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Education is the core of the factors that improved people for a better lifestyle and increases the level of society' development. Quality education is one of the most vital goals of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) due to actualizing these factors. Using relational network data envelopment analysis (DEA), which have three interrelated substages, this current paper computes the educational economy efficiency of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries bearing in mind the characteristics related to SDGs. The contribution of our study is the use of a novel approach to computing the educational economy efficiency using relational network DEA with GAMS. Even though some interesting differences reveal in the efficiency of the countries, the findings show that countries with high-efficiency scores are clustered around countries like Latvia, Slovenia, and Korea.

Over the last two decades, education privatization has become a widespread phenomenon, affecting most education systems and giving place to a consistent increase in private school enrolment globally. However, far from being a monolithic phenomenon, privatization advances through a variety of context-sensitive policy processes that translate into multiple policy outcomes. This paper aims at understanding why and how education privatization unfolds in a broad variety of settings and, to this purpose, examines the different manifestations of education privatization on the light of Cultural Political Economy (CPE). The conceptual and analytical tools provided by CPE prove to be particularly well suited to explore such a multi-faceted and multi-scalar phenomenon. CPE has helped us to capture the intersect and tension between different drivers (global and local, material and ideational) of education privatization through the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention. On the basis of a systematic literature review methodology, encompassing 227 research papers, the article identifies and systematizes six different paths towards education privatization--understood as groups of frequently associated circumstances, mechanisms and courses of action leading to privatization. Conceived as ideal types, these different paths ultimately allow for a richer understanding of education privatization and show that the international diffusion of education privatization norms and discourses is far from producing policy convergence at a global scale.

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In this paper, we develop a daily-frequency measure of economic and policy uncertainty for Chile, employing information obtained from Twitter accounts using web scraping techniques and following closely the methodology proposed by Baker et al. (2016). Our proposed measure, called DEPUC, aims to capture the level of general disagreement -a proxy for economic and policy uncertainty-in topics such as the economy, economic policies, uncertainty about particular events, and Chile's conjuncture situation. The index, available from 2012 onwards, shows significant hikes that coincide with several local and international episodes that provoked extraordinary levels of uncertainty in Chile, especially after the events around the civil protests in mid-October 2019 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March 2020. An empirical exercise reveals that the proposed measure is a significant determinant of the nominal exchange rate dynamics, especially when this variable's magnitude is high and a week after the shock occurs. On the contrary, when the exchange rate is low, the impact of uncertainty on this variable is quantitatively smaller for any forecasting horizon. These features, and others discussed in the paper, highlight the usefulness of the proposed metric as an additional indicator that policymakers can incorporate into their monitoring toolkit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the first macroeconomic textbook based on modern monetary theory (MMT) written by Mitchell, Watts and Wray. MMT is a heterodox theory that a government need not worry about budget and monetary constraints and excessive inflation until a country achieves its goals of full employment, first-class healthcare for all citizens, and other desirable policies. Their textbook, Macroeconomics, leaves out major sections that are standard in macroeconomic textbooks, such as AS-AD analysis and economic growth theory. I argue that MMT is a dangerous theory that can lead to a bloated government, runaway inflation, and slow growth. Furthermore, MMT is unnecessary given that many advanced economies have moved in the opposite direction and achieved full-employment growth without adopting MMT, such as Sweden, Canada, Singapore, and Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chilean water model has been described as a textbook example of a successful free water market system. This paper analyses water-rights transactions to determine how this water market has behaved in the northern Atacama Desert. It questions the neoliberal assumption that Chile’s unregulated water market has acted as an active tool to reallocate water towards uses that provide the highest economic value. Instead, it argues that the state is the central actor in water allocation. This problematizes the notion that the Chilean water model is one of the most unregulated in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The objective of this paper is to propose a lot-sizing methodology for an inventory system that faces time-dependent random demands and that seeks to minimize total cost as a function of order, purchase, holding and shortage costs. A two-stage stochastic programming framework is derived to optimize lot-sizing decisions over a time horizon. To this end, we simulate a demand time-series by using a generalized autoregressive moving average structure. The modeling includes covariates of the demand, which are used as predictors of this. We describe an algorithm that summarizes the methodology and we discuss its computational framework. A case study with unpublished real-world data is presented to illustrate the potential of this methodology. We report that the accuracy of the demand variance estimator improves when a temporal structure is considered, instead of assuming time-independent demand. The methodology is useful in decisions related to inventory logistics management when the demand shows patterns of temporal dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chile is experiencing a period of rapid aging, which increases the need of long-term care services in the country. Nursing homes have been the traditional alternative to deal with the increase of elderly population in the country, with services supplied by a mix of for-profit and nonprofit providers. Additionally, population exhibits a high degree of geographical concentration. The study aims to identify the determinants of the geographical location of nursing homes in Chile at municipality level. The analysis takes into account the different location criteria for different types of nursing homes as well as potential spatial effects. The paper uses spatial analysis tools to identify clusters of nursing homes and population characteristics and to estimate the determinants of nursing homes availability and coverage in the country. The analysis–based on spatial global and local tests, and spatial autoregressive models- show the existence of clusters of nursing homes as well as clusters of municipalities according to elderly population, income, poverty, population density, and public health insurance coverage. Residuals from ordinary least squares regressions were spatially autocorrelated, showing the need of using spatial models. Estimations show that availability and coverage of nursing homes are positively related with municipality income, and that for-profit and nonprofit facilities respond differently to different factors. A negative coefficient was found for poverty in nonprofit nursing homes, raising doubts about the effectiveness of giving public subsidies to incentive the installation of facilities in areas with high needs and low income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The salmon industry in Chile experienced large and rapid growth over the past three decades and by 2008 Chile was the second largest producer of salmon in the world after Norway. However, the industry was affected by a sanitary crisis that impacted on its growth and forced a change in production strategies. This paper argues that the post-crisis scenario shows the deepening of an enclave economy in Los Lagos region that is changing the way in which the industry participates in rural development. Starting with a literature review on enclave and extractive economies I characterise the salmon industry as an enclave, and then examine evidence from the field to identify local effects in rural communities of this new form of relationship. I conclude by calling for a revitalisation of the geographical debates on enclave economies from a political ecology perspective to better understand communities' interaction with extractive economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of value is fundamental to contexts of resource scarcity given that contest over use and distribution of scarce resources centres on judgments about rights, interests and access. In mining processes, the use and extraction of water in great volumes commodifies and threatens supplies of what others understand to be a substance essential to all forms of life. In the Atacama, while industrial extraction and commodification by the mining industry are the basis for indigenous people's contestations over water resources, an analysis of everyday water practice and performance (as 'ordinary ethics') demonstrates that an indigenous ethics of resources includes commodity values under certain conditions. This paper examines a field of competing actors engaging in extraction and use of scarce waters in order to make an argument for the importance of considering the complexities and dynamics of ethical practice and water value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Sociologia e Política is the property of Revista de Sociologia e Politica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper uses plant‐level data from the manufacturing sector of Chile to investigate how changes in the real exchange rate affect the decision to purchase foreign technologies through licensing. Theoretically, a real depreciation has an ambiguous effect on foreign technology adoption. On the one hand, a real depreciation makes exports more competitive, and as exporters tend to adopt and use more advanced technologies, we should observe a higher propensity to import technologies among them. On the other hand, a real depreciation can also make imports of technology relatively more expensive. Thus, this question must be examined empirically. The empirical analysis shows that a real depreciation significantly increases the probability of using foreign technology licences for plants that export and for plants in the intermediate range of the size and productivity distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the news coverage of poverty has largely overlooked the agency of the actors involved. This study addressed this gap by combining ethnographic fieldwork in a poor neighborhood with an analysis of television news about the neighborhood and interviews with the journalists who produced this news. The analysis shows a relationship between journalists and poor people significantly more complex than the relationship described in previous research: Journalists and poor people marketed the neighborhood's misery collaboratively. They shaped news in ways that could be stigmatizing, but that served their converging interests. By acknowledging that structure and agency presuppose each other, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of journalism, as well as to efforts to address poverty's symbolic injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze a firm’s joint decision to export and invest using a model that incorporates the essential features of self-selection and learning-by-exporting theories of firm-level dynamics. We calibrate the model to 2002–2007 Chilean manufacturing plant data and simulate it under different assumptions, finding that neither self-selection nor learning-by-exporting alone can adequately explain the observed cross-sectional relationship between firm level exports and capital, favoring instead a model that allows both mechanisms to work in tandem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture could be one of the most vulnerable economic sectors to the impacts of climate change in the coming decades, with impacts threatening agricultural production in general and food security in particular. Within this context, climate change will impose a challenge to policy makers, especially in those countries that based their development on primary sectors. In this paper we present a non-linear agricultural supply model for the analysis of the economic impacts of changes in crop yields due to climate change. The model accounts for uncertainty through the use of Monte Carlo simulations about crop yields. According to our results, climate change impacts on the Chilean agricultural sector are widespread, with considerable distributional consequences across regions, and with fruits producers being worst-off than crops producers. In general, the results reported here are consistent with those reported by previous studies showing large economic impacts on the northern zone. However, our model does not simulate remarkable economic consequences at the country level as previous studies did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic has inspired novel strategies for keeping worksites operational and workers safe, with varying degrees of success. In southern Chile, where more than a third of the world's farmed salmon is produced, the industrial aquaculture sector has been largely successful at avoiding major disruptions and financial losses by mobilizing strategies developed during previous sanitary crises that threatened the health of fish and the industry itself. Here, I engage with the literature on crises and disasters to evaluate these strategies as well as their unintended consequences. I contend that many of the strategies developed to address COVID‐19 as a sanitary crisis and prevent the spread of the virus have deepened the divisions between aquaculture firms and the remote coastal communities where they operate. These social and economic divisions have the potential to undermine the industry's long‐term viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: According to the International Labor Organization, Maternity Protection (MP) policies try to harmonize child care and women's paid work, without affecting family health and economic security. Chile Law 20.545 (2011) increased benefits for economically active women and reduced requirements for accessing these benefits. The goals of the reform included: 1) to increase MP coverage; and 2) to reduce inequities in access to the benefits. Method: This study uses two data sources. First, using individual data routinely collected from 2000 to 2015, yearly MP coverage access over time was calculated. Second, using national representative household surveys collected before and after the Law (2009 and 2013), coverage and a set of measures of inequality were estimated. To compare changes over time, we used non-experimental, before-after intervention design for independent samples. For each variable, we estimated comparative proportions at 95% confidence interval before and after the intervention. Additionally, we included multivariate and propensity score analysis. Results: Between 2000 and 2015, MP coverage grew from 24.4% to 44.8%. Using comparable 2009 and 2013 survey data, we observed the same trend, with 31.6% of estimated MP coverage in 2009, escalating to 39.5% in 2013. We conclude that: 1) after the reform, there was an increase in MP coverage; and, 2) there was no significant reduction of inequities in the distribution of MP benefits. Discussion/Conclusion: Few scientific evaluations of MP reforms have been conducted worldwide; even fewer including an equity analysis. This study provides an empirically-based evaluation of MP reform from both a population-level and an equity-focused perspective. We conclude that this reform needs to be complemented with other policies to ensure maternity protection in terms of access and equity in a country with deep socioeconomic stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economy is the largest context in which social work operates, and thus social work has an ethical responsibility to assess and intervene in the larger economic context, particularly as we face the rise of capital in a globalized world. In this context, financial social work has arisen, but it lacks a comprehensive assessment of the ethics of financial social work from a real world understanding of macroeconomics and microeconomics, including the relationships between wealthy and poor countries and the role of power in such relationships. We propose an ethical framework to develop such an assessment with a balanced understanding of the role of debt, financial education, and power relations in the economic context presented from the perspective of the United States and Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing multi-hazard environment to which millions of people in the world are exposed highlights the importance of making sure that populations are increasingly better prepared. The objective of this study was to report the levels of preparedness of a community exposed to two natural hazards and identify the primary sociodemographic characteristics of groups with different preparedness levels. A survey was conducted on 476 participants from two localities of the Atacama Region in the north of Chile during the spring of 2015. Their level of preparedness at home and work was assessed to face two types of natural hazards: earthquakes and floods.The findings show that participants are significantly better prepared to face earthquakes than floods, which sends a serious warning to local authorities, given that floods have caused the greatest human and material losses in the region's recent history of natural disasters. Men claimed to be more prepared than women to face floods, something that the authors attribute to the particular characteristics of the main employment sectors for men and women in the region. The potential contribution of large companies on preparedness levels of communities in the areas in which they operate is discussed. The sociodemographic profile of individuals with the highest levels of preparedness in an environment with multiple natural hazards are people between 30 and 59 years of age, living with their partner and school-age children. The implications of the results pertaining to institutions responsible for developing disaster risk reduction plans, policies and programs in a multi-hazard environment are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article revises conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in Latin America, followed by an examination of the history of poverty reduction programs in Chile since the 1960s and the installation of CCT programs in the country with a particular focus on the role of social work in their design and implementation. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenges social work faces in actively participating in the redesign and implementation of the new CCT model from a human rights and social justice focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme rainfall data are widely used in several hydrological models and civil engineering design. Despite high temporal resolution rainfall data are not commonly available, daily rainfall data series are easily found. When these available data series are short in length the Regional Frequency Analysis (RFA) is a good tool to enlarge them by joining stations into homogeneous regions. This is by far, the most complicated step in RFA. This work presents a new method to form homogeneous regions of extreme annual daily rainfall data series. Daily rainfall data series from 53 weather stations in the Maule Region (Chile) have been used. Their fractal dimensions spectra have been obtained by applying the box counting method. Each station has been characterized by the fractal dimensions D1 and D2. A cluster analysis has been carried out based on these at-site characteristics and three regions have been obtained. After performing a RFA of extreme daily annual rainfall data series within each region they have shown as homogeneous. Only one of the available stations has not been possible to be included into any homogeneous regions, being the local frequency analysis the only suitable method to be applied at this location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the economic cost of dementia in Chile, and its variation according to socioeconomic status (SES). We use primary data from a survey of 330 informal primary caregivers who completed both a RUD-Lite and a socio-demographic questionnaire to evaluate the severity of dementia and caregiver’s burden. The costs of dementia are broken into three components: direct medical costs (medical care, drugs, tests); direct social costs (social service, daycare); and indirect costs (mostly associated to informal care). The average monthly cost per patient is estimated at US$ 1,463. Direct medical costs account for 20 per cent, direct social costs for 5 per cent and indirect costs for 75 per cent of the total cost. The mean monthly cost is found to be inversely related to SES, a pattern largely driven by indirect costs. The monthly cost for high SES is US$ 1,083 and US$ 1,588 for low SES. A multivariate regression analysis suggests that severity of dementia and caregiver’s burden account for between 49 and 70 per cent of the difference in the indirect cost across SES. However, between one-third and one-half of the variation across SES is not due to gradient in severity of dementia. Direct medical costs increase in higher SES, reflecting differences in purchasing power, while indirect costs are inversely related to SES and more than compensate differences in medical costs. Moreover, in lower SES groups, female caregivers, typically family members who are inactive in the labor market, mostly provide informal care. The average annual cost of dementia in Chile (US$ 17,559) is lower in comparison to high-income countries (US$ 39,595) and the proportion of cost related to informal cost is higher (74 per cent compared to 40 per cent). SES is a key determinant in the cost of dementia. In the absence of universal access to treatment, part of the social cost of dementia potentially preserves or increases income and gender inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article examines the possibility of overcoming the resource curse through case studies of the appropriation and use of mining rents derived from public-private joint ventures in Argentina and Chile in the period 1973-2000. In particular, it examines how two similar cases of sectoral liberalization resulted in divergent outcomes: the deployment of rent-appropriation strategies around multinational corporations in Argentina and an innovative and productivist approach based on joint ventures with foreign capital in Chile. The article argues that while the liberalization of the sector created similar opportunities for appropriating rents in both countries, the existence of strong civil society pressures in Chile constrained rent-appropriation and waste by the state, in comparison to the absence of such pressures in Argentina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an economic decision model for planning in public education, considering the satisfaction of the total demand for education in a municipality and the annual cost involved in the system. Given a set of established schools in a municipality and possible new locations, the aim of the model is to find the optimal supply in terms of which schools should be kept open or closed, which grades (or year levels) should be made available and the number of classes that should be provided within each such grade to meet student demand. The model includes specific information about curriculum requirements in terms of the number of hours per year per subject to be provided for each grade level. The objective function essentially seeks to minimize the total fixed and variable costs to schools, which mainly relate to human resources (principal and direction, teaching, administrative, and support staff). We propose an integer optimization model for solving this problem and we apply it to two large municipalities in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to apply an innovative model of expansion to irrigation management and development in fruit exporting regions in central Chile. The model showed how external influences (globalization, climate, mountains) and complex adaptive systems (water conflicts, institutions and markets) influenced the evolution of irrigation development (the extension and emergence of novel properties) towards constructive (planned irrigation development) and destructive (climate change) futures. The model was simple, geometrical, consistent and future oriented. It was an innovative representation of expanding irrigation development and valuable to entrepreneurial water developers because it described the macro-scale processes involved in irrigation development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Chile, the 8.8 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck the country on February 27th 2010, made noticeable the necessity to Plan the Reconstruction of little towns and coves on the Central Chile costal edge that were affected by this natural disaster. For this reason, since 2010 onwards, the Government began different creative design programs in the search for the best way to carry through a sustainable Reconstruction in those urban centers which had been devastated by tsunami. These mentioned facts were materialized in the Master Plans for the Reconstruction of Chile. Its purpose was to articulate multidisciplinary teams in diverse areas such as: architecture, urbanism, design, economics and public policies in order to implement the Reconstruction plans. However, an unplanned collateral effect showed up: the local Urban Poverty increased. The Sustainable Strategic Reconstruction Plan of Duao, Iloca and La Pesca is a very important case of study in Chile, due to this experience shows clearly different ways of actors associativity, namely between public and private actors. Consequently, this process is a re-interpretation of the Opportunity Structures in territorial planning context after a natural disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to assess the welfare effects of climate change on the Chilean agricultural sector, with special focus on changes in water availability. The productive impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector are well analyzed at both a global and national level. There is, however, a lack of evidence about the aggregated impacts, considering both demand and supply. This study tries to fill this gap by using a multimarket model, specifically designed for the Chilean agricultural sector. According to our results, changes in water availability will have modest welfare impacts, with an average decrease of total surplus of 4.3%, minor price changes (around -1%), and no significant impacts on total agricultural land. Despite the small aggregated effects, it is expected that climate change will have uneven consequences across regions and activities. For instance, even though the southern zone (zone 3) shows the smallest income changes -14% (average), the impacts within the zone range from 1% to 52% decrease in agricultural net income. This situation suggests large distributional consequences of climate change for the Chilean agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptual innovation with respect to the enclave concept has been virtually absent compared with industry agglomerations. This is despite the fact that some varieties of agglomeration distinguished in the literature appear to come close to what previously were regarded as industrial enclaves and despite frequent allusions to the enclave nature of economic spaces produced by contemporary processes of globalization. Bringing the literature on agglomeration and enclaves into dialogue, we revisit the concept of the enclave-a concept that has been largely neglected since it enjoyed a popularity in connection with the study of particular (notably extractive) industries and particular (notably dependencia) theories of national economic development during the 1960s and 1970s. Much has changed since this time, which suggests that the concept of the enclave ought to be ripe for reevaluation. In this article we take an initial step in this direction, identifying analytical dimensions to the enclave and illustrating different manifestations of enclaves in the mining industry, drawing on the case of Chile. We conclude by advocating the renewed study of industry enclaves within contemporary economic geographic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the framework proposed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment ( MEA) − which conceptually links nature's services with human wellbeing − we design and also apply empirically what we have called the total economic value calculating matrix ( TEVCM) to estimate the monetary value of the annual flow of benefits provided by Chile's national system of protected areas ( NSPA). The calculated economic value of this flow amounts to US$2.55 billion per year. We also analyse the relevance and usefulness of the methodology we propose and use the valuation exercise presented to extract some normative lessons regarding nature conservation in Chile as well as in developing countries rich in natural resource endowments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water rights demand and supply in the upper Maipo river basin (Metropolitan Region of Chile) are estimated for the period July 1998 to June 2003, as well as a reduced form model for the equilibrium water rights price based on supply and demand determinants, as well as characteristics of the participating agents such as the economic sector of each agent and their individual market experience. Results show that the main participants in the market are both agriculture and real estate sectors (developers); agriculture buying 57 % and selling 68 % of transactions. The estimated supply and demand system shows that market forces indeed drive market water right prices. Demand is inelastic to price while supply is highly elastic. Furthermore, supplied and demanded water rights quantities are functions of water right price as well as the economic sector of buyer and sellers, sectoral profits, and geographic location of the water right. Additionally, the agent's previous water rights market-experience is an important determinant of water rights demands and supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]