Libros

Para mayor información sobre la profesora Escobar, accesa aquí.

Resumen 

We develop a framework to jointly estimate the productivity process and the assets dynamic decision of firms that face financial constraints. We show that standard approaches for estimating productivity (e.g. Olley-Pakes) underestimate the marginal effect of capital and the dispersion of the productivity distribution. We propose a flexible non-linear framework to jointly model and estimate the firm assets accumulation dynamics, the unobservable productivity process and the unobservable firm-secific financial friction. The empirical model consists of the production function, the assets dynamic decision of the firm and the investment decision of the firm. When applying our estimators to the population of chilean firms we show that the estimated marginal effect of capital in the production function increases from 0.30 (with Olley-Pakes) to 0.41. We also find a significantly larger dispersion of the productivity distribution, a larger degree of persistence in individual productivities and a more positive correlation of firm productivities with capital and assets, when comparing to the Olley-Pakes estimator. We estimate a firm-specific process of asset accumulation that is a function of the unobservable productivity shocks and the intensity of financial frictions, and explore the implications of these estimations to the quantitative models exploring the effects of financial frictions on the economy.

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Resumen 

Erasing negative information in credit bureaus can benefit some borrowers temporarily, while excluding others from future credit access, particularly if the deletion increases adverse selection. Using a sample of representative households in Chile that combines survey data and banking loan records, I evaluate the impact of three information laws implemented in 2010, 2011 and 2012, with the first law restricting the delinquency information from borrowers receiving unemployment benefits, the second law restricting the variables that can be applied in the credit score, and the third one deleting the available information on loan delinquencies below a certain value. I show that the first and second laws had a positive impact on credit access and reduced borrower delinquency, while the delinquency deletion law harmed loan access and increased delinquencies.

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Resumen 

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1994-1997), a work-based, anti-poverty intervention, "New Hope," randomly assigned an income subsidy—similar to the EITC—and a child care subsidy subject to a full-time work requirement to a group of economically disadvantaged families. Randomly chosen applicants had access to these benefits for three years. The experimental evaluation found positive effects of the program on labor supply, income, and child care use. Furthermore, while parents were eligible, the program also boosted various measures of child academic achievement. However, since policies were given in a single package, little is known about the mechanisms by which New Hope affected child outcomes. This paper disentangles the mechanisms that explain the impact of New Hope on the human capital of children who were young while their families were under New Hope. To this end, I estimate a dynamic-discrete choice model of the household and child human capital. Counterfactual experiments indicate that the bulk of the impact of New Hope on child human capital is explained by the child care subsidy component of the New Hope package: the impact of the child care subsidy on child human capital is 97% bigger than that of the income subsidy. If New Hope had not included a full-time work requirement, the effect of the program on child human capital would have been almost 40% bigger.

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Resumen 

Trade credit is the most important form of short-term finance for U.S. firms. In 2017, non-financial firms had about $3 trillion in trade credit outstanding equaling 20 percent of U.S. GDP. Why do sellers lend to their buyers in the presence of a well developed financial sector? This paper proposes an explanation for the puzzling dominance of trade credit: When sellers charge markups over production costs and financial intermediation is costly, then buyer-seller pairs can save on their overall financing costs by utilizing trade credit. We derive a model of trade credit and markups that captures this mechanism. In the model, the larger is the markup and the larger is the difference between the borrowing and the deposit rate, the more attractive is trade credit. The model also implies that trade credit use increases with repeated interactions and that this effect is stronger for complex products. Using Chilean data at the firm-level to estimate markups and at the trade-transaction level to analyze payment choices, we find strong support for the model.

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Resumen 

In this paper, we study whether a text and audio messaging program delivered after a parenting workshop, is effective to increase parental investment and reinforce the commitment of parents to their parental tasks. The messaging program is one of the components of "Crianza Positiva", an intervention for parents of children aged 0-2 designed to promote good parenting practices. Treated families received text and audio messages three times a week for 24 weeks. The messages were aimed at helping parents reorient their attention towards positive parenting practices, simplify complex parental tasks into simpler ones, establish new parenting habits, and reinforce positive identities. We evaluated the intervention using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the program in 24 Child and Family Care Centers (CAIF) in Uruguay. We found that the messaging intervention increased: parental investment as measured by a parental time investment index, parental engagement in social activities with the child, parental competences as measured by a positive parenting index, parental outreach for social support and parents' reflective capacity. In all cases, the effects range around 0.24 standard deviations.

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