Chile approved in early 2008 the replacement of her two current non-contributory subsidies for the old poor for a unified program with a pioneering design, with phase-in ending in 2012. This paper describes the political economy of this reform and evaluates it with regards to efficiency and...

This paper provides the first estimate of the actuarial balance of the Spanish contributory pension system for the old age contingency, based on official data. The novel entry in the balance sheet, named quot;Contribution Assetquot; or quot;Hidden Assetquot;, is at the centre of the theoretical...

This paper analyzes an unremunerated reserve requirement on cross-border short term credit inflows, as applied in Chile. The impact of this reserve requirement over the path of the real exchange rate is investigated empirically. The authorities expected t

Empirical studies assume that the macro Mincer return on schooling is constant across countries. Using a large sample of countries this paper shows that countries with a better quality of education have on average relatively higher macro Mincer coefficients. As rich countries have on average...

Aid for fighting infectious and parasitic diseases has had a statistically significant role in the under-five mortality reduction in the last decade. Point estimates indicate a country average reduction of 1.4 deaths per thousand under fives live-born attributable to aid at its average level in...

This paper studies the puzzling lack of correlation between income and schooling in macro regressions. It is argued that the root of the puzzle is threefold. First, there is a problem of a proper definition of the way in which years of schooling should enter into a production function. Second,...

This paper presents a new data set on human capital. It is based upon data released at the OECD for a subgroup of 38 member and non-member countries, and an effort performed at the Development Centre to expand this data set to other developing countries. The key to our methodology is to minimise...