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We study the long-run dynamic and predictive connection between atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and the probability of hydrometeorological disasters. For a panel of 193 countries over the period 1970-2016 we estimate the probabilities of hydrometeorological disasters at country levels by means of Bayesian sampling techniques. We then separate the effects of climatological and socio-demographic factors (used as proxies for exposure and vulnerability) and other country-specific factors, from a global probability of disasters (GPOD). Finally, we subject these global probability time paths to a cointegration analysis with CO2 concentration and run projections to year 2040 of the GPOD conditional on nine Shared Socioeconomic Pathways scenarios. We detect a stable long-term relation between CO2 accumulation and the GPOD that allows to determine projections of the latter process conditional on the former. This way, we demonstrate that generally and readily available statistical data on CO2 global atmospheric concentrations can be used as a conceptually meaningful, statistically valid and policy useful predictor of the probability of occurrence of (global) hydrometeorological disasters.

This article estimates the economic rents received by the 10 mines that comprise Chile’s large-scale private-sector copper-mining industry. The methodology used produces a conservative calculation and includes two corrections that have hitherto been ignored in the literature: the reimbursement of exploration expenses and the compensation needed for volatility in the copper price. Estimates show that the wealth transferred to these firms between 2005 and 2014 was at least US$ 114 billion. These rents are neutral in terms of investment and production decisions; in other words, if the private mining companies had paid the Chilean Treasury the calculated amount, their total investment and output would have been unchanged, but the country at large could have benefited from the huge voluminous resources in question. Moreover, in the absence of any other distortion, the firms would still have earned returns equivalent to what they would have obtained under perfect competition.

En este trabajo se estiman las rentas economicas de los diez yacimientos que constituyen la gran mineria privada del cobre en Chile. La metodologia utilizada asegura un calculo conservador e incluye dos correcciones ignoradas en la literatura: el resarcimiento de los gastos en exploracion y la indispensable compensacion por la volatilidad del precio del cobre. Las estimaciones muestran que la riqueza regalada a estas empresas alcanza un valor piso de 114.000 millones de dolares entre 2005 y 2014. Estas rentas son neutras en relacion con las decisiones de inversion y produccion, es decir, si estas empresas privadas hubiesen pagado al fisco chileno el monto calculado, su inversion y produccion totales no habrian cambiado, pero el pais habria podido disponer de esos cuantiosos recursos. Ademas, en ausencia de cualquier otra distorsion, estas empresas igualmente habrian tenido rentabilidades equivalentes a las que hubiesen logrado en una economia de competencia perfecta.

Enotourism has emerged as a promising, sustainable type of tourism that can provide many benefits for local, regional, and national economies. This study critically describes the current situation ...

Scenarios provide a platform to explore the provision of ecosystem services under global change. Despite their relevance to land-use policy, there is a paucity of such assessments, particularly in developing countries. Central Chile provides a good example from the Latin American realm as the region has experienced rapid transformation from natural landscapes to urbanization and agricultural development. Local experts from Central Chile identified climate change, urbanization, and fire regimes as key drivers of change. Scenarios depicting plausible future trajectories of change were developed to assess the combined effects on carbon storage, wine production, and scenic beauty for the year 2050. Across the region, the action of the drivers reduced the total amount of carbon storage (by 85) and wine production (by 52) compared with a baseline scenario, with minor changes incurred for scenic beauty. The carbon storage and wine production had declined by 90 and scenic beauty by 28 when the reaction to changed fire regimes was also taken into account. The cumulative outcomes of climate change and urbanization are likely to place substantial pressures on ecosystem services in Central Chile by mid-century, revealing the need for stronger planning regulations to manage land-use change. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

Today, based on the best scientific knowledge available, the main concerns regarding nature are the rampant ongoing destruction of Earth’s ecosystems and the increasing global warming, which threaten the very survival of the human species. The main reason is that the current functioning of the complex global socioeconomic-ecological systems of the world is driving the planet, with high certainty, towards a completely unsustainable deterioration of its natural capital, biodiversity, and atmosphere. This is the result of the manipulation of the power mechanisms within the socioeconomic-ecological systems of every country by the small powerful elites with the purpose of appropriating for themselves the enormous economic rents generated by the overexploitation of the planet’s natural resources and ecosystems. The monumental challenges of climate change, global warming, and nature deterioration are just the physical symptoms of the underlying unsustainable operation of the world’s socioeconomic-ecological systems (or social-ecological systems as they are generally known today). On the other side, its social and economic symptoms are the billions of people living in poverty, without water, proper education, and health services, and the prevailing enormous inequities in the distribution of the world’s wealth and income. In this chapter, using the Latin American experience, we analyze why this is happening and how enormously difficult is to change the current functioning of the system. We conclude with a rather pessimistic view about the possibility of meeting the challenges that all of us, as the human species, face today. Our only hope seems to be to use the opportunity offered by the modern communication technologies to inform the people of every country about the large risks and dangers we are all exposed to, and mobilize them to take effective control of the decision-making mechanisms that today are in the hands of the small powerful elites. This is obviously a monumental task.

This chapter analyzes the contribution of Participative Management Plans (PMP) for the identification of ecosystem services and the protection of conservation objects from the multiple-use protected coastal marine areas (MU-CMPA). The objective of these areas is to conserve the natural capital and cultural patrimony without restricting traditional productive activities such as fishing, mollusks and algae extraction, and energy resources. There are ten MU-CMPAs areas in Chile, but their implementation has been slow and 14 years after the first areas were legally declared, some of them still do not have management plans. Here we analyze the experiences of Isla Grande de Atacama MU-CMPA (MU-CMPA IGA) in the north of Chile, including the complexities of implementing PMPs and the challenges and opportunities of generating an ecosystem perspective in the management plans for protected areas. Administrative problems and conflicts of interest have worn social relationships generating little community participation regarding the design of a management plan. Nevertheless, there is a consensus among local social actors about the benefits of the ecosystems of the MU-CMPA IGA due to the high economic and social values given by the community to the services provided by the area.

This study analyzes the effects of rising water supply variability provoked by climate change on the welfare of a society whose economy heavily depends on water availability. Several studies recommend that communities should impose policies that ensure a minimum level of water allocation for human consumption. We compare two contracts, one where society allocates to the firm a fixed proportion of the annual water-runoff; and the other one, where due to the uncertainties of climate change, the community instead allocates to human consumption a fixed annual amount of water-runoff. We consider a risk-averse community. We show that, unless water supply is absolutely fixed, a higher variability and scarcity of water supply does not necessarily imply that society is better off choosing a contract that assures a minimum water for human consumption. Depending on the characteristics of water supply frequency distribution, particularly the third moment, it is possible that society would not benefit by switching to the fixed allocation contract for human consumption. We illustrate the main analytical results using data and runoff climate change projections from a water basin located in the central region of Chile, showing that in this case the community is better-off sticking to the current contract.

Most previous studies of income inequality have either ignored capital gains or have used taxable realized capital gains to estimate top incomes. Neither of these approaches is fully satisfactory. We apply for the first time a new methodology that allows us to account for fundamental accrued capital gains as part of the top incomes in a theoretically consistent manner. We estimate the shares of the superrich in Chile showing that accrued capital gains have a dramatic impact on these estimates. Also, the top income shares estimated using fundamental capital gains appear to exhibit a more stable and presumably more plausible time profile than estimates based on capital gains derived from asset market variations.

This paper hypothesizes that fiscal policy is one important factor determining whether or not environmentally and socially sustainable economic growth is possible. We postulate that tax policies affect the incentives to make the economy more or less dependent on natural resources and the environment as factors of production. So-called pro-growth tax policies consisting of a low tax burden, low direct taxes but high indirect ones, affect the composition of factor endowment, often inducing overinvestment in physical capital and underinvestment in human capital, including education and health. These policies in part explain a structure of production heavily dependent on natural-resource-based and environmentally dirty industries. Moreover, these tax policies induce high levels of inequality, which ultimately may render economic growth socially and politically unsustainable. This analysis has important implications for Chile and for other developing countries, especially in Latin America, which are highly dependent on natural resources and have highly unequal income distributions. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Chile is the largest copper producing country of the world; and almost 50% of the copper it exports to the rest of the world is exported as copper concentrates to be smelted and refined abroad. However, 70% of the weight of these exported copper concentrates is gangue (valueless and undesirable material associated to the copper content in these exported concentrates). In this paper analyze and quantify the contribution Chile could make to the ongoing world efforts to reduce climate change and global warming, if it adopts a trading policy eliminating its exports of copper concentrates and replacing them with the greater value added exports of the refined copper obtained from smelting and refining those concentrates in Chile. This policy would allow a significant reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted every year to the global atmosphere. This reduction would occur through two channels: 1. avoiding the combustion of more than 600,000 tons of diesel oil currently used to transport by sea almost 6,600,000 tons of the gangue incorporated in Chile's copper concentrate exports; and, 2. using Chile's cleaner technology for smelting and refining copper concentrates instead of the dirtier technologies of the countries currently importing, smelting and refining the Chilean copper concentrates. For the first time, using data for 2014, we estimate the total net reduction in GHG emissions to the global atmosphere that the proposed trade policy would imply. We calculate the distance of the nautical routes used for the 919 shipments of concentrates exported by Chile that year; and we perform sensitivity analysis for 4 scenarios, employing two alternative values for two key parameters. Additionally, we compare the GHG emission performances of the copper smelting and refining metallurgic technologies employed in Chile and in every one of the 22 countries that import and smelt and refine Chilean concentrates. Our estimates for the 2 most extreme scenarios indicate that, if instead of exporting copper concentrates in 2014, Chile would had exported only refined copper, it would had contributed with a total net reduction of GHG emissions emitted to the global atmosphere of 2,227,047 and 2,799,279 ton CO2-eq tons that year, which are equivalent to approximately 5.6% of the total amount of GHG emissions that would had made Chile fully carbon neutral that year. This is a significant contribution regarding Chile's commitment to the Paris Agreement as well as in terms of the required world efforts to reducing GHG emissions from sea shipping.

This study estimate, for the very first time, the total amount of diesel oil burned and of the greenhouse gas emissions associated to this combustion due to the transportation of overburden present in copper concentrates exported from Chile to the world. Using official data from 2014, we estimate the oil burned and the preventable CO2 emissions unnecessarily released into the global atmosphere that year as a result of not refining the copper in Chile and exporting it in the form of copper concentrates. We calculate the distance of nautical routes (origin-destination) used for all concentrate shipments that were exported in 2014. In addition, the estimates show a sensitivity analysis for 4 scenarios, resulting from considering two values for each of two parameters with uncertain values: i) the ships’ fuel consumption for ore transportation; and ii) the actual distance traveled by these ships. For the two extreme scenarios considered, we estimate the unjustified combustion of diesel oil in 516 to 721 million tons, in the year 2014, and the preventable CO2 emissions in 1.5 to 2.0 million tons of CO2. From an environmental policy perspective, these results are highly relevant for Chile because they imply that its mining sector could easily meet the goal committed by Chile for 2030 of reducing 30% of its emissions per GDP unit compared with the level achieved in 2007.

Theoretical models of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) almost universally assume additive preferences; we demonstrate that under non-additive preferences the sufficient condition to sign the economy's income-pollution path depends on the elasticity of substitution between consumption and environment (and not on the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption). The proposed model provides behavioral content that has been missed in the existing literature. In the model, and also departing from the previous literature, preferences change and evolve (through a variable elasticity of substitution) according to the relative scarcity of the environment.

Several authors have argued that forest ecosystems serve as a hedge against extreme climatic events at a local scale. Consequently, the local climate regulation ecosystem services provided by forests can be economically valued by evaluating the reduction (increase) in the insurance premium that risk-averse individuals are willing to pay when forest cover is marginally increased (reduced). This type of insurance value associated to forest ecosystems services is estimated to be USD 0.0733 per hectare of forest for Chilean farmers. The empirical framework proposed in this paper is useful and relevant for the cost-benefit analysis of natural resource conservation investments.

Nature is perceived and valued in starkly different and oftenconflicting ways. This paper presents the rationale for theinclusive valuation of nature's contributions to people (NCP) indecision making, as well as broad methodological steps fordoing so. While developed within the context of theIntergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), this approach is more widely applicable toinitiatives at the knowledge?policy interface, which require apluralistic approach to recognizing the diversity of values. Weargue that transformative practices aiming at sustainablefutures would benefit from embracing such diversity, which require recognizing and addressing power relationships across stake holder groups that hold different values on human nature relations and NCP Fil: Pascual, Unai. University Of Cambridge; Reino Unido Fil: Balvanera, Patricia. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina Fil: Pataki, György. Corvinus University of Budapest; Hungría Fil: Roth, Eva. University of Southern Denmark; Dinamarca Fil: Stenseke, Marie. University Goteborg; Suecia Fil: Watson, Robert T.. University of East Anglia; Reino Unido Fil: Basak Dessane, Esra. Project House; Turquía Fil: Islar, Mine. Lund University; Suecia Fil: Kelemen, Eszter. Environmental Social Science Research Group; Hungría Fil: Maris, Virginie. Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive; Francia Fil: Quaas, Martin. Kiel University; Alemania Fil: Subramanian, Suneetha M. United Nations University; Japón Fil: Wittmer, Heidi. Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research; Alemania Fil: Adlan, Asia. University of Khartoum; Sudán Fil: Ahn, SoEun. Korea Environment Institute; Corea del Sur Fil: Al-Hafedh, Yousef S. King Abdulaziz City for Science & Technology; Arabia Saudita Fil: Amankwah, Edward. Center for Environmental Governance; Ghana Fil: Berry, Pam. University of Washington; Estados Unidos Fil: Bilgin, Adem. University of Oxford; Reino Unido Fil: Breslow, Sara J. Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs of Turkey; Turquía Fil: Bullock, Craig. University College Dublin; Reino Unido Fil: Caceres, Daniel Mario. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias. Departamento de Desarrollo Rural; Argentina Fil: Daly-Hassen, Hamed. University of Carthage; Túnez Fil: Figueroa, Eugenio. Universidad de Chile; Chile Fil: van den Belt, Marjan. Victoria University of Wellington; Nueva Zelanda Fil: Verma, Madhu. Indian Institute of Forest Management; India Fil: Wickson, Fern. GenØk Centre for Biosafety, Siva innovasjonssenter; Noruega Fil: Yagi, Noboyuki. The University of Tokyo; Japón

We develop a method that allows transforming retained business profits in a particular year into business-accrued capital gains of the same year. These capital gains thus estimated can be simply added to other sources of personal income of top earners to obtain a consistent measure of their total income.

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. JEL classification: Q20, Q51, R52

This paper reviews and summarizes most of the literature on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), focusing mainly on disentangling and clarifying the key concepts underlying the two classes of existing theoretical explanations for the EKC occurrence — those driven by technology and those driven by preferences — as well as the technical formalization of such concepts. To do this, we develop a model which allows the analysis of the two types of theoretical explanations under a common theoretical framework. Using this analytical setting, we first review models with technology as the main driver of the EKC, and then we study those with preferences as the fundamental driver. Finally, we present a closed form solution for the EKC which, on the one hand, is simpler and less restrictive than previous ones in the literature and, on the other hand, helps us to highlight some of the remaining theoretical gaps and to propose some possibilities for future research.

Water conflict arises in interconnected ways. As demand increases in one region or industrial sector, the accompanying shifts in water resource management regimes have impacts at the local level and may carry international implications. Insecure water resources are often the root cause of resistance or social conflict across many political and economic sectors. Integrated Water Resources Management is an emerging transdisciplinary approach to science-based water management that attempts to account for these cross sector effects. This paper presents a case study of Integrated Water Resources Managment methods applied in the El Tatio Geothermal Field basin of northern Chile where tensions from the competing needs of metals mining, tourism, energy development, scientific research, and environmental conservation have created social and political tension. Participatory engagement was conducted with stakeholders in the field through elicitation and group dialogue process. This was combined with design of a cyberinfrastructure system for managing and presenting data. Results suggest that sustained facilitated dialogue and socio-technical systems approaches provide a framework to implement Integrated Water Resources Managment, improve science communication, and engage stakeholders at the center of resource conflict. In the case study, early results are informing the framing of data collection plans, microentrepreneurial ventures, and spurring communication across sectors.

While tourism brings many benefits to islands, it can also cause negative effects, especially when tourism development is a disorganised process, with significant environmental impacts. This has been the case of Easter Island: the recent, uncontrolled growth in tourist numbers together with social and political tensions, are signs of a socioeconomic process pursuing development that has neglected the institutional, environmental, social, and economic imperatives of sustainability for tourism management. The study initially presents the environmental impacts of tourism growth, including waste disposal and management issues, problems with sewage system, threats to water quality, and biodiversity loss. Next, using data from in situ fieldwork, interviews and surveys, it focuses on residents’ perceptions regarding environmental consequences of the vast tourism growth, as well as on the serious governance issues that Easter Island is currently facing and that complicate even further its sustainable development. Overall, our results indicate that—while acknowledging the negative impacts that uncontrolled tourism development has brought to the island and the need for it to become more sustainable—residents are in favour of tourism since it is the island’s main source of income and employment. The paper draws lessons for islands involved in the “development-through-tourism” model regarding the difficulties these islands will face in attaining their goals if they are not able to build and implement cooperative agreements among stakeholders to properly manage the common-pool resources involved. This is a warning sign for islands that enthusiastically promote tourism without implementing sound sustainability criteria to guide the management of their tourism sector.

Este trabajo presente la estimación empírica de un modelo dinámico de inversión, que permite determinar endógenamente la senda óptima de expansión de un activo productivo cuasifijo, así como su precio. Una ventaja es que el precio determinado para este factor de producción corresponde a su precio de activo y no a rental price originalmente derivado por Jorgenson (1963), con sus conocidas complicaciones empíricas. El modelo construye a partir de los últimos desarrollos en teoría moderna de la inversión, e incorpora expectativas racionales en el sentido de Ruth (1961). Reaplica a la inversión en maquinaria y equipo por el sector agrícola de los Estados Unidos, en el período 1948-1983. Se obtienen estimaciones, que parecen ser las primeras reportadas de los determinantes de la curva de oferta de la industria norteamericana productora y equipo agrícola. Se demuestra la importancia de estos determinantes en las decisiones de inversión del sector agroproductivo. Se discuten algunas implicancias de política, así como posibles investigaciones futuras a partir del modelo y las estimaciones presentadas.

This paper studies the determinants of manufacturing exports toChina. Data from 79 countries for the 1990-2006 period and estimatesof gravity equations are used to analyse the effects of countries' factorendowment, geographical characteristics and degree of economicopenness. The results are consistent with the factor abundance modeland reveal that economies with a larger human capital endowment exporta greater volume of manufactures to China. Having a large economyand being geographically close to China also make a country morelikely to export manufactures to it. The results do not indicate that othercharacteristics of countries, such as openness to trade or an outlet to thesea, play an important role; nor does the endowment per worker of land orcapital. The implications of this study should be of interest to economiesseeking to benefit from the remarkable dynamism of the Chinese economyby diversifying their exports into manufactures.

Searching for practical means to assessing economic growth’s sustainability, we extend a standard theoretical model to calculate “true” income measures for Chile, during the 1985–2004 period, and use estimates of natural capital depreciation to obtain genuine national saving measures. We found that, for the period, Chile’s economic growth was sustainable, even when approximately 2.5% of the income recorded by national accounts corresponded to depreciation of natural resources plus costs of atmospheric pollution. This performance can be partially explained by policies implemented to force fiscal responsibility and to assure wise public investment and expending during a natural resource driven growth. This evidence reinforces recent findings contradicting the natural resource curse, and the indirect negative effect of resource abundance over growth that would operate through the quality of institutions.

En este trabajo se estudian los factores determinantes de las exportaciones de manufacturas a China. Utilizando datos de 79 paises correspondientes al periodo 1990-2006 y estimaciones de ecuaciones de gravedad, se analizan los efectos de la dotacion de factores, las caracteristicas geograficas y el grado de apertura de las economias. Los resultados, que son compatibles con el modelo de abundancia de factores, revelan que las economias de mayor dotacion de capital humano exportan un mayor volumen de manufacturas a China. Asimismo, el tamano de la economia y la proximidad geografica con este pais favorecen las exportaciones manufactureras. Los resultados no indican que otras caracteristicas de los paises, tales como la apertura comercial y la salida al mar, desempenen un papel importante al respecto; tampoco la dotacion de tierra por trabajador y de capital por trabajador. Las implicaciones de este trabajo son utiles para las economias que procuran aprovechar el notable dinamismo de la economia china para diversificar sus exportaciones hacia los bienes manufacturados

In a recent paper in this journal Nunez et al. [Nunez, D., L. Nahuelhual, and C. Oyarzun, 2005. Forest and water: the value of native temperate forests in supplying water for human consumption. Ecological Economics 58: 606–616] presented a model to estimate the economic value of Chilean temperate forests in their function to contribute to maintain fresh water supply. We discuss and correct the estimated values of ecosystem services per household and per hectare.

Summary In an increasingly human-dominated world, more realistic, holistic and durable linkages need to be created for protected areas (PAs), for the sake of long-term conservation of species and habitats, and of ecosystem goods and services for serving the local people, as well as societies at large. In conjunction, geographical, physical and biological concepts of linkages need to be extended to embrace socio-economic factors. This paper develops a conceptual approach to this task, employing the nascent notions of ‘emerging ecosystems’, restoring natural capital and ‘socio-ecological systems’. We employ the value notion generally used by economic science, i.e. monetary value, as a conceptual tool in the unavoidable assessment process that modern societies must undertake to decide about conserving or restoring PAs, and ecosystems in general. We also draw attention to the importance of ecological and socio-economic thresholds of irreversibility in the evaluation and decision-making process concerning PAs and their linkages with other PAs, and especially with the unprotected world beyond their boundaries.

This paper estimates the true economic income for the Chilean mining sector, using the welfare foundations for the usual net domestic product (NDP) income measure of the traditional National Accounts System (NAS) provided by [ Weitzman, M., 1976. On the welfare significance of national product in a dynamic economy. Quarterly Journal of Economics. 90, 156–162 ; Weitzman, M., 2000. The linearised Hamiltonian as comprehensible NDP. Environment and Development Economics. 5, 55–68]. The total depletion of natural capital caused by mining is calculated by estimating, on the one hand, the depreciation of resources (using the net price approach) and, on the other, the environmental costs provoked by mining activity. The results show that, correcting the usual GDP measure for man-made capital depreciation plus the total loss of natural capital, the standard mining GDP measure of the NAS overestimates by 31–36% the economic income generated by Chile's mining sector during the period 1985–1996.

This article uses the welfare foundations for the usual net domestic product (NDP) income measure of the traditional National Accounts System (NAS) provided by Weitzman (1976, 2000), and the propositions of Hartwick (1993) and Hamilton (1994a) to correct this measure in order to obtain a green (sustainable) measure of economic income. It estimates green measures of the economic income of Chile's mining sector for the period 1977–1996. Different methodologies regarding the valuation of mining resources are employed, and exploration expenditures in the mining sector are included to empirically estimate the green measures of income. The results clearly show that the usual income measures of the traditional NAS overestimated the economic income generated by the Chilean mining sector during the period by 20–40 per cent, and its rate of growth by 3–20 per cent. Moreover, this overestimation has increased in recent years. These empirical results are remarkably similar when different methodologies are used to calculate green measures of the mining sector's economic income. The empirical evidence produced in this work, together with the one provided by other studies, leads to the conclusion that Chile's outstanding recent economic growth has not delivered the amount of economic income recorded by its NAS, since a significant part of it corresponded to depreciation of the country's natural capital.

Proposes a framework for the analysis and the execution of policies aimed at the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in developing countries. This framework is derived from institutional theory that offers, we argue, an alternative for those interested in understanding the forces that influence the adoption of ICTs in developing countries. We use the framework as a lens to tease out meanings of the Chilean case and identify possible courses of action that a country in a similar situation may take to expand and boost the expansion of ICTs. By drawing on the framework, we theorize about why some policies achieve their objectives while some others may not. We conclude by suggesting ways in which the framework can be applied by planners and decision makers in the formulation and evaluation of national ICTs policies.

This paper shows one important result, namely, that corporate tax systems that allow at least for two sources of investment tax deductions (e.g., accelerated arbitrary investment depreciation and deductibility of part of interest payments on the firm`s debt) can be, under certain plausible conditions, locally neutral. That is, they allow for the existence of at least one positive corporate tax rate that renders the user cost of capital equal to the undistorted (without taxes) level of this cost.

Using retained profits, instead of realized capital gains, by simply adding them to the shareholders’ other sources of income is shown to be in general incorrect. We provide a methodology to include undistributed profits as part of the income of the top echelons of the distribution.

This brief paper proposes an analytical method for estimating the economic value of forest ecosystems in supplying climate regulation. If, as argued by several authors, forests ecosystems serve as hedging against climatic risk, then natural ecosystems may act as substitutes for market insurance. This ecosystem service of climate regulation can be economically valued by the marginal reduction in the willingness of risk-averse individuals to pay to avoid risk. We formally develop this novel methodology. As an illustration, we provide an estimate of the insurance value of climate regulation provided by forests using data on insurance premiums paid by local Chilean farmers. The insurance value of climate regulation is estimated to be approximately USD 0.0733 per hectare of forest. The framework that is proposed in this paper is useful and relevant for the cost-benefit analysis of natural resource conservation investments.

Searching for a behavioural explanation of the empirical occurrence of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) the literature has usually assumed additive preferences, i.e. that the marginal utility of consumption does not depend on pollution levels. We update and extend previous literature on the EKC and show that the signing of the slope of the elasticity of substitution between consumption and environmental quality determines the occurrence of the EKC. This novel result does not require imposing restrictions on the sign of the cross-partial derivative of utility with respect to consumption and environmental quality. Under the assumption of a decreasing elasticity of substitution we derive a closed form of the EKC and show that this more general model encompasses as special cases most of the relevant EKC-generating models described in earlier literature.

Este trabajo estima el impacto que tuvo la reforma integral del sistema de transporte público en Santiago de Chile, denominada Transantiago, sobre la contaminación atmosférica en dicha ciudad. Un aporte del trabajo es que muestra cómo, utilizando un modelo econométrico y datos diarios de contaminación, develar técnicamente los impactos ambientales de un programa público que son difíciles de aislar y medir por la existencia de algunas variables confundentes. Se concluye que el Transantiago disminuyó en 3,9 µg/m3 el promedio diario de concentraciones de MP10 en la ciudad, provocando un ahorro que se estima en US$ 200 millones al año en el escenario medio, de los cuales un 12% corresponden al ahorro de gastos en atenciones públicas de salud.

We show that the tax system in Chile is insufficient, inefficient and inequitable. Insufficient because it does not yield enough revenues for the state to promote human capital development and to face poverty in a more comprehensive way; inefficient because it is highly unbalanced causing most of the tax burden to be concentrated in very few taxes while neglecting the use of the least distortion-prone tax mechanisms available; inequitable because it forces the middle and low income groups to shoulder most of the tax burden while allowing the super rich to get away paying one of the lowest tax rates among middle income and advanced countries. The consequence of the combined effect of the two sides of this fiscal policy - taxation and public expenditures - is to artificially increase the capital intensity of the economy, to deepen its dependency on natural resource based and environmentally dirty industries, to handicap the creation of human capital and to delay the evolution towards a knowledge-based economy. Fiscal policy has thus negatively affected the long run growth potential of the economy and has contributed to perpetuate a highly unequal distribution of wealth and to exacerbate environmental and natural resource degradation.

This article analyses different attributes as determinants of the market price of urban plots in Santiago. These attributes compose a "bundle" of characteristics that are transfered together with the transaction of the property rights of land plots. Hedon

Las estimaciones que utilizan datos de grupos de países para comprobar la existencia de la Curva Ambiental de Kuznets (en inglés, the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC)), la que empíricamente analiza la relación entre ingreso y contaminación, en general asumen una estructura común para todos los países. Sin embargo, como este supuesto no se deriva de la teoría económica y contradice la intuición, en este trabajo se emplea el modelo de "Coeficientes Aleatorios" propuesto por Swamy (1970) para estimar empíricamente las EKCs para SO2 (dióxido de sulfuro) y los puntos de quiebre específicos a partir de una muestra de 73 países de alto y bajo nivel de ingreso. Un hallazgo crucial es que existen amplias desigualdades entre los puntos de quiebre estimados de las EKCs para los diferentes países en la muestra, lo cual indica la relevancia del enfoque empleado porque el supuesto usual de una estructura común para todos los países erróneamente esconde esta característica empíricamente relevante. Más aún, el análisis de la estructura de las EKCs estimadas sugiere que procesos reguladores que replican mecanismos de mercado pueden inducir la emergencia de EKCs en los países que implementan tales procesos. Finalmente, para hacerse cargo de los cuestionamientos más recientes en la literatura, este trabajo testea econométricamente, por una parte, la validez del supuesto teórico usual de la exogeneidad de la variable de ingreso per cápita en la relación de EKC, y, por otra, la eventualidad de que un cambio estructural sea responsable del cambio de signo en la relación contaminación-ingreso per cápita de la EKC. Los tests de exogeneidad débil y de quiebre estructural empleados indican la plausibilidad de que la variable de ingreso per cápita sea realmente la variable causante que determina la relación de EKC encontrada.

In the past, Cd regulations have imposed trade restrictions on foodstuffs from some developing countries seeking to access markets in the developed world and in recent years, there has been a trend towards imposing more rigorous standards. This trend seems to respond more to public and private sectors strategies in some developed countries to create disguised barriers to trade and to improve market competitiveness for their industries, than to scientifically justified health precautions (sanitary and phytosanitary measures) and/or technical barriers to trade acceptable under the Uruguay Round Agreement of the WTO. Applying more rigorous Cd standards in some developed countries will not only increase production costs in developing countries but it will also have a large impact on their economies highly dependent on international agricultural markets. In the current literature there are large uncertainties in the cause-effect relationship between current levels of Cd intakes and eventual health effects in human beings; even the risk of Cd to kidney function is under considerable debate. Recent works on the importance of zinc:Cd ratio rather than Cd levels alone to determine Cd risk factors, on the one hand, and on the declining trends of Cd level in foods and soils, on the other, also indicate a lack of scientific evidence justifying more restrictive cadmium standards. This shows that developing countries should fight for changing and making more transparent the current international structures and procedures for setting sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade.

Chile has supported its agriculture with the use of price bands on selected commodities namely wheat, vegetable oils and fats, and sugar. In this paper we consider agricultural reform and how urban unemployment, and rural-urban migration, may alter the expected welfare effects of agricultural reform. We utilize a new CGE model of the Chilean economy based on the Harris-Todaro ramework, incorporating imperfect labor mobility, and consider both price band removal and more extensive agricultural reform that eliminates all tariffs on agricultural and food commodities in Chile. Results show that if trade reforms damage the rural economy in Chile, potential gains in welfare from lower agricultural prices are offset by increased urban unemployment and lower rural wages resulting in net welfare loss from trade reform.