Chile

Setting out from the broad capability approach put forward by Amartya Sen and working with data from the 2009 National Social Stratification Survey (enes), this article explores the influence of sex on differences in the personal capabilities deemed important for attaining outcomes that determine people’s levels of well-being or deprivation. In terms of capabilities, it investigates individuals’ ability to exercise material, cultural, social and political control over their lives and surroundings, distinguishing between the situation of men and women. Following the construction of individual capability measures, the hypothesis of female disadvantage was tested by the adjustment of multivariate models incorporating relevant controls. The findings suggest that there are non-negligible differences in capabilities between women and men in Chile.

Chilean exports have boomed since 1975, growing at an average annual rate of 6% per year in real terms. In this paper, we use Chilean manufacturing data at the plant level for the years from 1990 to 2007 to investigate the relationship between exports, plant dynamics and productivity. Our findings are consistent with the predictions of the new theories of heterogeneous firms and trade. First, 64.4% of the total increase in exports is accounted for by new exporters net of failed exporters. This effect is a combination of a larger proportion of plants exporting, a rising proportion of output sold abroad and a higher level of total sales. Second, productivity and exports co-moved over the course of the Chilean boom, exports being positively correlated with both withinplant productivity growth and the productivity-enhancing reallocation of output between plants.

This paper assesses the extent to which teachers’ actions in the classroom influence the school environment. The assessment is based on a statistical analysis of videotaped classroom observations of 51,329 teachers. The classroom environment was found to have a significant influence on students’ performance. More specifically, the teacher’s ability to handle the class as a group is consistently more significant than other measures of class environment. It was also founds that the overall school environment is a better predictor of students’ test results than the environment in the classrooms of the students whose test results are being reported. This suggests that the most effective course of action would be to improve the overall school environment, although individual teachers have less control over this factor.

A structural shift in the trend toward higher deficits had emerged by the middle of the 1860s in Chile. For some authors, this was the result of increased spending owing to a fastgrowing economy. Another common explanation is the higher spending required to finance and then recover from the war against Spain, which began in 1864. This article provides an alternative explanation for the country’s fiscal disarray during that period, suggesting that it was motivated largely by increased political turmoil at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century in Chile that ended with the ousting of President Balmaceda in 1891. That period represents a dramatic departure from the calmer and economically buoyant early years of the Republic. Thus, it is suggested that the beginning of President José Joaquín Pérez’s rule in 1861 marks both a major political realignment after the birth of the Republic and a structural shift in the trend toward higher deficits. This hypothesis is consistent with the idea that political instability tends to lead to a decoupling of taxes from spending, two elements which would be otherwise aligned as predicted by the tax smoothing theory. This essay is a factual description in support of this hypothesis.

In this study we provide evidence regarding the relationship between the Chilean peso carry trade and currency crashes of the peso against other currencies. Using a rich dataset containing information from the local Chilean forward market, we show that speculation aimed at taking advantage of the recently large interest rate differentials between the peso and developedcountry currencies has led to several episodes of abnormal turbulence, as measured by the exchange-rate distribution’s skewness coefficient. In line with the interpretative framework linking turbulence to changes in the forward positions of speculators, we find that turbulence is higher in periods during which measures of global uncertainty have been particularly high.

This article sets out to analyse differences in cognitive and non-cognitive skills between Chilean children. It first examines factors explaining the level of these skills and then goes on to distinguish between children from poor and non-poor households. The data are taken from the first Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey, which was analysed using logistic binary regression. This study finds that variables associated with the mother's intelligence level and other socialization-related variables are statistically significant. However, separate statistical analysis for poor and non-poor households yields different effects of socialization. The main conclusion is that the mother's skills are a relevant explanatory factor in both poor and non-poor children's households. Nonetheless, unequal development of skills in early childhood is not due to inherited traits alone. Stimulation matters in poor households, while the mother's education matters in non-poor households.

This article analyses the Chilean government’s response to the 1999 recession that followed on from the Asian financial crisis, focusing on the macroeconomic policy reforms adopted and the institutional factors that influenced this response. The analysis is based on a review of previous research on the topic and suggests that some fiscal and monetary policies adopted during 1997-1998 exacerbated the effects of what were initially external shocks. However, fiscal discipline and the robust public institutions developed before and after the recession strengthened Chilean social protection policies. Specifically, public debt reduction in the 1990s, the Copper Revenue Stabilization Fund (FEC) set up in 1985, the structural surplus fiscal rule introduced in 2000 and the new monetary, exchange-rate and fiscal policy mix of that decade reduced the vulnerability of Chile to new shocks.

Logit, binary and multinomial models are used in this study to determine the impact of objective and perceived working conditions on workers’ job satisfaction. Possible differences between job satisfaction in the Metropolitan Region and in other areas of Chile are also explored. The data used in this analysis are drawn from the first National Survey on Employment, Work, Health and Quality of Life of Workers in Chile (ENETS). Wage levels were found to have a positive impact across the board, while residence in an area other than the Metropolitan Region also had a significantly positive effect. These results were corroborated using matching techniques. The finding that subjective perceptions have a great deal of explanatory power and that their impact outweighs the influence of objective conditions may be of interest in the areas of both public policy and business administration.

To what extent are local economic development policies limited to a welfare approach in Chile? The hypothesis pursued in this work is that, taken together, these policies far exceed this paradigm. For the study, a register of 40 policy categories was taken by means of a reading and systematization of local economic development policies run by Chile’s municipalities through 69 District Development Plans (PLADECO). On average, municipalities propose actions in 16 of the 40 categories, but these, overall, are capable of encompassing in a satisfactory manner the various local economic development challenges faced by each municipality depending on the district’s production structure and situation.

This article reviews the trend of investment in Chile and its relationship with economic growth since the 1973 coup d’état; and it documents how investment remains the main growth driver. Notwithstanding that fact, innovation helps to mitigate diminishing returns from natural resources, while technology-intensive investment, such as broadband infrastructure, helps to diversify the production matrix. The article shows how a persistent increase in the investment ratio in 1990–1998 supported GDP growth of 7.1% per year; but since 1999 investment has wavered, and average growth dropped to below 4%. The article examines the macroeconomic environment and its real instability since 1999, along with investment in infrastructure, the quality of natural resources and environmental services; and it identifies challenges for boosting both investment and innovation, diversifying the production matrix and its agents, and moving towards inclusive growth.