We assess price dispersion in retail markets and its sources over time. Using a product-detailed price database, we document a consistent divergence of prices over time in retail markets in Uruguay: price dispersion increased by 3.1% in fifteen years. Next, we analyze microeconomic and...

This paper examines the disparity in default risk between vulnerable and non-vulnerable populations in consumer lending. We merge an exhaustive registry of loans granted in the financial system with microdata on vulnerable individuals applying for social programs. We estimate the sources of this...

This paper presents new evidence on wage and price setting based on a survey of more than 300 Uruguayan firms in 2013. Most of the firms set prices considering costs and adding a profit margin; therefore, they have some degree of market power. The evidence indicates that price increases appear...

The "border effect" literature finds that political borders have a very large impact on relative prices, implicitly adding several thousands of miles to trade. In this paper we show that the standard empirical specification suffers from selection bias, and propose a new methodology based on...

In a press article in the International Herald Tribune o September 27th, 2007, the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, established “Henceforth, climate change will no longer be a primarily environmental concern (...) As a political issue, climate change becomes closely linked...

We offer a new mechanism for prices to deviate from the Law of One Price. If stores differ in the varieties offered in a given product category, prices diverge more often regardless of distance. A simple extension to the Hotelling (1929) explains this result. To have one difference in variety in...

This study applies the extension of the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition developed by Albrecht, van Vuuren and Vroman (2009) to analyze the gender wage gap with selection correction in Uruguay. The wage gap is increasing in the upper part of the wage distribution suggesting a glass ceiling...

We analyze the impact of conditional cash payments on school enrollment, child labor and labor supply implemented between 2005 and 2007 to the poorest Uruguayan households. Targeting income discontinuities are not observed around the thresholds to partici