Technical efficiency, production risk and sharecropping: The case of rice farming in Chile

Submitted by Cristóbal Vásquez on

Contractual relationships regarding land tenure in agriculture are diverse. From formal systems such as landowner and fixed rent, sharecropping emerges as an alternative in which the owner of the land shares the benefits and risks of the results with tenants. Therefore, land tenure systems differ in terms of the incentives that the landowner offers to workers, which can have an impact on productivity and production risk.

Agriculture, Policy Design

Entry, location, and optimal environmental policies

Submitted by Cristóbal Vásquez on

We investigate the problem of choosing environmental regulations to control a multilateral, spatially heterogeneous pollution externality. There are three sources of inefficiency in this problem; the number of firms, their locations and their production/emissions levels. A first-best policy requires three instruments to address each of the sources of inefficiency, but such policies are not practical in most settings.

Policy Design

Forecasting extreme financial risk: A score-driven approach

Submitted by Cristóbal Vásquez on
EfD Authors:

This paper develops a new class of dynamic models for forecasting extreme financial risk. This class of models is driven by the score of the conditional distribution with respect to both the duration between extreme events and the magnitude of these events. It is shown that the models are a feasible method for modeling the time-varying arrival intensity and magnitude of extreme events. It is also demonstrated how exogenous variables such as realized measures of volatility can easily be incorporated.

Policy Design

Moving from Intention to Action: Insights on Firms’ Active Pro-Environmental Behavior

Submitted by Cristóbal Vásquez on

Organizations' pro-environmental intentions, like declaring environmental policies, are vital in determining organizations' pro-environmental behavior. However, the number of firms that move from intention to action is small. This study seeks to determine the organization's characteristics that influence firms' probability of declaring environmental policies and establish whether these policies or pro-environmental intentions are a good predictor of active pro-environmental behaviors.

Climate Change, Policy Design

Use of medical services in Chile: How sensitive are the results to different econometric models?

Submitted by Cristóbal Vásquez on

We compared different econometric specifications to model the use of medical services in Chile, focussing on visits to general practitioners and specialist physicians. The evaluated models are the Poisson, Negative Binomial, Zero Inflated Poisson and Negative Binomial, two-step Hurdle model, sample-selection Poisson, and Latent Class model.

Policy Design

Firms adaptation to climate change through product innovation

Submitted by Cristóbal Vásquez on

Climate change will impose high costs on different societal actors, including firms and organizations, forcing them to adapt to this new situation. Although the relevance of implementing adaptation strategies is widely recognized, studies on firms' adaptation to climate change are still in their infancy, especially regarding small and medium enterprises.

Climate Change, Policy Design

A comparison of mixed logit and latent class models to estimate market segments for seafood faced with ocean acidification

Submitted by Cristóbal Vásquez on

This study uses a choice experiment to characterize market segments (consumer preferences heterogeneity) based on three attributes of seafood (mussels) that are affected by ocean acidification: shell appearance, meat color, and nutritional composition. Using a sample of 1,257 individuals from two main cities in Chile, we estimate both the Mixed Logit model and the Latent Class model. We use the individual-specific posterior (ISP) parameters’ distribution to categorize consumers’ heterogeneity based on the signs and intensity (i.e., like or dislike dimension) of these ISPs.

Experiments, Fisheries, Policy Design

Traditional crops and climate change adaptation: insights from the Andean agricultural sector

Submitted by Cristóbal Vásquez on

The growth of traditional crops could be a primary resource for adapting to climate change and strengthening agrosystems’ resilience. However, these crops tend to be replaced by non-traditional crops with higher productivity, higher market values, and higher short-term income. In this context, smallholders face trade-offs between maximizing short-term income and ensuring resilience to face likely future climate adversities. The economic assessment of such trade-offs has been commonly neglected in the literature.

Agriculture, Climate Change, Policy Design, Water

Can local financial depth and dependence on external funding impact regional creation of new firms in Chile?

Submitted by Cristóbal Vásquez on

Uniform regional development is a challenge in low-income and emerging countries, making the role of financial systems to promote new business, investment, entrepreneurship, and growth particularly important. This paper investigates the combined effect of dependence on external funding and financial depth at a regional level, estimating a panel model using Chilean data. This study reveals evidence of a direct relationship between entrepreneurship and the combined effect of the two variables.

Policy Design