Este paper busca modelar de qué manera las semejanzas culturales influyen en el comercio bilateral. Se busca determinar si lo hacen actuando como un costo fijo o como uno variable. Para esto, se analiza cómo estas variables afectan el Margen Extensivo (número de firmas) y el Intensivo (las exportaciones promedio de cada una de ellas), comparando ambos efectos. Utilizando el modelo de Melitz (2003) se predice el comportamiento que debería tener cada uno de estos márgenes según el tipo de costo que se esté modificando, para luego evaluarlos empíricamente a través de un modelo de gravedad, usando datos de Chile. El estudio se centra en dos variables: el idioma y el origen legal de cada país de destino. La evidencia encontrada presenta al idioma como un costo fijo, mientras que al origen legal como uno variable. Se encuentra que del efecto positivo del idioma sobre el volumen de exportaciones, el 79% se explica por un aumento del Margen Extensivo. Además, se analiza la sensibilidad de estos resultados frente a cambios en la elasticidad de la demanda, confirmándose aún más las conclusiones.

La República Dominicana tuvo un crecimiento promedio del PIB per c apita de 3.6% durante 1966-2010, siendo la segunda econom ía con mayor crecimiento de Latinoamérica y el Caribe en el periodo analizado. En el presente artículo se estudian las fuentes de crecimiento econ omico de la República Dominicana, una economía abierta en vías de desarrollo. Para esto se realizan ejercicios de contabilidad de crecimiento y además se analizan los determinantes de la productividad total de factores (PTF). Para mejorar la medición de la PTF los factores productivos son ajustados por calidad y utilización. La acumulación de capital físico y humano han tenido la mayor participación en el crecimiento, pero a diferencia de estudios anteriores, en este trabajo encontramos una participación importante de la PTF. En el análisis se denota un comportamiento que no es trivial en la complementariedad de políticas. El desarrollo nanciero solo contribuye con la PTF bajo escenarios macroeconómicos favorables, mientras que el efecto de largo plazo de la apertura comercial, a pesar de ser positivo, es muy bajo.

This research analyses the determinants that influence the decision to work for women who prefer part time jobs in Chile. It seeks to understand how women's personal characteristics, together with home characteristics and features of the home environment, affect women in getting employed, or, otherwise remain unemployed and unable to join the workplace.

As a response to historically low retention rates amongst junior level Army officers, the Department of the Army instituted a new incentive program in 2005 to boost career satisfaction and retention. As a result of this program the United States Military Academy (USMA) changed the way it matched cadets to their future career specialties. The new matching mechanism instituted by the USMA is one that has not yet been studied in the literature but it has significant theoretical value as it extends the typical matching problem in a new direction by including a rudimentary system of prices. This thesis is both a theoretical study of the new USMA matching mechanism and a policy analysis of the program’s effect on cadet matching outcomes. Drawing heavily from the mechanism design literature, I show that the USMA matching mechanism suffers from several deficiencies and that as a result it does not have any of the three central properties desirable of priority-based allocation systems namely; fairness, strategy-proofness, and Pareto efficiency. I propose a market-based matching mechanism that incorporates priorities and a) has all three central properties and b) generates optimal outcomes for both the Army and cadets. The three central properties are demonstrated through formal mathematical proofs. Through simulations with real-world data on cadet preferences and career specialty allocations, I demonstrate that the USMA matching mechanism is a Pareto improvement over the original single-category serial dictatorship matching mechanism but is still sub-optimal to the market-based matching system.

This thesis studies students’ mobility during primary education in the Region Metropolitana. It describes the mobility rates from first to eighth grade, and looks for correlations between them and individual characteristics. This description establishes that: half of the students hange school at least once between first and eighth grade, the mobility rate is related to socioeconomic characteristics, and there is a common pattern (falling rate on the grade, except for when students pass from sixth to seventh grade). Furthermore, it studies the impact of the chance of changing school for the population that change school (positive) and the externality for those that do not change (negative).

Este trabajo hace un análisis de las características que definen la elección individual de modalidad de pensión para los jubilados en el sistema previsional chileno. Se utilizan datos de la Encuesta de Protección Social 2009 y datos administrativos de la Superintendencia de Pensiones para generar una muestra representativa de jubilados con sus características individuales. En particular, se evalúa el efecto de la implementación del Sistema de Consulta y Oferta de Montos de Pensión (SCOMP) sobre la elección individual. Además, se introducen nuevos determinantes de la decisión de modalidad.

El programa de las 900 escuelas críticas fue una de las primeras medidas tomadas durante la reforma educacional de los años 90. Este programa, de discriminación positiva, fue considerado un gran éxito por los agentes involucrados en él, y recomendado por la literatura como un ejemplo a seguir. El presente estudio intenta comprobar si efectivamente el P900 tuvo influencia sobre los resultados escolares, medidos a través de la prueba SIMCE. Para lograr este objetivo, y debido a que el P900 sufrió una serie de importantes reformulaciones a lo largo de su desarrollo, se dividió la investigación en cuatro sub períodos comprendidos entre los años 1993 y 2003. Además, se intenta aprovechar estas diferencias para extrapolar hacia otros programas educacionales aquellas políticas que resulten positivas. El estudio se realizo utilizando una metodología de Regression-Discontinuity Designs, con el fin de aprovechar la discontinuidad que se produce en la probabilidad de elección sobre los establecimientos que caen bajo cierto resultado SIMCE. El estudio concluye que el P900 no tuvo implicancias significativas, aun cuando se encuentra evidencia indicando que para el sub período 1995-1996, en la prueba de Matemáticas, y en los sub períodos 1997-2000 y 2001-2003, en la prueba de Lenguaje, los efectos del programa son positivos.

In a fully funded capitalization pension system, an interaction between mandatory saving and minimum pension program happens. This interaction generates a moral hazard issue. When the system allows its members to choose the level of risk of their savings, the future participants of the minimum pension program have incentives to increase the amount of risk taken. Using an option valuation model it is found that the present value of the option is maximized by choosing the riskiest investment alternative, almost for any income level. Fiscal expenditure and the volatility involved in the subsidy rises with a change in the composition of members selecting the riskiest alternative. It is also found that the moral hazard issue is greater for those that happen to have an income that puts them on the participation threshold of the program.

A popular belief in Chile is that a large percentage of those who hire domestic labor sub declare the wages paid to their workers in order to minimize the payroll tax to be withheld each month. Either because this brings benefits to the employer or to the employee, there are incentives for parties to prefer to reach an agreement of this nature. Unable to directly observe whether this occurs for most workers in private homes, the following work presents an exercise to answer this question indirectly. Assuming that those who commit this practice pays taxes correspondent to the minimum wage, the goal of this work is to test if changes in the minimum wage have resulted in a change in employment in this market. If it is true that a large majority of employers do withhold payroll taxes correspondent to the minimum wage, then when the minimum wage changes, this should have an effect in employment. The results found that while there is a negative effect on employment, it is weakly significant and only for workers who do not reside in the workplace. It follows, though with caution given the limits imposed by the available data and the magnitude of the wage change, that there are few listed by the minimum wage.

This thesis studies the empirical relationship between mean reversion of stock and the turnover of such shares. From the theoretical intuition of Beker And Espino (2010) and Chen et al (2010) that argue a positive relationship between mean reversion and investors’ heterogeneity in beliefs, and the positive relationship between turnover and investors’ heterogeneity in beliefs that are reported by papers such as Banerjee and Kremer (2010), Ajinkya et al (1991) and Barron (1995), I research the empirical relationship among turnover and mean reversion. The research method applied is a panel of portfolios depending on the turnover level and the state of nature in which the stock pays (beta and company size). With that end in view I use annual data from companies of U.S.A., for a period from 1992 to 2010. The results partially suggest a positive relationship between mean reversion and turnover.

This investigation test the hypothesis which states that price dispersion observed in the Chilean pharmaceutical market can be explained by asymmetric information models and search costs. Estimating by “pooled OLS” we show that the investigation supports theoretical models where uninformed consumers tend to face greater price dispersion than informed ones. My explanation for this is that search costs still persist even when pharmacies are located in the same spot. The study is a contribution to price dispersion and search costs literature because it places a model of search in a context where three companies dominate the market while they face price wars followed by collusive periods. The estimates show that price dispersion tends to be less during price wars and collusive periods. In addition, we discuss what can be deceptive discount policies implemented by some of these companies, and the potential benefits to the consumer to compare prices between competing firms.

During the 60's, 70's and 80's, much work was done trying to model price dispersion. While doing that, authors attempted to explain what happened in a competitive market when informational parameters, such as the proportion of informed and uninformed consumers or the cost of aquiring information, were changed. But, what happens if the probability of ocurrance of a competitive equilibrium depends on the same parameters? In this work we explore some models of the original literature but from the scope of collusive schemes, with the objective of nding if changes in these key parameters make cartels easier to exist or not. Not surprisingly, some e ect on the critic delta exists but its sign totally depends on the model being analysed.