In September 2005, the Chilean Competition Authority filed a lawsuit against the 5 largest private health insurance providers for violation of antitrust laws, specifically accusing them of collusion in the coverage of the plans offered to consumers between March 2002 and March 2003. In fact,...

In this paper I explore the relationship between the sales tax rate and the tax treatment of food in American states. One of the main difficulties in the empirical estimation of this relationship is that state governments set the two tax policy variables. This produces a potential endogeneity...

It is widely held that indigenous Chileans experience greater rates of poverty and indigence than non-indigenous Chileans, yet the evidence to date has been based on surveys that are not representative by ethnicity. In this paper, we use poverty mapping methodologies that are typically applied...

Despite success in reducing poverty over the last twenty years, inequality in Chile has remained virtually unchanged, making Chile one of the least equal countries in the world. High levels of inequality have been shown to hamper further reductions in poverty as well as economic growth and local...

There are several examples of pelagic fisheries that have experienced fishing collapse when facing downward abundance cycles. Improving understanding about pelagic catch's stock dependence can help avoid new cases of fishing collapse. This paper analyses the possible endogeneity of the fish...

In the last decade, the importance of exploiting significant long-term potential of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in Chile has increased significantly as fossil fuel prices rise and concerns regarding climate change issues grow, posing an important threat to its economy. However, to date, the...

In recent decades, we have seen in Latin America an increase in the use of conditional cash transfer programs to fight poverty. Although these programs can be effective to improve the welfare of the poor in the short term and to guarantee a certain basic health care and education, they can also...