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We seek to analyze the relationship between some macroeconomic variables and commodity prices in Latin America. The main hypothesis is that the economic performance in the area is tied to the pattern followed by the commodity prices. Moreover we expect to find that some commodities are more relevant than others. We find evidence supporting our former hypothesis but not the latter. An important result is that macroeconomic variables and commodity prices breaks followed a bimodal distribution over the last 60 years with one mode around the 70s and the other mode at the beginning of the 21th century., En el presente trabajo analizamos la relación entre determinadas variables macroeconómicas y los precios de commodities en América Latina. La hipótesis principal es que el desempeño económico del área siguió el patrón del movimiento de los precios de las commodities. También era esperable que algunas commodities fuesen más relevantes que otras. Encontramos evidencia a favor de nuestra primera hipótesis, pero no de la segunda. Un resultado importante es que los quiebres de las variables económicas y de los precios de las commodities siguieron una distribución bimodal durante los últimos 60 años con una moda en los setentas y la otra moda a principios del siglo 21., Facultad de Ciencias Económicas

En este trabajo, se estudia la presencia de quiebres estructurales en los flujos de capitales de 16 economías de Latinoamérica usando el test de raíz unitaria de Zivot y Andrews (1992). Para complementar el análisis, se utiliza el test de quiebres estructurales de Bai Perron (1998). Luego, se procede a analizar la posibilidad de contemporaneidad entre los quiebres encontrados y las crisis que tales países sufrieron en los últimos 40 años. Dichas crisis pueden ser de moneda, bancarias, domésticas o de deuda externa. Se encontraron muchos casos de contemporaneidad, especialmente con las crisis que ocurrieron al final de los 90., This paper studies the presence of structural breaks in the capital flows of sixteen economies of Latin America using the unit root test by Zivot and Andrews (1992). It is complemented by the structural break test by Bai Perron (1998). Afterwards, an analysis of the likelihood of contemporaneity between the breaks found and the crises the countries had suffered in the last forty years is presented. These crises were either of currency, banking, domestic and external debt type. Many cases of contemporaneity were found, especially with the crises that occurred at the end of the 90s., Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas

Chapter 1 partially surveys auctions with contingent contracts, i.e., contracts in which payments are allowed to depend on an ex-post verifiable variable, such as revenues. The review starts with the seminal paper of DeMarzo et al. (2005) and partially departs from Skrzypacz (2013) by analyzing on externalities and risk aversion concerns. A partial ranking of auction revenues for auctions that differ in terms of contract forms, pricing rules and seller commitment are described. Models incorporating adverse selection, moral hazard, competition between auctioneers, externalities and risk aversion are discussed.\ud \ud In Chapter 2 we study second price auctions, where buyers compete for the allocation of a project, by bidding securities over project's realized value. In addition, we allow for negative externalities, which are suffered by the losers in case the winner implements the project. Under this environment, we introduce two payment instruments: the Fixed-Equity Hybrid -which embeds cash- and the Fixed-Cash\ud Hybrid -which embeds equity. As our main result, we rank the instruments in terms of revenue, and show that the fixed-equity hybrid is the best instrument whereas equity is the worst despite being the most sensitive instrument to bidders' true type.\ud \ud Finally, in Chapter 3 second-price auctions, where buyers compete for the allocation of a project, by bidding securities over project's realized value are studied. In addition, bidders are allowed to be asymmetric not only with respect to their underlying distribution of payoffs but also with respect to their risk aversion. Under this environment, it is shown that steeper securities provide higher insurance. As a main result, the instruments are ranked in terms of efficiency, and shows that the steepest security minimizes the efficiency loss when bidders are indeed asymmetric. Moreover, steeper securities are shown to increase revenue for the seller as in DeMarzo et al. (2005).\ud