This paper presents a theoretical model and empirical estimations to evaluate the effects of competition on school quality. Empirical estimations, using roughly 5,000 Chilean schools in the 1994-1997 period and econometric techniques robust to endogeneity, support the theoretical model and show...

This paper compares the results of applying several detrending methods to the Chilean monthly economic activity index (IMACEC) that arise from using real-time data sets. We show that data revisions are extremely important and that they can lead to systematically inconsistent estimates of the...

Levels of development vary widely within countries in the Americas. We argue that part of this variation has its roots in the colonial era, when colonizers engaged in different economic activities in different regions of a country. We present evidence consistent with the view that “bad”...

In this article, we revisit the relationship among institutions, human capital, and development. We argue that empirical models that treat institutions and human capital as exogenous are misspecified, both because of the usual omitted variable bias problems and because of differential...

While the aggregate effects of sudden stops and international financial crises are well known, the disaggregated channels through which they work are not well explored yet. In this paper, using job flows from a sectoral panel dataset for four Latin American countries, we find that sudden stops...

Why does schooling attainment vary widely across countries? Why are differences in schooling attainment highly persistent? I show that cross-country differences in schooling are related to political institutions, such as democracy and local democracy (political decentralization), which are...

This paper compares the results of applying several detrending methods to the Chilean monthly economic activity index (IMACEC) using real-time data sets. We show that data revisions are extremely important and that they can lead to systematically inconsistent estimates of the trend component....

This paper develops a macroeconomic general-equilibrium model fully parameterized for the Chilean economy. The model’s basic relations are derived from intertemporal optimization by a group of rational forward-looking agents. The model also adds critical real-world features – such as...

This article generates innovative confidence intervals for two of the most popular de trending methods: Hodrick-Prescott and Band-Pass filters. The confidence intervals are obtained using block-bootstrapping techniques for dependent data. As an example, we present GDP trend growth and output gap...

This paper provides empirical evidence on some of the microeconomic effects of the capital controls introduced in Chile during the 1990s, in particular, the unremunerated reserve requirement (URR). By looking at financial statements for a group of 73 Chilean firms during 1986-2001, the paper...