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This article examines how a policy oriented toward a specific group within the population can have collateral effects on the economic decisions of other groups. In 1996, the Chilean government approved the extension of the school day from half- to full-day school. This article exploits the quasi-experimental nature of the reform's implementation by time, municipality, and age targeting of the program in order to examine how the maternal labor supply is affected by the childcare subsidy implicit in the lengthening of the school day. Using data from the Chilean socioeconomic household survey and administrative data from the Ministry of Education for 1990-2011, the authors estimate that, on average, there is a 5 percent increase in labor participation and employment rates of single mothers with eligible children (between 8 and 13 years old) with no younger children, who are the group that would be mainly affected by the policy. No significant labor supply responses are detected among others mothers with eligible children.

Since the 1970s, Chile has exhibited a highly skewed income distribution accompanied with strong fluctuations over time. Although income distribution worsened notably in the 1970s-80s, a significant improvement was recorded in the first half of the 1990s, resulting from better economic and social policies in the return to democracy. Nonetheless, Chile still faces significant challenges to improve development. There must be an active macroeconomic policy focused on the real economy. Chile also needs profound microeconomic reforms, including (i) capital markets, developing long-term financing channels for small businesses; (ii) radical progress in quality of education and labour training; and (iii) vigorous public support for innovation.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact that the anti-crime program Comuna Segura: Compromiso 100 had on the reporting rate of different types of crimes. This program, implemented in Chile starting in 2001, was very highly criticized and, therefore, was eliminated in 2006. This paper provides statistical evidence, using the impact assessment methodology, which shows that the program was successful in increasing the reporting rate in targeted municipalities and also in decreasing levels of crimes associated with other crimes, such as rape. All this underlies the importance of carrying out formal impact assessments in order to determine benefits that air associated with a particular program. However, financial issues are also very important too and it is necessary to take them in account when making a fair statement about the cost-effectiveness of the program. This point is, however, not addressed in this paper but should bi kept in mind in order to have a complete picture of the program. El objetivo de este trabajo consiste in la evaluación del programa anti delincuencia Comuna Segura implementado a partir del año 2001, el cual fue muy criticado y, por ende, eliminado en el año 2006. En este artículo si presenta evidencia estadística, utilizando la metodología de evaluación de impacto, que muestra que el programa fue exitoso en aumentar las tasas di denuncia de ciertos tipos de delitos in las Municipalidades beneficiarias, y también in reducir otros delitos como violación. Todo esto recalca la importancia di llevar a cabo evaluaciones de impacto con el objetivo de determinar los beneficios asociados a un programa in particular. No obstante lo anterior, es importante también analizar los aspectos financieros del programa para establecer de una manirá más precisa la efectividad del mismo. Esta punto no es abordado en este artículo pero debe tenerse presente al analizar integralmente el efecto que tuvo el programa.

This paper analyzes the determinants for first-year students’ performance results in four Chilean universities. In addition to the standardized college entrance exams (PSU, for the Spanish acronym) and high school marks aggregation (NEM, for the Spanish acronym), this study includes a measurement of relative ability based on Registro de Estudiantes de Chile (RECH), as an outcome predictor. Results indicate that a good performance of high school students is directly related to better university results, even when controlled by marks in college entrance exams and high-school marks for each degree. This suggests that our relative ability measure captures information (eventually non-cognitive skills) that the selection variables currently in use do not provide, which is important for explaining the first year college performance.

This paper studies long-term trends of self-employment in Chile. Self-employment is associated with poor job conditions, vulnerability, and instability or informal labor market. Contrary to what is expected, self- employment level does not respond to macroeconomic variables. Using forty-one cross sections of the longest Employment Survey available, we show that there is little correlation of the economic cycle with variations in self-employment. Cohort effects are also unimportant. In fact, age is the most important predictor of self- employment; older people are more likely to be self-employed. In addition, we performed a decomposition of changes in self-employment on changes in coefficients, which are a measure of the returns to individual characteristics, and on changes in characteristics. The results indicate that self-employment should have decreased given the changes in individual characteristics, but was prevented by changes in coefficients. We also find indirect evidence that these changes in parameters are not correlated with macroeconomic variables. Finally, the changes in individual characteristics, such as education and age, and changes in their coefficients account for most of the changes in self-employment Este trabajo estudia las tendencias de largo plazo del empleo por cuenta propia en Chile. El empleo por cuenta propia está asociado con pobres condiciones de trabajo, vulnerabilidad e inestabilidad o informalidad laboral. Contrario a lo que se espera, el nivel del empleo por cuenta propia no responde a variables macroeconómicas. Usando 41 cohortes transversales de la encuesta de empleo más extensa disponible mostramos que existe poca correlación entre los ciclos económicos y las variaciones del empleo por cuenta propia. Los efectos de cohorte tampoco son importantes. De hecho, la edad es el predictor más importante del empleo por cuenta propia; personas de mayor edad presentan una mayor probabilidad de ser autoempleados. Adicionalmente, realizamos una descomposición de cambios en empleo por cuenta propia en cambios en los coeficientes, los cuales son una medida de los retornos a las características individuales, y en cambios en características. Los resultados muestran que el empleo por cuenta propia debería haber disminuido debido a los cambios en las características individuales, pero esto fue compensado por cambios en los coeficientes. También encontramos evidencia indirecta que estos cambios en los parámetros no están correlacionados con variables macroeconómicas. Finalmente, los cambios en características individuales, tales como educación y edad, y cambios en sus respectivos coeficientes, explican la mayor parte de los cambios en el empleo por cuenta propia

Analysis of two water subsidy schemes a means tested subsidy in Chile and a geographically targeted subsidy in Colombia shows that the means-tested system is better able to identify poor households than the geographically targeted scheme. However, the overall distributive impact of both schemes is quite similar, at least for the three lowest income deciles, because the amount of benefits per household in the geographically targeted Colombian scheme are differentiated by the socioeconomic classification of household. Despite the relative merits of the Chilean means tested scheme, targeting errors are still quite large. More than 60 percent of subsidies accrue to households that are above the third decile of the income distribution. If the policy objective in Chile is to benefit a significant proportion of households in the lowest income deciles, then either the targeting mechanism must be improved or the number of subsidies has to increase to take into account these targeting imperfections. In Colombia almost all households receive some kind of benefit, implying an unnecessarily high fiscal cost. An improvement in the targeting mechanism could lower this cost without jeopardizing benefits to lower-income households. Some suggestions for additional research and for improving both schemes are discussed.

For over twenty years, a voucher system has been used in Chile to promote competition in the educational system between public and private schools. Attending a private subsidized school is associated with increased standardized test scores, but the apparent impact is relatively small. Controlling for school choice using a supply-side instrument (school availability at community level) implies substantially larger impacts of the voucher system. The effect of parents' education on academic performance is smaller than that implied by simple OLS estimates that do not control for school choice. Finally, the results also show that family school choice is gender biased, females are sent more often to voucher schools while males are sent more often to private (non voucher) schools. In addition, the TSLS estimates show that females gain less than males from going to voucher schools.