SEMINARIOS ACADÉMICOS

Pablo Flores
MA. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Abstract: Los países del Triángulo Norte de Centroamérica han presentado en el pasado reciente una ralentización en sus tasas de crecimiento económico. Ante esta realidad, surge la pregunta: ¿cuáles son las restricciones que enfrentan y que evitan una mayor expansión y una mejor interacción entre los agentes económicos? Para responder a dicho cuestionamiento, el marco metodológico diseñado por Hausmann, Rodrik y Velasco (2005), denominado «Diagnóstico del Crecimiento», se presenta como una alternativa ideal por su adaptabilidad y su nivel de completitud. Los resultados obtenidos para el período 1990-2019 sugieren, sin ser limitativos, la necesidad de fortalecer el diseño de las políticas públicas de estos países en temas torales, como la inseguridad ciudadana y el crimen; la baja calidad, eficiencia y coordinación de las instituciones del sector público; así como los bajos niveles de productividad y calidad del capital humano; de manera que disminuyan estas restricciones al crecimiento económico. Por tanto, coordinar esfuerzos para implementar acciones de política que apoyen la reducción de dichas restricciones puede contribuir al éxito de las agendas de trabajo nacionales y de esa manera permitir que los países alcancen mayores estadios de Desarrollo.

Raimundo Soto
PhD Universidad de Georgetown

Abstract: This paper reviews the design and operation of the Chilean fiscal rule in the past 30 years. Using different empirical approaches, we assess its impact on fiscal procyclicality, public debt, and public investment. While there has been substantial progress in building a modern institutional framework for fiscal policy, we find that the rule is incomplete in two dimensions: it lacks an escape clause, and it needs to supplement the budget balance rule with a debt rule. The former is seen in the pervasive inability of the authorities to steer fiscal accounts back to their long-term sustainable path after the rule was breached the rule in 2009. The latter issue is illustrated by the speedy build-up of the public debt as a result of the need to finance fiscal deficits. We do not find, nevertheless, a negative impact of the rule on public investment. We propose reforms to improve on transparency and accountability, as well as to supplement the rule with escape clauses and a debt anchor.

Paula Calvo
PhD Yale University

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Juan Francisco Yépez
PhD en Economía. Universidad de Notre Dame.
Economista Senior del FMI.

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of fiscal consolidation announcements on sovereign spreads using high frequency data for a panel of 21 emerging market economies during 2000–18. We construct a novel dataset using a global news database to identify the precise announcement date of fiscal consolidation actions. Our results show that sovereign spreads barely decline after fiscal announcements from the executive branch. Nonetheless, spreads decline significantly following news that austerity measures have been approved by the legislature (congress or parliament), particularly in economies with high sovereign spreads, debt levels, and low credit-risk ratings. These effects are even larger in the presence of an IMF program. In addition, we find that consolidation announcements are less contractionary when sovereign spreads decline. The reduction in output is a third of the counterfactual case in which spreads do not respond to announcements. These results show that confidence effects, in the form of lower sovereign spreads, are an important transmission channel of fiscal policy actions. We also find that the role of confidence effects increases with the level of spreads, such that countries with high spread levels stand to benefit the most from putting in place credible austerity packages.

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Paul Carrillo
PhD en Economía. Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales.
Docente-Investigador UDLA.

Abstract: This paper estimates the distribution-led regime of the US economy for the period 1947–2019. We use a time varying parameter model, which allows for changes in the regime over time. To the best of our knowledge this is the first paper that has attempted to do this. This innovation is important, because there is no reason to expect that the regime of the US economy (or any economy for that matter) remains constant over time. On the contrary, there are significant reasons that point to changes in the regime. We find that the US economy became more profit-led in the first postwar decades until the 1970s and has become less profit-led since; it is slightly wage-led over the last fifteen years.

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Arnab Basu
PhD en Economía. The Johns Hopkins University.
Profesor en Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University.

Abstract: : Bargaining power of a spouse within the household is highly correlated with a spouse’s individual characteristics like education, labor market participation, fertility, monetary / non-monetary transfers at the time of marriage and health, amongst other factors. One way to address this endogeneity is to exploit unanticipated income shocks (windfall income gains to either the husband or the wife) to determine how the extra income is used, and therefore which spouse has more bargaining power. Absent income shocks, field experiments offer an alternative method of observing bargaining power by letting husbands and wives decide about the allocation of a pre-determined endowment within a controlled environment independently of each other. In this talk, I will focus on the design of a novel intra-household bargaining power experiment that mimics real world decision-making by featuring both non-cooperative and cooperative decision-making aspects. As an example, I will relate the measure of mother’s bargaining power to children’s educational outcomes using data from rural Cote d’ Ivoire. I will also discuss an experiment to elicit risk preferences to check whether mother’s risk preferences and bargaining power complement each other in the determination of educational outcomes for children

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María Marta Ferreyra
PhD en Economía. PhD en Economía. University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Economista Senior en la Oficina del Economista Jefe para América Latina y el Caribe del Banco Mundial.

Abstract: : Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs) can play a central role in skill development and higher education expansion, yet their quality varies greatly within and among countries. In this paper we explore the relationship between programs’ practices and inputs (quality determinants) and student academic and labor market outcomes. We design and conduct a novel survey to collect program-level information on quality determinants and average outcomes for Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Peru. Categories of quality determinants include training and curriculum, infrastructure, faculty, link with productive sector, costs and funding, and other practices on student admission and institutional governance. We also collect administrative, student-level data on higher education and formal employment for SCP students in Brazil and Ecuador and match it to survey data. Using machine learning methods, we select the quality determinants that predict outcomes at the program and student levels. Estimates indicate that some quality determinants may favor academic and labor market outcomes while others may hinder them. Two practices predict improvements in all labor market outcomes in Brazil and Ecuador—teaching numerical competencies and providing job market information—and one practice—teaching numerical competencies—additionally predicts improvements in labor market outcomes for all survey countries. Since quality determinants account for 20-40 percent of the explained variation in student-level outcomes, estimates indicate a role for quality determinants to shrink the quality gap among programs. These findings have implications for the design and replication of high-quality SCPs, their regulation, and the development of information systems.

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