El proyecto de “ley corta” de electricidad propone importantes modificaciones a la actual regulación de la transmisión eléctrica en Chile. En este artículo desarrollamos un modelo simple para analizar dos de las propuestas centrales del proyecto: (i) el traspaso directo de parte de los...

The choice of an appropriate discount rate is of major importance in cost benefit analysis both, at the private and at the social levels. The theories that rationalize the NPV criterion also identify the appropriate rate. However, the question remains as to what should be done when the...

Over the last 12 years, Chile has been very successful in attracting private participation into the provision of Public Infrastructure. Private capital has gone into road infrastructure, ports and airports all over the country in the form of Concessions. The aim of the 1991 Concession Law, and...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the productivity experience of Chile over the last four decades. The major determinants of productivity growth are identified and, given this context, the country’s strengths and weaknesses are assessed with regard to the factors behind productivity...

This paper presents ways of measuring the progress of market-oriented reforms in both traditional areas of first-generation reform and the areas of institutional reform that have been emphasized lately. These policy areas are the domestic financial system; international financial markets;...

The profitability gap between state-owned enterprises and the non-state industrial sector in China is significant. Using a highly-disaggregated database of China’s industry in 2003, we estimate an average return to capital in state-owned enterprises about 9% that of foreign-invested firms, and...

Dollarization brought economic stability to Ecuador and higher economic growth. The labor market has not reacted accordingly and unemployment rates remain stubbornly around 10%. I use a simple econometric model of the labor market to disentangle the impact on employment of GDP growth, real...

FDI introduces competition between foreign and domestic firms at the factor market level. If the latter are technology backward, cost pressures render them uncompetitive, and absolute advantage determine the pattern of foreign and domestic firms’ production. To compensate for technology...

Policy makers in different parts of the world are paying more attention to environmental markets (i.e., tradeable emission permits markets) as an alternative to the traditional command-and-command control approach of setting uniform emission and technology standards. I extend the basic (perfect...

I study gender differences in major choice and college entrance probabilities in University of Campinas, a Brazilian public university dependent on the State of Sao Paulo. As with most Brazilian public universities, students select a major, and then compete for a place in that major by taking a...