Paul CarrilloPhD University of Virginia
Abstract: An important
Abstract
Paul Carrillo PhD University of Virginia
Abstract: An important but poorly understood form of firm tax evasion arises from “ghost firms”—fake firms that issue fraudulent receipts so that their clients can claim false deductions. We provide a unique window into this global phenomenon using transactionlevel tax data from Ecuador. 5% of firms use ghost invoices annually and, among these firms, ghost transactions comprise 14% of purchases. Ghost transactions are particularly prevalent among large firms and firms with high-income owners, and exhibit suspicious patterns, such as bunching below financial system thresholds. An innovative enforcement intervention targeting ghost clients rather than ghosts themselves led to substantial tax recovery.
Cristóbal OteroPhD UC Berkeley
Abstract: We study whether, and how, managers can increase government productivity in the context
Abstract
Cristóbal Otero PhD UC Berkeley
Abstract: We study whether, and how, managers can increase government productivity in the context of public health provision. Using novel data from public hospitals in Chile, we document that top managers (CEOs) account for a significant amount of variation in hospital mortality. We then use a staggered difference-in-differences design, and show that a reform which introduced a competitive selection system for recruiting CEOs in public hospitals reduced hospital mortality by approximately 8%. The effect is not explained by a change in patient composition
and is robust to several alternative explanations. The financial incentives included in the reform—performance pay and higher wages—do not explain our findings. Instead, we show that the policy changed the pool of CEOs by displacing older doctors with no management training in favor of younger CEOs who had studied management. The mortality effects were driven by hospitals in which the new CEOs had managerial qualifications. These CEOs improved operating room efficiency and reduced staff turnover.
Andrea LópezPhD George Washington University
Abstract: This paper studies tax evasion in the form of under-reported wages in
Abstract
Andrea López PhD George Washington University
Abstract: This paper studies tax evasion in the form of under-reported wages in Ecuador using microdata from a combination of electronic billing and personal income tax returns filed in 2017. Bringing together this novel combination of data, the study applies the standard method Pissarides and Weber (1989) used to estimate the under-reporting of income by comparing public- and private-sector employees. The results demonstrate empirically that under-reporting of income in private-sector employees is between 7 and 9 percent of their income, which translates to an estimated 3 percent of unregistered GDP. The under-reporting has important implications for social security, reducing these contributions by about 10 percent. Beyond the overall picture of under-reporting, the study detects substantial heterogeneities concerning firm size, concluding that the gap size is negatively correlated with the number of employees at the firm, which is consistent with different risks and administrative costs of envelope wages in small versus large firms.
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.
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.
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
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.
Abstract: We study a regulation in Chile that mandates warning labels on products whose sugar or caloric concentration exceeds certain thresholds. We show that consumers substitute from labeled to unlabeled products—a pattern mostly driven by products that consumers mistakenly believe to be healthy. On the supply side, we find substantial reformulation of products and bunching at the thresholds. We develop and estimate an equilibrium model of demand for food and firms’ pricing and nutritional choices. We find that food labels increase consumer welfare by 1.6% of total expenditure, and that these effects are enhanced by firms’ responses. We then use the model to study alternative policy designs. Under optimal policy thresholds, food labels and sugar taxes generate similar gains in consumer welfare, but food labels benefit the poor relatively more.
Abstract: Does transit infrastructure reduce labor market power? This paper estimates the effects of a large subway expansion on local labor market outcomes in Santiago, Chile. Using a linked employer-employee dataset with spatial information on workers and firms, we estimate the effects of the network expansion on the most-affected workers and firms through a reduced-form analysis. We find changes in work locations and wages consistent with a reduction in firms’ labor market power around areas that were connected to the subway network after the expansion. We then lay out a quantitative spatial equilibrium model where firms behave as oligopsonies in the labor market to calculate the welfare gains from the transit infrastructure expansion. Our model allows us to decompose the welfare gains into: i) the efficiency gains through improved matching between workers and firms, and ii) the gains from reduced factor misallocation. The model also provides a framework to analyze the distributional implications of reduced labor market power for workers and firms.
Abstract: This paper examines the effects of institutional differences between marriage and non-marital cohabitation on household formation, individual’s welfare, and child human capital. I first show that, conditional on observable characteristics, cohabiting couples have, on average, higher separation rates, higher female labor supply, and worse cognitive outcomes among their children, relative to married couples. To explain these empirical findings, I model the individuals’ life-cycle problem within an equilibrium marriage market framework that features the choice between marriage and cohabitation. I estimate the model using U.S. household data. The results indicate that low-educated cohabiting women receive a lower share of the household’s resources than low-educated married women. Moreover, consistent with the empirical findings, their children accumulate less human capital compared to those born to low-educated married women, explained by lower maternal time investments and higher separation rates between cohabiting couples. In counterfactual analysis, I equalize child custody laws for unmarried and married parents upon separation. I find that this policy would improve the welfare of low-educated cohabiting women and the outcomes of their children. Accounting for marriage market equilibrium effects is critical for this result: Under the baseline equilibrium, this policy change would reduce the welfare of low-educated cohabiting women (by reducing their access to children upon separation). However, in the new marriage market equilibrium, these women would be compensated with a higher share of the household’s resources, which induces them to form cohabiting relationships. This policy also contributes to closing the human capital gap between children born to low-educated cohabiting and married women
Abstract: Colombian schools have been closed since March 15, 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, causing concerns over the potential widening of the already large academic gaps between students from different socio-economic strata. We suggest an intervention aimed at narrowing these gaps by assigning online high school students as tutors to fifth graders from more disadvantaged backgrounds. Our intervention consists of two different components. First, we plan to evaluate the impact of tutoring on both academic outcomes, as well as non-cognitive ones for the tutees. Second, we will evaluate whether exposure to peers from lower-economic strata impacts the tutors views on poverty and redistribution of income.
Claudio Mora PhD Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Abstract: This paper studies the effects of peers on the adoption of a Youth Employment Subsidy in Chile since its inception. We examine the effects that former classmates’ and coworkers’ adoption have on one’s adoption. Identification comes from discontinuities in the assignment rule that allow us to construct valid instrumental variables for peers’ adoption. Using a comprehensive set of administrative records, we find that classmates and especially coworkers play significant roles in the adoption of the subsidy. Peer effects are determined during the early stages of the program’s implementation and vary by network characteristics and the strength of network ties.
Claudio Mora PhD Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Abstract: This paper uses the gradual implementation of a primary health care intervention in Costa Rica to examine the long-term effect of primary health care on mortality. Nine years after opening a primary health care center, known as a Health Area, there was an associated 13 % reduction in age-adjusted mortality rate in the assigned patient population. The effect was highest for those aged 65 years and older and for those with non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular-related causes of death. We also show that as Health Areas opened, more individuals sought care at primary care clinics and fewer at emergency rooms, which may have partially mediated the effect of the intervention on mortality.
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.
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.
