results indicate that a one standard deviation (s.d.) increase in problematic alcohol consumption increases deaths in car accidents by 0.51 s.d., injuries in car accidents by 0.82 s.d., and batteries by 1.27 s.d.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Financial Frictions, Occupational Choice and Economic Inequality
We develop a quantitative theory of entrepreneurship, income inequality, and financial frictions disciplined with household data from Brazil. The theory extends Lucas (1978) by modeling heterogeneity in two skills: -working and managerial skills. Consistently with the evidence, the theory implies three occupational categories: workers, employers, and self-employed entrepreneurs. We find that the correlation between working and managerial skills matters importantly for the distribution of earnings across occupations and for the quantitative implications of financial frictions. We also find that while most households benefit from a reform that eliminates enforcement problems, the majority of employers (about two thirds) lose from the reform. By depressing the demand for labor, limited enforcement depresses the equilibrium wage rate, increasing the profits of employers. Our theory thus suggests that employers in Brazil may have a vested interested in maintaining a status quo with low enforcement.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
An exploratory study of entrepeneurial ventures in Argentina, their financing and first years' growth
This is a study of entrepreneurial ventures in Argentina, in particular regarding their finance and growth in their early years. We sample young manufacturing SMEs (i.e., with an average of six years and a maximum of ten years old), and interview their founding partners. The entrepreneurs reported on how their ventures were financed during the startup and subsequent years of operations. We first examine the financing structure, how it changed in the first five years, the degree of similarity of financing structures across ventures, and the feasibility of access to alternative sources as reported by the founding partners. We then focus on the determinants of venture’s growth, and for this purpose we econometrically test the effects on employment growth of several characteristics of the venture -including the startup financing structure- and of their founding partners, notably including a set of psychological traits. We find that financing structures at startup are highly and near exclusively concentrated on owners’ equity, accounting for approximately 80% of total financing. Outsiders’ debt -including bank and non-bank sources- reach 10% of total financing. Outsiders’ equity accounts for a higher percentage and is actually perceived as more feasible than bank lending. After the first five years of operations, the financing structure concentrates even more in owners´ equity and, although there is an improvement in the perceived feasibility of access to bank lending as reported by entrepreneurs, this is not translated into a higher participation in bank financing as percentage of total financing. In relation to growth results, we find some evidence that those entrepreneurs that also own or partner in other businesses, and those firms with a higher number of partners explain a higher employment growth rate. No effects are found for initial financing structure variables. In terms of psychological traits, and with some exceptions –a weak evidence on negative effects of risk aversion and positive effects for the Self-Efficacy Trait- we find that the factors that in the literature are seen to explain entrepreneurial career choice are not corroborated here as determinants of growth.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Business Cycles in Emerging Markets: the Role of Durable Goods and Financial Frictions
There is a growing literature studying business cycles in emerging economies. This paper contributes to this literature by examining how durable goods and financial frictions shape cyclical fluctuations in a small open economy subject to transitory and permanent shocks. We find that permanent shocks play a less important role driving the cycle in emerging economies than previously documented. We also find that financial frictions are crucial to explain some key business cycle properties of these economies. In our quantitative model, a countercyclical borrowing premium interacts with the purchase of durables to deliver highly volatile consumption and strongly countercyclical net exports.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Can a Mining Windfall Improve Welfare? Evidence from Peru with Municipal Level Data
In this paper we investigate whether fiscal performance is affected by the presence of natural resource revenues. We compare policy outcomes from mineral-abundant municipalities and non mineral-abundant municipalities in Peru, before and after the mining windfall. We use a difference in difference approach with municipal-level data, profiting from the exogeneity of mining canon transfers. Our findings are not consistent with a significant difference in terms of public goods provisioning between canon recipient governments and non-recipient governments. We do not find that citizen participation in public governance alter these results. Mineral rich regions do not seem to be reaping the benefit of the windfall.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Decisiones laborales en América Latina: el caso de los emprendedores
Los países de América Latina han experimentado fuertes transformaciones en sus mercados laborales, las cuales han tenido consecuencias en términos sociales y productivos. Analizar al mercado laboral, y en particular a las decisiones de trabajo, es importante para una mejor comprensión de los cambios en la pobreza, la desigualdad, la productividad y el crecimiento en la región. Este trabajo, utilizando microdatos de encuestas de hogares y laborales de todos los países de América Latina (AL), contribuye a ese objetivo, caracterizando la condición ocupacional y documentando diferencias entre los países de la región y su evolución en el tiempo. En particular, el trabajo se focaliza en la condición laboral de patrón o empresario, con el objetivo de contribuir a entender las decisiones hacia la actividad emprendedora en la región. Toda acción emprendedora tiene origen en una decisión ocupacional afectada por las condiciones de mercado y las características idiosincráticas (observables o no) del individuo. En consecuencia, entender el emprendedurismo requiere caracterizar la condición ocupacional a lo largo de múltiples dimensiones. Este trabajo ofrece esta amplia caracterización en diferentes países de América Latina, con el fin de dar luces sobre algunas propiedades de la decisión ocupacional.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Diferencias en la calidad de la educación e ineficiencia: un análisis basado en el método de frontera estocástica.
En este trabajo se emplea información acerca del desempeño escolar a nivel de establecimiento educativo para Chile y Perú con el objeto de estudiar la eficiencia en la provisión de servicios educación en la dimensión de calidad. Se emplea el método de la "frontera estocástica" y se hace especialmente énfasis en los diferenciales de eficiencia entre escuelas públicas y privadas. Se encuentra que parte de la brecha en los resultados de las pruebas entre estos dos tipos de instituciones, se explica por falta de insumos y por el background socioeconómico de los estudiantes; sin embargo, aun el incorporar estos factores, una brecha de eficiencia entre escuelas públicas y privadas persiste; especialmente en el caso el Perú. Este hallazgo pone en el centro de la discusión la pregunta sobre qué prácticas e instituciones favorecen un mejor uso de los insumos educativos; discusión que es presenta sucintamente al final de este documento.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Distorsions, resource al location and productivity in Latin America
We develop a span-of-control model where managerial skills are endogenous and the outcome of investments over the life cycle of managers. We calibrate such model to U.S. data, and use it to evaluate the interplay between idiosyncratic distortions and exogenous productivity in accounting for plan-size differences and output per worker in Mexico. We find that idiosyncratic distortions, as heavier implicit subsidies on small and large establishments, are essential to generate a plant-size distribution in line with Mexican data. Differences in exogenous productivity drive the bulk of output per-worker differences between the U.S. and Mexico.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Management practices, firm ownership, and productivity in Latin America
We analyze management and performance data for over 8,000 manufacturing firms across the Americas, Asia and Europe. We find that Latin American firms have poor management practices by international standards, with limited monitoring, short-term and narrow targets, and ineffective human-resource practices. A major factor behind this poor management quality is the high incidence of firms owned and controlled by the founder or the founding family. In Latin America, these firms lag both in average management quality when compared to firms of the same ownership structure in other regions and in catching up to their peers within their regions. Limited product market competition, the presence of few foreign multinationals, already explored by Bloom et al. (2012b), also appear to account for poor management practices. Across firms, we find that poor management practices are linked to a less educated workforce and low export orientation as well as heavy labour-market regulations and limited access to credit. Finally, we show that better management quality is tightly linked to higher firm and national productivity, confirming that the management practices measured are economically meaningful.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Patrones de desarrollo en América Latina: ¿convergencia o caída en la trampa del ingreso medio?
América Latina cuenta con el mayor número de países de ingreso medio del mundo, sin embargo, durante la mayor parte del siglo XX las tasas de crecimiento per cápita de los países de la región fueron inferiores a aquellas de los países desarrollados. Este fenómeno es tradicionalmente conocido como la "trampa del ingreso medio". Este documento evalúa si la pérdida del dinamismo del crecimiento es algo esperable a medida que se cierra la brecha del ingreso con las economías industriales. Durante la última década, la mayoría de los países de América Latina ha desempeñado buenas gestiones macroeconómicas acompañadas de iniciativas sociales significativas y de progreso microeconómico sustancial, de condiciones económicas internacionales favorables. Sin embargo, la región todavía necesita atender problemas estructurales importantes: las enormes disparidades sociales, los bajos niveles de ahorro e inversión doméstica, la excesiva concentración de las exportaciones en materias primas y otros commodities de poco valor agregado, y la escasez de competitividad y productividad de las industrias relativa a aquella de otras regiones del mundo. En gran medida, estos cambios estructurales explican por qué América Latina ha perdido relevancia en la economía mundial durante los últimos 40 años.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Reciprocity and willingness to pay taxes: evidence from a survey experiment in Latin America
We provide the first experimental attempt at measuring reciprocity in tax collection in developing countries, where enforcement institutions are weak, and where tax rates and in general tax observance is lower. In a household survey carried out in 17 Latin American cities, we randomly provide respondents with positively or negatively information on the local Government's administration; this information significantly altered perceptions on the quality of the local government in two cities, and we find that in Rio de Janeiro -where a relative high degree of tax autonomy allows citizens to make a clear link between taxes and the provision of public services- people's perception on the quality of the local government can have sizable effects on their willingness to pay taxes.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Spillovers of health education at school on parents´ physical activity
To prevent modern health conditions like obesity, cancer, cardiovascular illness, and diabetes, which have reached epidemic-like proportions in recent decades, many health experts argue that students should receive Health Education (HED) at school. Although this type of education aims mainly to improve children's health profiles, it might affect other family members as well. This paper exploits state HED reforms as quasi-natural experiments to estimate the causal impact of HED received by children on their parents' physical activity. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) for the period 1999-2005 merged with data on state HED reforms from the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) Health Policy Database, and the 2000 and 2006 School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS). To identify the spillover effects of HED requirements on parents' behavior we use a “differences-in-differences-in-differences" (DDD) methodology in which we allow for different types of treatments. We find a positive effect of HED reforms at the elementary school on the probability of parents doing light physical activity. Introducing major changes in HED increases the probability of fathers engaging in physical activity by 12.4 percentage points, while this probability for mothers does not seem to be affected. We find evidence of two channels that may drive these spillovers. We conclude that the gender specialization of parents in childcare activities, as well as information sharing between children and parents, may play a role in generating these indirect effects and in turn, in shaping healthy lifestyles within the household.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The impact of taxes and social spending on inequality and poverty in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico and Peru: a synthesis of results
We apply a standard tax and benefit incidence analysis to estimate the impact on inequality and poverty of direct taxes, indirect taxes and subsidies, and social spending (cash and food transfers and in-kind transfers in education and health). The extent of inequality reduction induced by direct taxes and transfers is rather small (2 percentage points on average) especially when compared with that found in Western Europe (15 percentage points on average). What prevents Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil from achieving similar reductions in inequality is not the lack of revenues but the fact that they spend less on cash transfers -especially transfers that are progressive in absolute terms- as a share of GDP. Indirect taxes result in that net contributors to the fiscal system start at the fourth, third and even second decile on average, depending on the country. When inkind transfers in education and health are added, however, the bottom six deciles are net recipients. The impact of transfers on inequality and poverty reduction could be higher if spending on direct cash tranfers that are progressive in absolute terms is increased, leakages to the nonpoor are reduced and coverage of the extreme poor by direct transfer programs is expanded.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Young businesses, entrepreneurship, and the dynamics of employment and ouput in Colombia´s manufacturing industry
In this paper, we study the characteristics and growth dynamics of young businesses, and the contribution of these businesses to aggregate growth, in a developing economy: Colombia. Our study covers the 17 years between 1993 and 2009. We limit our study to manufacturing plants of 10 or more employees (and some with less employees but large production). By doing so, we concentrate our attention on the segment of young businesses that are most likely truly entrepreneurial efforts. We characterize young manufacturing plants and compare them to older ones. This characterization covers several dimensions of business performance: employment, output, exports, survival patterns, productivity and investment. We contrast these patterns with those observed in the US. We also study the contribution of establishments of different ages to overall employment and output growth over our 17 year period. The paper makes several contributions to the existing literature. First, it characterizes young business dynamics for a developing economy. Second, it focuses on establishments that are born large enough that they plausibly represent truly entrepreneurial initiatives. That focus enables us to show that part of the wide variation in growth patterns among young businesses found by previous studies reflects the poor performance of micro establishments. In particular, we find much less destruction from exit of young businesses when the micro segment is removed from the data.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Impacto de las políticas de fomento al emprendedorismo: el caso de "Buenos Aires emprende"
Este trabajo evalúa el impacto de una política orientada a promover la creación y desarrollo de emprendimientos innovadores en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. El programa recibe unos 100 proyectos por año, de los cuales selecciona a alrededor de la mitad. Asiste a los beneficiarios por medio de capital y asesoramiento técnico a través de instituciones patrocinantes. Mediante una encuesta especialmente diseñada para la evaluación de impacto se encuentran fuertes diferencias entre los emprendimientos que son aprobados y los que no: los beneficiarios tienenuna mayor tasa de realización del proyecto, supervivencia, además demayor empleo, ventas e ingresos. Sin embargo, los beneficiarios son seleccionados por sus características. Para aislar este efecto se utilizan los métodos de discontinuidad: dado que el programa asigna un puntaje a cada proyecto, se compara a los emprendimientos de un lado y del otro del umbral especificado para la selección. A partir de estos métodos se encuentra un impacto significativo del programa en la tasa de creación, supervivencia y en el empleo. Una cuantificación de este impacto muestra que el programa ha generado unas 137 empresas y unos 665 empleos. Este estudio explora también el trabajo independiente de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, encontrando un ambiente propicio para este tipo de políticas. Se muestra que, en comparación con el emprendedor típico de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, los participantes de programas públicos del gobierno local son una selección particular, siendo más capacitados, relativamente jóvenes y con emprendimientos en sectores más dinámicos. Por último, encontramos que el 80% de los emprendedores encuestados se ubica por encima de la mediana de su grupo de comparación, algo que la literatura llama overconfidence, y que el proveer información sobre la competencia modera este efecto.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Políticas de fomento al emprendimiento dinámico en América Latina: tendencias y desafíos
Este trabajo se focaliza en las políticas de fomento al emprendimiento dinámico, es decir de las nuevas empresas que, además de sobrevivir, logran crecer de manera significativa. Este trabajo describe y analiza aquellas políticas que buscan explícitamente promover la gestación, nacimiento y expansión de empresas con potencial de crecimiento y/o innovación. El emprendimiento es un proceso de largo plazo, que incluye distintas etapas en las cuales inciden diferentes factores. Por lo tanto, el enfoque conceptual adoptado es sistémico y holístico. Este enfoque permite identificar las brechas que están afectando el surgimiento y desarrollo de emprendimientos y de emprendedores en la región. Sobre la base de este marco general se seleccionaron y analizaron con mayor detalle dos casos de países, Brasil y Chile por ser los que mayor trayectoria han recorrido en materia de las políticas de interés. Adicionalmente, se incluyeron dos experiencias de nivel subnacional, implementadas en las ciudades de Buenos Aires y de Medellín, y un caso de alianza público-privada con organismos internacionales (FOMIN y CAF) con el propósito de ilustrar la existencia de distintos ámbitos para la promoción del emprendimiento.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Credit Constraints for Higher Education
This paper addresses the importance of credit constraints explaining the gap on
college enrollment between students coming from rich and poor families. Measuring the effect of credit constraints on college enrollment is a complex task due to the unobserved nature of credit constraints and the existence of other variables that affect college enrollment that are unobserved as well. This paper exploits a natural experiment that produces variation on credit constraints directly, analyzing two programs that give college tuition loans to students who score above a given cut-off in the national college admission test. This enables a regression discontinuity design that addresses the problems of unobserved omitted variables and self-selection. Moreover, the paper uses a rich and detailed data set from a nationwide admission process that does not rely on unobserved subjective variables to select students, eliminating potential biases from the supply side. With this exogenous variation on loan access, I estimate the causal effect of credit constraints on college enrollment. The college enrollment rate increases significantly for students that are eligible for loans, and is statistically the same for all income groups after the elimination of credit constrains.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Development effects of electrification: evidence from the geologic placement of hydropower plants in Brazil
We estimate the development effects of electrification across Brazil over the period 1960-2000. Brazil relies almost exclusively on hydropower, which requires intercepting water at high velocity. We build an engineering model which takes as inputs only geography (river gradient, water flow and Amazon) and simulates a time series of hypothetical electricity grids for Brazil that show how the grid would have evolved had infrastructure investments been made based solely on geologic cost considerations, ignoring all demand-side concerns. Using the model as an instrument, we document large positive effects of electrification on development that are underestimated when one fails to account for the political allocation of infrastructure projects or its targeting to under-developed areas. Broad-based improvement in labor productivity across sectors and areas rather than general equilibrium re-sorting (in-migration to electrified counties) appears to be the likely mechanism by which these development gains are realized.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
El tamaño del estado y su impacto redistributivo en América Latina
Este ensayo analiza la evolución del gasto público en América Latina a lo largo de las dos últimas décadas, y ofrece como referencia una perspectiva de más larga duración cuando la disponibilidad de estadísticas lo permite. Utiliza con tal propósito distintas fuentes de información, aunque mayoritariamente de la CEPAL. La tarea no resulta fácil porque la información disponible de diferentes fuentes no es necesariamente consistente entre sí y presenta grandes vacíos, particularmente en relación con el alcance de las empresas públicas y, por ende, a la estimación del gasto público consolidado.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Government performance, taxation and citizen participation: evidence from Brazil
Fiscal contract theories of the state hypothesize that government performance affects tax collection and that institutions that foster representation and accountability link taxes and services. These propositions have yet to be tested with a causal research design and disaggregated data. In this paper, we use a quasi-experimental research design with randomized audits from Brazil to assess whether revealed corruption and other metrics of government performance affect municipal property tax collection. We find that revealed corruption robustly reduces property tax revenue; revealed performance on many other dimensions does not. We also find that while the structure of fiscal institutions (participatory budgeting versus budgeting via elected representatives) has no effect on the amount of corruption revealed or the quality of performance, revealed corruption increases the probability that a municipality will adopt participatory budgeting in the future.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Tax structure in Latin America: its impact on the real economy and compliance
In this paper we review the structure of tax systems in Latin America and analyze their impact on the real economy-- economic growth, macro-economic stability, income redistribution and foreign direct investment--, and on the extent of informality –the size of the shadow economy—and ‘tax morale.’
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The economics of tax evasion
This paper begins by reviewing the problem of tax evasion measurement. Based on available data, I conclude that this problem is far from being negligible, both for developed and developing countries. I also present in more detail the reasons that justify worrying about tax evasion, and thus the need to study more rigorously this phenomenon. I also revise some of the main results that appear in the theoretical, empirical, and experimental literature of personnel income tax evasion and the theoretical contributions on firms’ tax evasion. Finally, I present policy implications and illustrate them with real case studies.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The political economy of budgeting in Latin America procedures, oversight, and participation
This report provides a selective overview of issues pertaining to the budgetary process and a mapping out of budgetary institutions in Latin America and assesses to what extent budgets play the role societies expect from them. We review the legislative involvement, provide first hand updated data on budget committees, institutional prerogatives of the legislative branch and identify the institutional checkpoints for the approval of budgets. We also offer an overview of issues pertaining to budget rigidity. Starting from the stylized fact of budget rigidity in Latin America the paper focuses on the mechanisms governments (both at the national and sub-national levels) have implemented to deal or to overcome budgetary institutional inflexibilities and problems of accountability that are associated with them. We further investigate the existing mechanism of control and accountability budget appropriation. Given that all over the region the executive is the dominant political player and legislatures usually do not have institutional conditions and/or incentives to fully oversight presidents, legislators have delegated oversight to auxiliary bodies such as audit institutions. Finally, we identify and analyze initiatives to enhance transparency and citizen’s participation especially at the non-government level and experiences of participatory budgeting at local level. A number of experiences are reviewed including the Open budget project.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Training or technical assistance? A field experiment to learn what works to increase managerial capital for female microentrepeneurs
This study evaluates the impacts of a business training program serving female microentrepreneurs in Lima that have previously benefited with the titling of their urban parcels. The intervention included personal development, business management and productive skills, aiming at empowering women so that they improve the control of their lives, their access to credit, their business practices, which in turn would increase the income and welfare of their families. 1983 eligible women were randomly allocated to treatment (2) and control groups. Women in the two treatment groups (1416) were offered business training in 36 three-hour sessions over approximately 12 weeks (regular training). In addition, half of them were offered an individualized support in the form of technical assistance (TA) over a period of three extra months. A baseline survey was applied before randomization and a follow-up survey about four months after the end of the treatment (about 12 months since the beginning of treatment). We find that women assigned to treatment indeed made some important adjustments in their business practices according to the training, although they differ depending on the type of treatment received. Those that received only regular training were more prone to close losing businesses. In turn, those that also received TA, were more prone to plan and execute innovations, as well as to increase their association with business peers and its use of informal credit sources. Furthermore, such innovations led to an increase in sales of at least 18%. These results have a clear policy implication: transmitting general good business practices may be cheaper and more scalable, but we need to include specific advice to help female microentrepreneurs grow. Both, business income and practices effects accrue among those with relatively larger businesses, suggesting the existence of a threshold above which this kind of business training can help. Lack of strong effects on the participation of women in key decisions and attitudes towards gender relations suggest the need to strengthen the personal development module, but such adjustment needs to take into account that time is a scarce resource for female microentrepreneurs as they need to share their time between their businesses and their traditional responsibilities with household chores.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
What do non-renewable natural resource rich countries do with their rents?
This paper examines three sets of questions related to the use of non-renewable natural resource rents: (1) To what extent countries rich in non-renewable natural resources use such rents to increase present consumption or investment or save them through net increases in foreign assets (or reduction of net foreign liabilities)? (2) To what extent countries tax them and how do they use such fiscal revenues: whether to increase public expenditures (and in particular public investment in infrastructure and human capital formation), reduce taxes on other activities (and become fiscally dependent on their natural resource wealth) or net public debt? (3) To what extent countries rich in non-renewable natural resources have less efficient and more volatile and pro cyclical public expenditures? Additionally, we examine if these effects on macro and fiscal performance depend on the countries level of development and quality of institutions, as theory suggests.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Workfare and crime: evidence for Argentina
This paper investigates the effect of introducing a massive workfare program on property crimes. In order to circumvent the endogeneity problem common to joint factors determining crime and demand for workfare we make use of instrumental variables. We exploit two special features. First, the program was assigned according to political criteria which were trying to attract provinces and/or counties who were aligned with the national government. Second, the program was grant in mid-2002 and closed afterwards, so there were no new-comers to the program. We use political affiliation of different level of governments as instrument for the number of workfare programs per capita and find that the program reduced property crime but had no effect on other kinds of crime. The paper represents a contribution to the crime literature, since this issue has not been explored. If workfare programs have an effect on crime, then the welfare effect is different from the one often calculated in the literature.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Working mothers and intergenerational mobility: evidence from sibling schooling gaps in Venezuela
This paper documents the change in intergenerational mobility over the 35 year period between 1975 and 2010 in Venezuela and finds that equality of opportunities increased significantly from the mid 1970's until around 1988, then stagnated/reverted slightly up to 2004, when it again began to improve. Publicly provided education and the generalized increase in the demand for schooling throughout the period is insufficient to explain such changes in measured mobility. Instead, the pattern of female labor force participation is nearly the mirror image of the mobility index. A simple model and its empirical implications suggest that as mothers' time at home is substituted by other factors in the production of children's educational outcomes, family (mother's) characteristics become more important in child school achievement; this is consistent with a literature that finds negative effects of childcare on cognitive achievement, as other inputs are imperfect substitutes for mothers' time with the child.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Acceso al financiamiento de la pequeña y mediana empresa en Colombia: retos de política pública
Este artículo presenta de manera resumida las reflexiones y hallazgos de trabajos previos sobre el acceso al financiamiento de PYMES con el propósito de que la discusión de aspectos del caso Colombiano sirva para aportar al debate de estos temas en el contexto más amplio de América Latina. Se recogen las consideraciones de Meléndez y Perry (2008) acerca de la calidad del diseño de las intervenciones del gobierno Colombiano que han tenido como propósito facilitar el acceso a financiamiento de las PYME, y se reseñan dos trabajos recientes que realizan evaluaciones empíricas de políticas específicas, una dirigida a moderar el problema de acceso a financiamiento de las pequeñas y medianas empresas mediante el otorgamiento de garantías parciales de crédito (Arráiz, Meléndez y Stucchi, 2010) y otra dirigida a atenuar las restricciones financieras de las empresas mediante la concesión de beneficios tributarios atados a la inversión en activos fijos (Galindo y Meléndez, 2010). No se aporta nueva evidencia más allá de la consignada en los trabajos que se reseñan, con una sola excepción, que es la utilización de la base de datos de la Encuesta Anual Manufacturera (EAM) del Departamento Nacional de Estadística de Colombia (DANE) para ofrecer una caracterización general de las PYME manufactureras que enfrentan restricciones de liquidez en Colombia, que contribuya a poner en contexto la discusión.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Estructura tributaria y evasión impositiva en América Latina
Este informe estudia la evolución y las características del nivel y la estructura de la carga tributaria promedio en la región a través de los últimos veinte años, buscando identificar las diferencias relevantes entre países a partir de su clasificación en tres grupos distintos. Además, se señalan los principales obstáculos y limitaciones que han encontrado la mayoría de los países de la región para incrementar sus ingresos tributarios y modificar sus respectivas estructuras tributarias y, se explican las principales alternativas adoptadas por las administraciones públicas en materia de política tributaria, durante los años recientes, con el afán de aumentar el nivel de carga tributaria. Aunado a esto, se estudian los distintos aspectos de la evasión impositiva, se analizan algunas estrategias implementadas para mejorar la recaudación de los principales tributos y se presentan distintos indicadores de desempeño de las administraciones tributarias latinoamericanos en lo que respecta a su eficiencia, su efectividad y la disponibilidad de recursos.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Access to Financing of SMEs in Argentina
In this paper, we examine SMEs in Argentina in search for a measurement of those who are credit constrained. We also estimate a model for the determinants of credit rejection taking into account those that are self-excluded. In addition to the 7 percent of SMEs that request credit from banks and face rejection, we find that there is at least a percentage of nearly 37 percent of SMEs that are self-excluded from the credit market, although they seem to be in need of external financing (by several indicators); while having profitable investment projects. We find that the size of firms, low levels of leverage, and an exporting condition, all increase the probability of being granted a bank credit. Surprisingly, we do not find a role for other financial statements based variables such as collaterals or cash flow in the explanation of bank’s approval/rejection decision. Even more surprising is the fact that neither of the balance sheet based variables help to explain the self-exclusion from bank credit. The self-exclusion from the credit market is strongly related with firms’ private expectations on the existence of profitable opportunities, and their needs/desire for external financing.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Banking Services Supply and Micro Firm Performance: Evidence from Colombia
This paper uses a dataset of a survey of Colombian micro firms from 2003 to 2007 in combination with data from publicly available sources about banking services supply at the municipality level, to assess the impact of the availability of banking services on micro firms performance. We find a positive and statistically significant correlation between banking services supply targeted to micro firms and firm size measured by sales, firm labor productivity and firm capital to labor ratios, and a nil correlation with employment, suggesting improved access to credit has resulted in micro firms’ transit to more capitalintensive technologies. This result is robust to alternative empirical specifications. Also, policies to extend microcredit access to the smaller informal micro firms appear to have been successful in promoting their growth. Finally, microcredit availability at the local level does not appear to have a positive impact on formalization. On the contrary, more flexible requirements to access financing, seem to be a counter incentive for formalization.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Canon minero y decisiones fiscales subnacionales en el Perú
Este trabajo estudia el impacto del canon minero en las prácticas fiscales sub-nacionales en Perú. En particular se explorara si el régimen de distribución de fondos asociados a la actividad minera ha promovido o no la ampliación de brechas en el desarrollo entre regiones al interior del país a través del efecto sobre las decisiones fiscales (ingresos y gastos) de los departamentos. El análisis explota el carácter exógeno del canon minero cuya distribución mayormente no atiende a principios compensatorios sino a la producción minera de las regiones. El análisis econométrico indica que las transferencias por canon minero no tienen efecto sobre la recaudación local, pero si sobre la composición del gasto; incrementando la importancia relativa de la inversión pública. Dado que la inversión pública impulsa las capacidades productivas de la localidad, y el hecho de que la distribución del canon se concentra en las regiones más ricas, es posible que el régimen de trasferencias contribuya a ampliar las brechas de desarrollo entre las distintas regiones que conforman el Perú.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Estructura de financiamiento y restricciones financieras de las empresas en Colombia
En este estudio evaluamos las restricciones financieras que enfrentan las empresas en Colombia e identificamos los determinantes de su estructura de financiamiento. Utilizando datos a nivel de firma, analizamos la evolución de dicha estructura en el período 1996-2008 y la complementamos con la percepción cualitativa de los empresarios acerca de si las fuentes utilizadas limitan sus planes de inversión. Encontramos que la financiación a través de recursos internos (reinversión de utilidades) ha crecido de manera acelerada. Por medio de estimaciones de un modelo de inversión (ecuación de Euler) identificamos si esta situación responde a restricciones al financiamiento. Encontramos diferencias marcadas entre tamaños de empresas. Las empresas más pequeñas enfrentan restricciones financieras fuertes y el costo de la deuda limita su inversión. Por el contrario, el uso de recursos internos por parte de las firmas más grandes, especialmente en los últimos años responde más a estrategias propias de las firmas, apoyadas por un crecimiento acelerado de la rentabilidad en los últimos años y a incentivos tributarios generosos a la adquisición de activos con utilidades retenidas. Esto lo confirman las estimaciones sobre determinantes de la deuda.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Information sharing and access to finance of SMEs: cross country evidence from survey data
Using a survey of firms in 61 countries around the world (WBES) and econometric techniques that allow us to deal with observed and unobserved country specific components as well as with partial endogeneity, we explore the role of the development of credit information mechanisms such as private credit bureaus or public credit registries on small and medium-size enterprises' access to bank credit. We find that the development of information sharing mechanisms reduces significantly the financing gap between small and large firms.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Oil abundance and growth
The aim of this paper is to investigate the following questions: Is an abundance of oil, a curse or a blessing? What are the effects of oil abundance on growth and economic development, as seen in the level of income per capita? Our estimation results, using the real value of oil production or rent as a proxy for resource endowment, indicate that oil abundance does not seem to be a curse, exhibited through both the long-run and the short-run effects. Whether or not oil abundant countries could be richer and provide a better living standard to their population than what is observed is a different issue, but oil abundance does not seem to damper economic growth.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
People or places: the causes of spatial income differences in Brazil
This paper explores testable implications of a simple model of spatial heterogeneity in earnings, a model in which this spatial heterogeneity arises both from differences in the places that people work and differences among people themselves. Using micro data from four waves of the Brazilian Census (from 1970 to 2000), we estimate a place premium of between 20% and 80% of wages after controlling for observable and unobservable differences between migrants and non migrants. We derive testable implications of three different potential causes of this relationship: causation of earnings by location, migrant selection, and externalities on non migrants. A range of evidence is incompatible with the notion that selection or externalities are principal determinants of the movement‐earnings relationship. This suggests that even within country's borders, very large productivity differences may arise and be persistent over time
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
State formation, tax structures and mineral abundance Chile and Peru, 1850-1930s
The paper assesses the impact of natural resource abundance on state formation by looking at how tax structures responded to booming periods in the early ages of the Chilean and Peruvian republic, 1850-1930s. The paper inquires whether these early booming periods impacted on the structure of fiscal revenues, and finally, on the development of the state.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Efectos dinámicos de los precios de las materias primas en las posiciones fiscales de América Latina
El último episodio de auge y caída en los precios de las materias primas ha generado preocupación acerca del impacto de precios volátiles en las posiciones fiscales de los países de América Latina. Este trabajo, usando una novedosa base de datos con frecuencia trimestral, analiza los efectos dinámicos de las fluctuaciones en los precios de las materias primas en los ingresos y gastos fiscales de 8 economías de la región. Los resultados indican que las posiciones fiscales de los países estudiados reaccionan a shocks en los precios de las materias primas, sin embargo, hay marcadas diferencias entre países. Las variables fiscales en Venezuela presentan la más alta sensibilidad a los shocks en los precios de las materias primas, donde los gastos reaccionan significativamente más que los ingresos. En otro extremo está Chile, donde los gastos reaccionan muy poco y su respuesta dinámica es similar a los países exportadores de materias primas de altos ingresos. Este comportamiento probablemente refleja la eficiente aplicación de reglas fiscales, acompañadas por instituciones fuertes, compromiso político y altos estándares de transparencia.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Contracting the Road to Development: Early Impacts of a Rural Roads Program
We studied here the early impacts of the Peruvian rural roads program (RRP) that is characterized by the contracting of private local firms for the rehabilitation and maintenance of rural roads with local supervision by community leaders setting incentives that favour prevention activities and a sustainable and timely maintenance of rural roads. We find that this institutional innovation improved road transitability which in turn led to increased income, change in employment patterns and increased investments in education and health, although they differ greatly by the characteristics of the individual, household, villages and treated road. In particular, it is interesting to find that early income effects accrue in households associated to non-motorized tracks and that the change in employment patterns focus on women. On the other side, the exclusion of older girls from the positive effects on school attendance urges for a deeper understanding of the factors behind this source of gender inequities. Thus, the results of this early evaluation are very positive about the impacts of the Peruvian RRP, even though it does not include construction of new roads or their upgrading as it is the case in programs recently evaluated. The contracting of local private firms for the rehabilitation and maintenance of rural roads in developing countries may have meaningful pro-poor social and economic impacts, especially if programs include non-motorized tracks as they best serve the activities of women in poorer households
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Decentralization and Access to Social Services in Colombia
A central claim in favor of decentralization is that it will improve access to public services, but few studies examine this question empirically. This paper explores the effects of decentralization to access to health and education in Colombia. We benefit from an original database that includes over 95% of Colombian municipalities. Our results show that decentralization improved enrollment rates in public schools and access of the poor to public health services. In both sectors, improving access was driven by the financial contributions of local governments. Our theoretical findings imply that local governments with better information about local preferences will concentrate their resources in areas their voters care about most. The combination of empirical and theoretical results implies that decentralization provides local officials with the information and incentives they need to allocate resources in a manner responsive to voters’ needs, and improve the quality of expenditures so as to maximize their impact. The end result is greater usage of local services by citizens.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
El impacto del petróleo y la minería en el desarrollo regional y local en Colombia
Este trabajo estudia el impacto de la explotación de hidrocarburos y minerales sobre el desarrollo regional y local reciente en Colombia. Examina si los departamentos y municipios productores de hidrocarburos y carbón, y receptores de regalías, han crecido más o presentan mayores niveles de PIB per cápita en comparación con los departamentos que no se han beneficiado de éstos recursos. Asimismo, explora si hay diferencias en el comportamiento fiscal entre las regiones receptoras y no receptoras de regalías. Por otro lado, analiza si la disponibilidad de regalías tiene efectos sobre el crecimiento y el comportamiento fiscal diferentes a los que presenta la disponibilidad de transferencias de recursos nacionales del Sistema General de Participaciones, que constituye otra fuente exógena de recursos para los entes territoriales. Por último, el trabajo presenta alguna evidencia parcial, con estudios de casos, del impacto de la producción minera y las regalías sobre otras variables claves tales como la educación, la salud y la infraestructura pública.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Improving the education and health of the poor: decentralization and policy reform in Colombia
A central claim in favor of decentralization is that it will improve access to public services, but few studies examine this question empirically. This paper, the policyoriented companion to Faguet and Sánchez (2009), explores the effects of decentralization on the uses and spatial distribution of public investment, and on access to health and education services in Colombia. I show that investment shifted from infrastructure to social services and human capital formation, and resources were rebalanced in favor of poorer districts. Decentralization improved enrollment rates in public schools and access to public health services. In both cases, poor people benefitted most. Four important lessons emerge. For decentralization to work well, (i) local governments must face harder budget constraints; (ii) central government must be scaled back; (iii) decentralization is composed of distinct, separable components, the sequencing of which is important.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Inter-jurisdictional coordination in the management of natural resources: evidence from water basin committees in Brazil
Decentralized management of public goods creates the potential for spillovers across jurisdictions. These spillovers may be particularly large in the case of river management where the river has little value to upstream constituents once it has left the jurisdiction. Cross border cooperation in management of public goods can reduce spillovers, but negotiation between jurisdictions can be difficult to achieve. This paper estimates the effectiveness of policy interventions designed to increase the potential for coordination and negotiation between jurisdictions and investigates the mechanisms through which water management committees and other forums designed to enable cooperation between jurisdictions may improve cross border cooperation. We develop a simple theoretical model, based on a two stage bargaining game, in which we analyze negotiation between jurisdictions. We arrive at several key theoretical predictions: 1) Pollution levels between jurisdictions decrease following the institution of water basin committees, 2) These reductions in pollution loads are largest in the downstream areas of the river, and 3) Political affiliation and other factors which reduce transactions costs between counties also lead to larger negotiated pollution reductions by the upstream county. We find that overall; water basin management committees have a mixed impact on water quality. Organic pollution loads appear to decrease with the institution of water basin committees, but the overall health of the river as measured by dissolved oxygen content appears to be relatively unaffected by the institution of water basin committees. Consistent with the model, we find that the impact of water basin committees is largest in the downstream portion of the river where information asymmetries about the origin of the pollution are largest. We also find that increases in political cohesion between the upstream and downstream counties lead to decreases in organic pollution loads between the upstream and downstream counties. These decreases in pollution arising from decreased costs of negotiation between local leaders appear to be largest when combined with dedicated forums for negotiation between the counties.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Local economic development. Some cities develop more than others: specialization, human capital and institutions
Why does a certain metropolitan area grow more than another? The answer to this question has evaded much of the considerable body of scholarship on the topic. One problem may be that some of the frameworks that drive empirical research in this field tend be based on ad hoc combinations of explanatory factors, ranging from natural climate to business climate to land and labor costs. Theoretical approaches emphasize differences in economic specialization: some activities have higher rates of growth than others, and this translates into divergence in medium-term rates of inter-urban growth and income. But specialization itself needs to be explained. International economics has adopted theoretical frameworks for explaining different growth rates and income levels among countries involving multiple causes and their potentially recursive interactions. Three main forces are at the heart of this literature: specialization, labor force and human capital issues, and institutions. This framework can be fruitfully adapted to the analysis of metropolitan growth and change. The thorniest aspect of doing so is to consider recursive relationships among the three in a dynamic model, where specialization, human capital and institutions are endogenous to the explanation, and where causality can reverse over time in complex sequences. In this paper, we lay out the elements of such an approach and conclude that while explaining the origins of specialization remains beyond our grasp, many of the most important adjustments of regional economies can be explained. The most important force in adjustment is local institutions, but these must be understood in a non-conventional way, mostly as informal actor-networks. Policy for local economic development needs to address the ways it can nurture and support those actor-networks that play a constructive role in local economic development, by affecting patterns of specialization and development of human capital; and how it can replace or eliminate actor-networks that obstruct economic development.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
On the emergence and significance of local economic development strategies
This paper examines to what extent local and regional economic development strategies (LED) are becoming a necessary and viable complement to traditional development strategies in a world that has been radically changed by the parallel processes of economic globalization and by the emergence of subnational political actors and changes in territorial governance. Drawing on five Latin American examples from Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, the paper identifies the key concepts, core values, and principles that inspire this approach to development. It also looks at the key constraining and facilitating factors that contribute to the success or failure of this type of strategies and at the characteristics that contribute to generate an enabling environment for this type of approach. The main conclusion is that local economic development strategies, while no panacea, may be a valid complement to traditional top-down strategies in order to deliver sustainable development and it many cases may deliver greater economic efficiency by mobilizing resources that otherwise may have remained untapped and a large number of social benefits, by promoting voice, participation, and sustainability across territories where institutional conditions have been far from ideal.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Servicios locales, infraestructura y transporte: dimensión, escala, redes e instituciones de gobernanza
Este trabajo pretende contribuir a la comprensión de las pautas de producción y de gobernanza de los servicios públicos locales. La cuestión central es que algunos de estos servicios están caracterizados por economías de escala, de densidad o de alcance. Esto provoca que los límites de jurisdicción de los gobiernos municipales sean en algunos casos más reducidos de lo que aconsejaría la escala óptima de producción. De ahí emerge una cuestión muy relevante: ¿Cómo deben organizar los gobiernos locales la provisión de esos servicios de forma que puedan aprovechar las ganancias de escala y, a la vez, mantener un grado suficiente de control sobre los servicios, de forma que las autoridades locales puedan ser reactivas a las presiones de los ciudadanos para proporcionar una calidad adecuada?
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The impact of financial repression on interest rate spreads in Venezuela
This paper empirically examines the effect of financial repression on interest rates spreads in Venezuela. In order to have a measure of financial repression, we built an index that captures the opportunity cost of regulatory restrictions on banking operations, such reserve requirements, mandatory lending programs, and the cost of financial transactions taxes. After controlling for other bank-level and systemic determinants, results of panel regressions suggest that there is a statistically significant positive correlation between the overall index of financial repression and interest rate spreads.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Trade liberalization, economic integration and regional disparities
What is the impact of trade liberalization and economic integration on the geographical distribution of economic activities? To address this question the present paper proposes a conceptual framework based on recent developments in the theory of international trade and geographical economics. It then surveys the applied literature to show that the main components and mechanisms of the proposed framework find indeed support in the empirical evidence. Finally, based on this “validation”, it uses the conceptual framework to interpret the evolution of spatial disparities in areas of the world that have been involved in processes of trade liberalization and economic
integration.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Decentralisation and Local and Regional Development
Este artículo explora el impacto de la descentralización sobre el potencial para el desarrollo local y regional, tanto desde una perspectiva teórica como utilizando ejemplos de América Latina. Pone de relieve que la descentralización podría convertirse en un vehículo clave para propiciar un desarrollo sustentable, pero que al mismo tiempo presenta significativas desventajas que deben ser atendidas para maximizar los beneficios potenciales de la transferencia de poder y de recursos hacia niveles subnacionales de gobierno. Dadas estas ventajas y desventajas, el artículo analiza bajo cuáles circunstancias la descentralización puede convertirse en un instrumento efectivo para alcanzar un desarrollo sostenido y una mejora sostenible en la calidad de vida de los individuos, especialmente la de aquellos que viven en regiones desfavorecidas o en regiones con condiciones iniciales difíciles. Los casos de estrategias de desarrollo en Medellín (Colombia) y en Rafaela (Argentina) ilustran cómo esto puede lograrse.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
El tamaño importa: la estructura vertical de gobierno y la gestión del gasto público local
Una gran cantidad de países alrededor del mundo presentan estructuras verticales de gobierno percibidas como ineficientes debido a un alto nivel de fragmentación jurisdiccional. La respuesta común a este diagnostico ha sido la implementación de programas de consolidación jurisdiccional tanto forzados como voluntarios. El objetivo fundamental declarado de tales programas es el alcanzar, mediante un tamaño mayor, economías de escala y por tanto reducir los costes de producción de los servicios públicos a nivel local o regional. En este trabajo se analizan tanto los principios teóricos que guían el análisis económico tradicional de las estructuras verticales de gobierno, como experiencias relevantes de consolidación jurisdiccional a nivel internacional. Con base en este análisis argumentamos que la evidencia empírica en apoyo de la existencia de economías de escala en la provisión de servicios públicos locales no es concluyente. Cuando existen, dichas economías de escala se concentran en servicios que requieren altas dosis de inversión en capital fijo y son altamente dependientes en la tecnología de producción disponible e incluso en la localización geográfica de las jurisdicciones. No es de extrañar por tanto que los programas de consolidación jurisdiccional no hayan ofrecido en general las ganancias de eficiencia económica prometidas. El tamaño óptimo jurisdiccional parece depender no solo del potencial de economías de escala, sino también de las preferencias de los ciudadanos hacia la representación institucional y de las condiciones geográficas, socio-culturales e históricas de cada país. Concluimos por tanto, que la reforma de la estructura vertical de gobierno y el nivel de fragmentación jurisdiccional no deben aproximarse desde posiciones dogmáticas fundamentadas en escasa evidencia empírica. La consolidación puede en ocasiones ser la alternativa más eficiente, pero es necesario ofrecer otras opciones institucionales que permitan soluciones intermedias (o en su caso más eficientes) para la provisión de servicios.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Local governments' capacity and performance: evidence from peruvian municipalities
This paper explores the extent of technical capacity constraints in Peruvian local governments. To do that, we study how effective municipalities are in using a significant income windfall due to central government transfers mostly earmarked to capital expenditures. We find evidence that in the short-term municipalities are unable to use all the additional resources. The inability to spend additional resources seems to be linked to lack of project management and administrative skills. Mayor experience is another important factor. These results provide powerful insights to the design of training programs in countries like Peru.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
The pillars of fiscal decentralization
Fiscal decentralization can de be defined as the process of transferring budgetary authority from central government to elected subnational governments in order to grant them power to make decisions regarding taxes and expenses. This paper discusses, theoretically and empirically, what some consider the three pillars of fiscal decentralization: expenditure assignment, revenue assignment, and intergovernmental transfers. In the real world, almost all countries have these three pillars. However, there are no two countries alike because of the different possibilities at hand in designing a decentralized fiscal framework. Here, the international experience is studied to shed some light on the various institutional and practical issues arising in the design and implementation of fiscal decentralization. Not surprisingly, results vary widely, and this experience suggests that there are different ways of achieving a successful framework. Therefore, this paper intends to point and describe the key elements that contribute to achieving an effective decentralized fiscal framework that responds more efficiently to the demands of its constituencies.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Transportation infrastructure and productivity: evidence from Colombia
This paper analyses the role of transport infrastructure in determining plant level TFP. We calculate TFP from the annual manufacturing surveys using accounting and econometric procedures. We find that differential access to transportation infrastructure is an important determinant of TFP at the plant level. In particular, growth in road density (kilometers of roads around the plant) has a positive impact on TFP growth, while growth in congestion (traffic per day) is negatively related to TFP growth. After correcting for potential endogeneity, our estimates suggest that the elasticity of TFP with respect to the stock of roads is approximately one. In addition, we analyze the effect of infrastructure on the level and of dispersion of TFP and find that markets with better infrastructure are also more contested. This means that TFP across plants shows less dispersion and higher minimum and median values. In other words, only the more efficient producers survive, suggesting a possible channel trough which infrastructure contributes to the overall efficiency of the economy.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Infraestructura y aspectos distributivos en la tarificación de los servicios públicos: ámbito y posibilidades de la tarifa social en la Argentina
El caso argentino presenta particularidades que sugieren y motivan una estrategia de análisis y evaluación de la tarifa social en los sectores de infraestructura. Por un lado, la ausencia de mecanismos de tarifa social (en el contexto de un congelamiento generalizado de tarifas residenciales que lleva seis años) en sectores de infraestructura importantes y en especial en la región metropolitana de Buenos Aires. Por el otro, una proliferación de diversos mecanismos en el sector eléctrico que aparecen en diversas provincias (que sí aumentaron las tarifas), en el marco de un federalismo regulatorio en ese sector. Con estos antecedentes se evalúa el desempeño de los mecanismos observados en el caso de la provisión de energía eléctrica en las provincias. Los resultados sugieren que las provincias que han usado criterios selectivos de niveles de vida y acotado los subsidios a umbrales no excluyentes (Es decir no eliminado los mismos si el consumo supera un umbral) parecen haber logrado un buen desempeño.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica
Subsidios al consumo de los servicios públicos: reflexiones a partir del caso colombiano
Este artículo presenta una evaluación del esquema de subsidios cruzados a las tarifas de servicios públicos vigentes en Colombia, basada en el análisis de encuestas de hogares, y estudia las propiedades de esquemas alternativos de diseño implementados en otros países, mediante ejercicios de simulación. Encuentra que el mecanismo de focalización geográfica de subsidios a las tarifas vigente en Colombia ha sido exitoso en dirigir subsidios a los hogares pobres, pero con el costo de un desperdicio sustancial de recursos, producto de altos errores de inclusión. La debilidad del instrumento está aparentemente asociada con la excesiva discrecionalidad de los gobiernos locales al momento de implementación. Las simulaciones muestran que las propiedades de focalización de un esquema basado en la comprobación previa de medios de vida son mucho mejores y que el mecanismo de focalización geográfica es, en todo caso, más efectivo en dirigir subsidios hacia los pobres que la focalización basada exclusivamente en el consumo de los hogares. Muestran también que en un contexto de demandas relativamente inelásticas, los incrementos en el costo de los servicios públicos resultantes de la eliminación de subsidios tendrían como resultado la racionalización de los consumos suntuarios de los hogares. A la luz de su impacto marginal sobre el bienestar de los hogares pobres, sobre sus patrones de consumo, y sobre el desbalance del esquema de subsidios y contribuciones y su respectivo impacto fiscal, la evaluación costo-beneficio de la política que desvincula las tarifas sociales de los costos de prestación de los servicios para los hogares más pobres en Colombia (Leyes 812 de 2003 y 1117 de 2006) es mala.
Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica