It has become common wisdom amongst monetary policy professionals that central banks in Latin America should adopt inflation targeting. Pure inflation targeting implicitly assumes a social loss welfare function dependent on only inflation. In this paper using subjective well-being survey data...

This study compares the levelized cost of electricity generated with fossil fuels (including coal, natural gas, fuel oil, and diesel) and renewable or carbon-free energy sources (including hydro, wind, solar, nuclear and geothermal). A meta-study of power generation technology capital costs...

This paper exploits unique features of a recently introduced tariff schedule for natural gas in Buenos Aires to estimate the short-run impact of price shocks on residential energy utilization. The schedule induces a non-linear and nonmonotonic relationship between households’ accumulated...

El objetivo del presente estudio es, en primer lugar, introducir el estado actual del marco normativo e institucional vigente para la promoción de recursos energéticos renovables, tanto convencionales (RERC, es decir, grandes centrales hidráulicas), como no convencionales (RER, es decir,...

Este trabajo hace uso de la Encuesta Mundial de Gallup de 2006, que contiene opiniones sobre satisfacción con diversos aspectos de la vida en 130 países. Aunque la relación entre satisfacción e ingreso que se encuentra es muy sólida (tanto entre países como entre individuos en los...

This paper makes use of the 2006 Gallup World Survey, which includes opinions on satisfaction with various aspects of life in 130 countries. Although a very solid relationship is found between satisfaction and income (both across and within countries), raising doubts regarding the well-known...

This paper assesses the welfare impacts of local investments projects in rural areas of Guatemala. Using census track data from two rounds of the Guatemalan population census, we find, as expected, that local investment in schools significantly boost enrollment and normal progression in school,...

This paper examines the association between trust and community involvement with fear of crime. Fear of crime is measured by three typical perception measures: neighborhood security; walking alone in the dark; and the risk of becoming a victim. The data is from Chile’s Victimization Survey....

The paper uses microeconomic data to characterize entrepreneurs by income group and selected household, individual and business characteristics, finding that entrepreneurship is rare but more frequent in the upper class than the middle or lower classes. Middle-class entrepreneurs are, on...

This paper uses self-reported data on victimization, subjective well being and ideology for a panel of individuals living in six Argentine cities. While no relationship is found between happiness and victimization experiences, a correlation is documented, however, between victimization...