Libros

Resumen 

Much of what we know about individual decision making to date derives from laboratory experiments, and less so from real-life settings. Real-world data typically entail a lack of control, which can make it difficult to discriminate between competing hypotheses. Carefully designed experiments do allow for this and have generated a rich literature, but are at the same time vulnerable to criticism about the generalizability of findings to situations beyond the context of the lab. Because it is impossible to study behavior under each and every possible set of conditions, the optimal approach is to study behavior in a limited number of diverging ways. The use of TV game shows is one of these. Game shows allow the study of behavior in a high-scrutiny field setting where the stakes are high, and for a diverse subject pool. Combined with the strict and well-defined rules, game shows can provide unique opportunities to investigate the robustness of existing laboratory findings. In our talk, we will present our game show work on risk taking, bargaining, and cooperation.

Resumen 

This paper investigates bank size as a factor of the transmission of risk in the US banking sector during the Subprime crisis. Specifically, the transmission of risk is investigated in two directions; from large to small banks and from small to large banks. For this purpose, a Spatial Autoregressive model is estimated by using all US commercial banks from 2005 to 2010. Results show that while the transmission from small to large banks appears during early stages of the Subprime crisis, this transmission despairs post the pick effects of this crisis. However, the transmission from large to small banks appear latter but is long lasting being significant during the last period of the sample studied here, i.e. 2010.

Resumen 

This paper explores labor market inclusion in Chile, using a new household survey representative of the population living in rural-urban territories, that is, small and medium cities with functional linkages to their surrounding rural areas. This particular type of territories are of interest because they are home to about half of the population in Latin America and have a number of distinctive characteristics compared to both larger cities and more isolated rural areas. Indeed, emerging evidence suggests that small and medium cities and rural-urban linkages contribute significantly to growth and poverty reduction, especially via diversification into rural non-farm activities, while agglomeration in metropolitan areas does not. We focus on labor force participation and employment quality of women and young people, two groups with historically low participation in Chile, as indicators of labor market inclusion. Policies for labor market inclusion tend to focus on improving individual assets (including human and social capital). However, the characteristics of the place where people live contribute to defining the structure of opportunities and constraints that people face. If public policy does not take them into account, people-based policies of labor market inclusion may fail to provide sustainable positive results. In this paper we test the hypothesis that place characteristics have a significant influence on labor market inclusion, over and above individual characteristics, and we trace possible mechanisms through which such influence may arise. 

Resumen

Multiple-choice exams play a critical role in university admissions across the world. A key question is whether imposing penalties for wrong answers on these exams deters guessing from women more than men, disadvantaging female test-takers. We consider data from a large-scale, high-stakes policy change that removed penalties for wrong answers on the national college entry exam in Chile. We find that the policy change significantly reduced a large gender gap in questions skipped. It also reduced gender gaps in performance, leading to increased representation of women in the top percentiles of achievement.