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Vinculamos más de un millón de evaluaciones de casi 200.000 profesores hechas por alumnos en el sitio web RateMyProfessors con información sobre la productividad de la investigación de casi 3.000 profesores en Google Académico (Google Scholar) a fin de ofrecer una caracterización sistemática de la relación entre las evaluaciones de los alumnos y las características de las clases, las universidades y los profesores, para comprobar si las evaluaciones de los alumnos tienen una relación condicionada con la productividad de la investigación. El estudio concluye que, si bien lo "fácil" e "interesante" que los alumnos consideran un curso son los factores más determinantes de sus evaluaciones, existe una prima de "apariencia" o "belleza", sin un componente sistemático de raza, edad o género. Sorprendentemente, se constata que la productividad de la investigación no es significativa o está negativamente relacionada con la evaluación de las capacidades docentes de un profesor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Voucher systems in education firmly rely on the parent's ability to choose their child's school at any time during their schooling years. This ability, however, is reduced by switching costs. Methods: Using an identification for each student from fourth grade in 2000 to eighth grade in 2004, so we were able to verify if they changed schools. Thus, we can compare the expected utility associated with the chosen school with a new school that was not available in 2000 and the estimation of switching costs. Results: We find that on average switching costs are statistically significant and economically relevant and that affect the decision to change the chosen school. Also, we show marginal changes in their levels of utility aren't sufficiently significant to make decision to change at chosen school identifying an eventual threshold. Conclusions: The natural concern regarding parents' capacity to react is given by the existence of switching costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The positive impact that competition has on performance in most industries has been questioned in the education sector. The difficulty to measure competition, the idea that parents don't rationally choose schools for their children, and that schools do not react to that choice is in the center of the debate. We critically analyze the prevailing methodology in the literature that relates competition and educational performance, and the data used to estimate that impact. We propose a methodology that considers relevant substitutes for each school using various attributes which parents consider when choosing schools, and we apply it to estimate the effect o f competition on educational performance in Chile, were more than 90% of the students are covered by a voucher. The evidence supports the hypothesis that competition has a positive, statistically significant, and economically relevant educational impact on private and public schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the pillars of the educational voucher system is that competition between schools to attract students would improve the quality of the education provided. Surveys in Chile have suggested that parents are not aware of the performance of their children's schools. In this paper, we assess the effect of public information of school quality on the school choice by parents. We use a data set which includes measurements of the distance between homes and schools, and the performance of the school measured by a standardized tests and the school fee for two distinct periods (1996 and 2003). Whereas in 1996, information regarding school performance was scarce, it was widespread in 2003. We conclude that regardless of these considerations, school performance is an important determinant of school choice. Thus, parents appear to act "as if" they knew it when choosing a school. Nevertheless, making public the information regarding the performance of the schools has made it a more important factor in choosing a school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The educational voucher system builds on the pillars of informed choice and competition to improve the quality of the education provided. This document summarizes some of the results of recent literature on the subject, and discusses their public policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a framework for evaluating the importance of the arrival of new information for forecasting, estimation, and decision making. By fusing known and recently developed statistical tests and concepts, the paper provides guidelines for detecting outliers, influential observations, innovations, and possible breaks in the end of the sample. The methodology is applied to analyze the Chilean CPI inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses several econometric models to evaluate the determinants of the outcomes of the World Cup Qualifying matches played in South America. It documents the relative importance of home-field advantage and other factors. Contrary to popular belief, altitude appears not to be an important factor behind the outcome or score of a match. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a robust finding for the relationship between money growth and inflation in Chile: inflation causes (precedes) money and not the other way around. This result holds irrespectively of the way in which monetary policy was conducted, the sample period, the choice of monetary aggregate, the consideration of conditional second moments, or the inclusion of inflation targets. A simple theoretical model is used to motivate why money and inflation are not necessarily correlated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite having accumulated physical and human capital at significant rates, Latin America's growth has been generally disappointing. Successful growth episodes have been accompanied by surges in TFP, sound and stable macroeconomic policies, and fewer distortions and government interventions. Structural breaks are often cited as sources of the disappointing and heterogeneous growth performance of countries in Latin America. We find that, once controlled for external shocks and a measure of distortions, the behavior of per capita GDP in a sample of Latin American countries is remarkably stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes whether or not the econometric methods usually applied to test for absolute convergence have provided this hypothesis a "fair" chance. I show that traditional (absolute and conditional) convergence tests are not consistent with even the simplest model that displays convergence. Furthermore, claims of divergence on the grounds of bimodalities in the distribution of GDP per capita can be made consistent with models in which neither divergence nor twin peaks are present in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the asymptotic and finite sample properties of the efficient method of moments and indirect inference, when applied to estimating stationary ARMA models. Issues such as identification, model selection, and testing are also discussed. The properties of these estimators are compared to those of maximum likelihood using Monte Carlo experiments for both invertible and noninvertible ARMA models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a statistical comparison between the actual and predicted evolution of the Chilean gross domestic product (GDP) for the period 1986-1998 made by several forecasters. The Chilean economy presents one of the highest average growth rates in the Western Hemisphere. In fact, the average annual growth rate of the GDP between 1986 and 1997 was approximately 7.7 percent. Accompanying this spectacular performance there has been a proliferation of projections of the growth of the economy by different sources. This work has been evaluated by these projections and comparing them with the actual evolution of the rate of growth of the GDP for the period 1986 to 1997. It presents a comparison between the effective evolution of the growth rate of the GDP and the projections made by the forecasters and third section presents some final comments. It analyses the statistical properties of the forecast errors made by several forecasters during the period 1986 to 1997.