The Political Economy of School Size: Evidence from Chilean Rural Counties

Public schools in Chile receive a per-student subsidy depending on enrollment, and are managed by local governments that operate under soft budget constraints. In this paper, we study the effects of this system on per-student expenditures. Per-student expenditures on rural areas are 30% higher than in urban areas. We find that about 75% of this difference is due to the fact that rural public schools are significantly smaller and thus do not benefit from economies of scale. Besides, we also show that in our preferred estimates about 50% of the students in rural areas could be moved to schools that could exploit economies of scale – i.e., these students could attend bigger schools traveling at most an hour day a day in total. We show that even if we use conservative average speed rates or control for transportation, utility and infrastructure costs, there is a sizeable share of students that could be consolidated. We argue that local governments that have soft budget constraints do not consolidate these schools giving the existing potential because of political factors: closing schools is harmful for mayors in electoral terms. Consistent with this claim, we find that a decrease in the degree of political competition in areas with better access to non-voucher transfers from the central government (i.e. with softer budget constraints) decreases the extent of the inefficiency.

Gender differences in time allocation of poor children in Colombia

This paper studies the e§ect of credit constraints and constraints on transfers between parents and children, on di§erences in labor and schooling across children within the same household, with an application to gender. When families are unconstrained in these respects, di§erences in labor supply or education are driven by di§erences in wages or returns to education. If the family faces an imperfect capital market, the labor supply of each child is ine¢ cient, but di§erences across children are still driven by comparative advantage. However, if interfamily transfers are constrained so that parents cannot o§set inequality between their children, they will favor the human capital accumulation of the more disadvantaged child -generally the one who works more as a child. We use our theory to examine the gender gap in child labor. Using a sample of poor families in Colombia, we conÖrm our prediction among rural households, although this is less clear for urban households. The gender gap is largely explained by the wage gap between girls and boys. Moreover, families with the potential to make capital transfers to adult children (e.g. those with large animals), can compensate adult sons for their greater child labor and reduced educational attainment. In such families, as predicted, the male/female labor gap isgreater.Child labor, schooling, credit constraints.

The determinants of the health status in a developing country: results form the colombian case

ABSTRACT This paper tries to find empirical evidence of the health determinants, as a measure of health capital in a developing country after a deep reform of its health-care sector. It follows the Grossman model (1972) and also takes, besides individual and socioeconomic variables, institutional factors of the health sector. Two surveys from 1997 and 2000 in Colombia, with a subjective (self-report) health status of the individuals, and information about the health system affiliation type, were used. The estimation method is an order probit model. At the end, the results show an important connection between individual, institutional and socioeconomic variables with the health status of a person in Colombia. The effect of the type of access to medical care strengths the inequities in health outcome. *************************************************************************** RESUMEN El artículo busca encontrar evidencia empírica de los determinantes de la salud, como una medición de capital salud en un país en desarrollo después de una profunda reforma en el sector salud. Siguiendo el modelo de Grossman (1972) y tomando factores institucionales, además de las variables individuales y socioeconómicas. Se usaron las encuestas de 1997 y 2000 donde se responde subjetivamente sobre el estado de salud y tipo de afiliación al sistema de salud. El proceso de estimación usado es un probit ordenado. Los resultados muestran una importante conexión entre las variables individuales, institucionales y socioeconómicas con el estado de salud. El efecto de tipo de acceso al sistema de salud presiona las inequidades en salud.Demand for health, health production, developing countries, probit estimations

Influence of Adaptive Comfort Models in Execution Cost Improvements for Housing Thermal Environment in Concepción, Chile

Most of the operational energy needed by the housing sector is used to compensate energy losses or thermal gains through the building’s envelope. As a result, any improvement in the thermal behavior will provide important opportunities to reduce energy consumption. This research analyzes improvements in the thermal envelope in social housing in the Greater Concepción area in Chile using adaptive thermal comfort models and thermal insulation investments. The objective set out is to evaluate the economic reduction of thermal envelope improvement costs for dwellings, which entails using the adaptive thermal comfort model obtained through monitoring and the surveys applied to the users of social housing in Concepción (CAS), against the international adaptive thermal comfort models established by the EN 15251:2007 and ASHRAE 55-2017 standards. Finally, it is concluded that, on having applied the social housing adaptive thermal comfort model (CAS), execution costs are reduced by between 28.8% and 58.2%, reaching a time of comfort in free oscillation similar to that obtained from applying the models of the EN 15251:2007 (74.2%) and ASHRAE 55-2017 standards (59.9%)CONICYT FONDECYT 3160806VI PPIT-U

Unattainable extended spacetime regions in conformal gravity

The Janis-Newman-Winicour metric is a solution of Einstein's gravity minimally coupled to a real massless scalar field. The $\gamma$-metric is instead a vacuum solution of Einstein's gravity. These spacetimes have no horizon and possess a naked singularity at a finite value of the radial coordinate, where curvature invariants diverge and the spacetimes are geodetically incomplete. In this paper, we reconsider these solutions in the framework of conformal gravity and we show that it is possible to solve the spacetime singularities with a suitable choice of the conformal factor. Now curvature invariants remain finite over the whole spacetime. Massive particles never reach the previous singular surface and massless particles can never do it with a finite value of their affine parameter. Our results support the conjecture according to which conformal gravity can fix the singularity problem that plagues Einstein's gravity.Comment: 1+10 pages, 2 figures. v2: refereed versio

The border effect and the non-linear relationship between trade and distance

After the seminal paper by McCallum, various authors have estimated the effect of regional and national borders on trade. This paper digs deeper into the matter, estimating how the internal and external border effect is affected by the non-linear relation between trade and distance at different spatial levels, and the econometric procedure used to control for it. Our paper uses a novel dataset that captures intra- and inter-national truck shipments between Spanish regions and regions in eight European countries. To deal with this non-linearity, we use three alternative strategies— segmented distance, piecewise regressions and semi-parametric approaches—that achieve similar result

In-loop Feature Tracking for Structure and Motion with Out-of-core Optimization

In this paper, a novel and approach for obtaining 3D models from video sequences captured with hand-held cameras is addressed. We define a pipeline that robustly deals with different types of sequences and acquiring devices. Our system follows a divide and conquer approach: after a frame decimation that pre-conditions the input sequence, the video is split into short-length clips. This allows to parallelize the reconstruction step which translates into a reduction in the amount of computational resources required. The short length of the clips allows an intensive search for the best solution at each step of reconstruction which robustifies the system. The process of feature tracking is embedded within the reconstruction loop for each clip as opposed to other approaches. A final registration step, merges all the processed clips to the same coordinate fram

Cláusulas abusivas en la contratación de préstamos hipotecarios

Abstract not availabl