Abstracts

Parallel Sessions F1 to F5

Full abstracts for the five contributed sessions of block F. Each session lists three papers with authors and affiliations.

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Block A Block B Block C Block D Block E Block F Full program

F1: Economic History

Country of Women? Repercussions of the Triple Alliance War in Paraguay

Felipe Valencia, University of British Columbia
Jennifer Alix García, Oregon State University
Laura Schechter, UW Madison
Jessica Zhu, Precision Agriculture for Development

Skewed sex ratios often result from conflict, disease, and migration, yet their long term impact remains less understood. The War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870) in South America killed up to 70% of the Paraguayan male population. According to Paraguayan national lore, the skewed sex ratios resulting from the conflict are the cause of present day low marriage rates, high rates of out of wedlock births and a generally male chauvinist culture. We collate historical and modern data to test this conventional wisdom in the short and the long run. We examine both cross border and within country variation in child rearing, education and labor force participation in Paraguay over a 150 year period. We find that more skewed post war sex ratios are associated with higher out of wedlock births, more female headed households, and better female educational outcomes, even after the first returned to normal. Cross country comparisons suggest that Paraguayan women are less likely to be employed than those in neighboring districts in Argentina and Brazil, but that within Paraguay, they are more likely to be employed where the sex ratio shock was more severe. The impacts of the war persist into the present, and are seemingly unaffected by variation in economic openness, uncertainty, or traditional norms.

The grievances of a failed reform: Chilean land reform and conflict with indigenous communities

Dany Jaimovich, Universidad de Talca

This paper study the effects of the Chilean land reform (1962–1973) on the intensity of the current indigenous self determination conflict in the Araucania region. The Mapuche were actively involved in the land reform process, and at least 150,000 hectares were expropriated in their favor. Nevertheless, the counter reform process, after the 1973 military coup, almost fully reverted these expropriations. This failed land reform potentially created local grievances which may explain some aspects of the current social and political conflict in the region. To test this hypothesis, a unique geocoded plot level database for the Araucania region has been assembled. The results from OLS estimates suggest that plots involved in the land reform are more likely to be invaded and attacked and the effect is larger for plots located around indigenous reductions and those in which there was direct Mapuche participation during the land reform. To deal with potential endogeneity problems, we implement an instrumental variable identification strategy based on historical rainfall in the region. In these results, the sign of the estimates for land reform plots is reverted, but the results for the sub set of plots with Mapuche participation are confirmed.

The Legacy of Spanish Conquista in the Andes Understanding the persistence of the Mining Mita

Cesar Huaroto, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

There is a growing body of literature that documents the long term effect of history in development. But, it is not yet clear how it is affecting economic growth today. To shed light on this topic, I use the case of the Mining Mita and provide evidence of its persistence through beliefs and attitudes. Specifically, Mita districts experienced more social unrest, participate less in democracy, and have less interest in politics, and show higher self identification with their local ethnic group. Moreover, I show evidence of how a recent mining boom in the area affects Mita non mita differently—finding that the former benefit less from it. Taken together, this evidence documents that historical events can interact with economic shocks to maintain its effect over time

F2: Economic Growth

Crecimiento económico, corrupción e instituciones en Bolivia

Juan Barrios, UMSA

La presente investigación se plantea con el propósito de analizar los efectos de la corrupción sobre el crecimiento económico en Bolivia, considerando la calidad del entorno institucional en los dos sistemas políticos que comprende el lapso 1996–2018. Para dicho objeto el enfoque aplicado a la presente investigación corresponde al de la escuela neo institucionalista, que permite dilucidar el efecto de las instituciones sobre el crecimiento económico, utilizando para dicha labor técnicas de datos panel dinámicos sobre los tres sectores de la economía nacional. Los resultados muestran que la corrupción tiene un efecto nocivo sobre el crecimiento económico nacional, que el entorno institucional no ha podido amortiguar debido a su baja calidad.

El impacto de los choques transitorios y de largo plazo en el PIB de Bolivia: Un modelo de Vectores Autoregresivos Estructurales

Ernesto Bernal, Universidad Técnica de Oruro

La economía de un país tiene variables de importancia crítica, que son el crecimiento del Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) y los precios. Esta investigación presenta el impacto de corto y largo plazo en el PIB y los precios en Bolivia El objetivo del trabajo de investigación es: Estimar parámetros y choques estructurales de corto y largo plazo a partir de la imposición de restricciones basadas en la teoría económica. La metodología utilizada fue vectores autorregresivos estructurales con datos del Instituto Nacional de Estadística. Los choques de oferta agregada tienen un impacto positivo de largo plazo sobre el PIB de nuestra economía y generan una caída en el nivel de los precios. La respuesta a los choques de demanda del PIB y los precios es negativa. Las crisis política, subprime y de los commodities han tenido un impacto negativo sobre el crecimiento del PIB.

Productivity Dynamics and Convergence Clubs in Latin America

Carlos Méndez, Nagoya University

A growing literature highlights the development potential of Latin America being constrained by its low productivity. Through the lens of a non linear dynamic factor model, this paper evaluates the productivity dynamics and convergence patterns of 20 Latin American countries over the 1980–2014 period. The results indicate a lack of overall convergence and the formation of multiple convergence clubs with separating tendencies. Two commonly used indicators support these findings. On the one hand, the dynamics of labor productivity suggest the formation of four clubs of countries. On the other, the dynamics of total factor productivity suggest the formation of three clubs. Interestingly, in both indicators, the lowest productivity club is systematically drifting downwards at the highest speed. Overall, these results indicate that masked behind the average low productivity of Latin America, there are pockets of heterogeneity that need to be addressed to improve both economic cohesion and competitiveness in the region.

F3: Environmental Economics

Assessing ‘not in my backyard’ environmental policies: Is carbon leakage worse than we thought?

Johann Caro Burnett, Hiroshima University
Luis E. Gonzales Carrasco, CLAPES UC, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

In the last few decades, highly productive and developed countries have pushed their policy agenda towards environmentally friendly policies. The carbon leakage literature has shown us that these policies have increased the emissions in unregulated countries, which happen to be low productivity and developing nations. Using a panel at the country level, we show that because of the productivity differential, the global net effect of heterogeneous regulation has increased global net emissions. This result calls for international coordination and cooperation in order to achieve a sustainable global economy.

Marriage Market Responses in the Event of a Natural Disaster in India

Shreyasee Das, Temple University
Shatanjaya Dasgupta, Beloit College

With increasing occurrences of natural disasters globally, there is a need to study their demographic effects both in the short and long run. In the backdrop of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake that resulted in over 20,000 casualties and large scale loss of property, this paper analyzes marriage market responses in the event of a natural disaster. Using the 2004–05 round of the India Human Development Survey and employing a difference in differences strategy, we find a statistically significant reduction in women’s marriage age, a lower probability of marital matches within the same villages, a decrease in spousal educational difference and probability of marrying a husband with more education, and an increased likelihood of women marrying into poorer households. Additionally, we discuss how our results could be affected by several channels and provide empirical evidence on changes in dowry payments as a potential mechanism.

Weather Shocks’ Impacts on Farm Level Agricultural Outcomes in Bolivia

Sergio Daga, UPSA and University of Navarra

This paper studies how weather shocks affect agricultural outcomes in Bolivia at the farm level. Using micro data from the Bolivian Agricultural Survey of 2008 and 2015, satellite climate data, and a municipality level fixed effects model, we show that weather shocks, such as extreme temperature and extreme rainfall shocks have detrimental effects on Bolivian farmers’ yield. We also study how farmers cope with short run weather extreme variations. We present our results differentiating by the climate risk areas and the geographic regions of Bolivia. On average, farmers that live in highlands municipalities experience greater reductions in yields and farmers that live in flood prone municipalities increase the within farm labor supply in agricultural activities to cope with weather shocks. Our findings could orient policies toward mitigating the short run implications of weather extreme variations.

F4: Labor Markets

Active Labor Market Policies in a Context of High Informality: The Effect of PAE in Bolivia

Horacio Valencia, CAF
Rafael Novella, IDB and University of Oxford

Information asymmetries and limited skills are two main factors affecting jobseeker’s chances to access quality jobs in developing countries. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a job intermediation and wage subsidy program in Bolivia, a country with one of the highest levels of informality in Latin – America. Using administrative and survey, we find that the program substantially increases employment, formality, and earnings. These effects are heterogeneous across different subsamples of interest. Our results suggest that Active Labor Market Policies might be an effective solution for improving access to quality jobs in the context of high informality.

Childcare Provision and Labor Outcomes for Women in Poverty

Jose Balmori de la Miyar, Universidad Anahuac México
Carlos Rodriguez Castelán, World Bank
Adán Silverio Murillo, Tecnológico de Monterrey

This paper examines the causal effect of a public childcare program on labor outcomes for eligible poor women, living in urban areas in Mexico. We use the 2013 wave of the National Survey for Employment and Social Security (ENESS), which is a special module of the National Survey for Employment and Occupations (ENOE), the main survey used in Mexico to measure nationwide labor outcomes. The identification strategy for this paper consists of an instrumental variable that captures transaction costs on childcare program participation. Namely, we use the linear distance from the household to the nearest public childcare location. Preliminary results indicate a statistical significant effect of public childcare on employment equal to 2.3%.

Recentred influence functions (RIFs) in Stata: RIF regression and RIF decomposition

Fernando Rios Avila, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

Recentered influence functions (RIFs) are statistical tools popularized by Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2009, Econometrica 77: 953{973) for analyzing unconditional partial e ects on quantiles in a regression analysis framework (unconditional quantile regressions). The flexibility and simplicity of these tools have opened the possibility to extend the analysis to other distributional statistics using linear regressions or decomposition approaches. In this article, I introduce one function and two commands to facilitate the use of RIFs in the analysis of outcome distributions: rifvar() is an egen extension used to create RIFs for a large set of distributional statistics, rifhdreg facilitates the estimation of RIF regressions enabling the use of high dimensional fixed effects, and Oaxaca RIF implements Oaxaca Blinder decomposition analysis (RIF decompositions).

F5: Development in Bolivia

Crecimiento Económico, Desigualdad y Pobreza: Evaluación Empírica para el Caso Boliviano

Claudia C. Montaño, Universidad Mayor de San Simón and Consultora Energía Inteligente
Marcel Navia, Universidad Mayor de San Simón and Consultora Energía Inteligente

A lo largo de la historia muchos países han priorizado el crecimiento económico sobre los indicadores de inequidad en los ingresos y pobreza, por considerarlos objetivos contrapuestos. En los últimos años, se ha empezado a generar una posición contraria, la misma plantea que para garantizar elevados niveles de crecimiento económico, debe priorizarse la distribución de ingresos como un determinante para reducir los niveles de pobreza. El objetivo es determinar el impacto del crecimiento económico sobre la inequidad en la distribución de los ingresos y la pobreza, utilizando datos de Bolivia. Al tomar en cuenta aspectos teóricos es posible argumentar que existe una relación negativa entre el coeficiente de Gini y la tasa de crecimiento de la economía, lo cual es evidenciado empíricamente a partir de la modelación econométrica con información anual de series de tiempo y de corte transversal para el período 1989–2018. De acuerdo a los resultados de la investigación se tiene que el crecimiento económico no ha reducido la desigualdad en el ingreso de Bolivia, aunque si ha disminuido el nivel de pobreza.

Determinants of total productivity of factors in South America

Andrés Gutierrez Villca, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés

Este estudio identifica los determinantes de la Productividad Total de Factores (PTF) de América del Sur haciendo uso de técnicas econométricas de datos panel con la aproximación de diversos indicadores económicos, institucionales, tecnológicos y sociales. Entre los principales resultados se destacan la fuerte contribución a la PTF de los términos de intercambio, el ahorro, la apertura externa, el salario real, la inversión extranjera. En cuanto al capital humano presentan efectos positivos, pero de magnitud reducida, expresándose en la baja formación y capacitación de los trabajadores. Los entornos institucional y tecnológico, reportan efectos positivos de magnitud reducida. La volatilidad de los términos de intercambio, la informalidad, la desigualdad, la fertilidad, reportan efectos negativos de magnitudes altas. Por país se identifica que las economías que incrementaron sus dotaciones de capital humano y fortalecimiento del entorno institucional, aumentaron su productividad eficientemente, por el contrario, las economías que no presentaron mejoras en dichas áreas fueron rezagando su productividad. En una retrospección histórica 1976 a 2015, la contribución de la PTF al crecimiento económico regional fue marcado preeminentemente por el comportamiento de los términos de intercambio.

Fluctuaciones climatológicas e inflación de alimentos en Bolivia

Darwin Ugarte, UPB

La inflación de alimentos es un componente importante de la inflación total en Bolivia, sus fluctuaciones definen bastante las variaciones del IPC. Lo particular es que estas fluctuaciones en los precios de alimentos están determinadas principalmente por eventos no anticipados y fuera del alcance de las políticas monetarias: los shocks climatológicos, como sequías, inundaciones, heladas y granizadas. El presente trabajo estima la relación existente entre estos shocks climatológicos y la inflación de alimentos en Bolivia: se calculan las elasticidades precio clima para los tres productos con mayor incidencia en el IPC, tomate, cebolla y papa. En la medida que las variables climatológicas se miden en el periodo de producción (exante) y los precios una vez terminada la cosecha (expost), se sugiere que los resultados de la investigación pueden proponer a las variables climatológicas construidas como indicadores líder de la inflación de alimentos en Bolivia.