Chile’s regulatory framework is working reasonably well. The country’s structural reforms since the 1980s, with the privatisation of utilities and deregulation of product and labour markets, have improved resource allocation and increased the population’s access to basic services, while...

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are increasingly used to provide infrastructure services. Even though PPPs have the potential to increase efficiency and improve resource allocation, contract renegotiations have been pervasive. We show that existing accounting standards allow governments to...

Studies that estimate deficit probabilities in hydrothermal systems have generally ignored the response of demand to changing prices, in the belief that such response is largely irrelevant. We show that ignoring the response of demand to prices can lead to substantial over or under estimation of...

This paper analyses the foundations of “efficient-firm” regulation (implemented in Chile for almost two decades), and the formulas that are used to set the prices of water/sanitation companies, electric power distributors and the dominant phone companies. We show that efficient-firm...

Este trabajo estudia formalmente si la ley eléctrica contenía precios suficientes para administrar sin cortes y eficientemente caídas drásticas de la cantidad ofrecida de energía y daba los incentivos correctos para invertir en capacidad de reserva. También analizamos en detalle las...

In market economies financial intermediaries develop during the early stages of industrialization. This paper argues that it occurs because as firms specialize the number of transactions involving credit increases. The main conclusions of the paper are : (a) when increased specialization is a...

La traída del gas natural argentino para generar energía eléctrica fue muy beneficiosa para Chile. Si se pierde el gas argentino —advierten los autores de este trabajo—, el costo de generación de electricidad, sólo en el SIC, aumentará en aproximadamente US$ 350 millones por año. Esta...

An influential literature has emerged around the premise that there exists an uneasy tension between (1) bank-firm relationships that promote incentives for firm-specific investments by banks, and (2) competition between banks that can destroy such incentives. This paper studies the industrial...

Esta nota estudia los determinantes de la tasa de descuento apropiada para fijar peajes de transmisión. Para ello se desarrolla un modelo simple que permite descomponerla en una suma de la tasa libre de riesgo y el premio por riesgo. Los principios generales son dos: (a) la tasa de descuento...