School Choice, Incentives, and Academic Outcomes: Evidence from Chile

This paper examines the effects of inter-school competition on student outcomes by using exogenous variation in the availability of private schools in Chile. Given that naïve estimates of the effects of competition on student outcomes are biased by endogenous entry of schools, this paper uses variation in the number of Catholic priests per capita in different school markets, as an exogenous determinant of the supply of private schools. Results suggest that greater competition significantly raises both test scores and the productivity of schools. There is also evidence that the effects of school choice are significantly larger for students attending subsidized private schools, and insignificant or even negative for students attending public schools facing softer budget constraintsVouchers, School choice, incentives, Chile

Trends and Cycles in Real-Time

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 trend component. Furthermore, most of the filters commonly used to detrend time series in practice, are highly unstable and unreliable for end-of-sample estimation.

Financial Structure in Chile: Macroeconomic Developments and Microeconomic Effects

The objectives of this paper are, first, to describe the developments in Chilean financial markets at the macroeconomic level and, then, to examine their effects at the level of firms. After reviewing the main government policies towards financial markets in the last three decades, the paper describes the remarkable changes and progress in the banking sector and in various types of capital markets (bond, stock, pension and insurance markets) during the same period. This is done by evaluating changes in financial markets size, activity, and efficiency. Second, the paper analyzes the changes in both the access to financial markets and the financing (balance-sheet) decisions in a sample of Chilean firms. The sample consists of 79 firms that are quoted in the stock market and for which annual balance sheet data for the period 1985-1995 are available and complete. The paper estimates and tests econometrically three issues. The first is whether the firms' reliance on internal funds for investment has decreased in the more financially open period of the 1990s relative to the 1980s and, thus, whether investment has been more responsive to changes in the q-value of the firm. The second examines whether financial liberalization and the development of the banking, stock and bond markets at the aggregate level have affected the importance of debt relative to equity and the maturity of debt in the balance sheet of firms. The third studies the extent to which firm-specific and aggregate financial market developments have impacted on firm growth, measured by the percentage increase in operational revenues. In general, we conclude that financial developments at the macro level have indeed had an impact on the firms' access to capital markets, their financial structure, and their rate of growth.

Good, bad, and ugly colonial activities : studying development across the Americas

Levels of economic development vary widely within countries in the Americas. This paper argues that part of this variation has its roots in the colonial era. Colonizers engaged in different economic activities in different regions of a country, depending on local conditions. Some activities were"bad"in the sense that they depended heavily on the exploitation of labor and created extractive institutions, while"good"activities created inclusive institutions. The authors show that areas with bad colonial activities have lower gross domestic product per capita today than areas with good colonial activities. Areas with high pre-colonial population density also do worse today. In particular, the positive effect of"good"activities goes away in areas with high pre-colonial population density. The analysis attributes this to the"ugly"fact that colonizers used the pre-colonial population as an exploitable resource. The intermediating factor between history and current development appears to be institutional differences across regions and not income inequality or the current ethnic composition of the population.Population Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Demographics,,Country Population Profiles