After a wide and successful call that sought to support students of master’s degrees in economics and related fields, four research Scholarships were awarded.
The students, Javiera Palma, Diego Tello Córdova, Rafael Tiara, and Sebastián Inostroza are all winners of BecaMIPP 2020, rewarded for their outstanding performance and the impact of their research projects.
The Institute for Research in Market Imperfections and Public Policy (MIPP) promotes and disseminates leading-edge research on public policy responses to market failures. In this context, this was the 8th call for MIPP Master’s Scholarships in 2020.
We invite you to review the winning proposals:
Javiera Palma:
THESIS: “The Impact of Crisis Scenarios on the Labor Market: Women and the Pandemic”
The thesis project is an empirical study on the impact of COVID on the gender gap in the labor market and time use. Before the pandemic, Chile was already one of the Latin American countries with lower labor force female participation rates. As such, the purpose of the research is to study how the workforce has been further impacted and – if necessary – propose special measures in order to not undo all the advances in gender equity of the past few years, especially during the period of economic revival that Chile is expected to experience in the coming months.
Diego Tello Córdova
THESIS: “Gender Discrimination in Chile: A Counterfactual Analysis of the ISAPRES Market”.
Until 2019, the health insurance providers in Chile (ISAPRES) would set the prices of their plans based on gender, age, and type of beneficiary (contributor or dependent). However, as of April 1st, 2020, this mechanism was changed and a schedule of common risk factors was established for all ISAPRES. As a result, health insurers can no longer price discriminate based on gender. In addition, the previously existing age groups were reduced, which also implies less room for age-based price discrimination. Upon implementation, the average prices of women’s health plans fell. However, there is no current way of comparing the decline in prices due to this policy, and other potential policy regulations along the same line, which could have been implemented. This thesis intends to seek different currently nonexistent regulatory scenarios and to observe the final price that contributors face, the consumer surplus, and the male-female cross-subsidy generated in each of these potential scenario simulations.
This will make it possible to provide a quantitative comparison between the policy implemented and the generated alternative scenario simulations and observe if the current policy is optimal in terms of different economic variables. Finally, the impact of the current regulation will also be observed, in order to measure if it had a lesser or greater impact on the gender gap reduction than the not implemented regulations.
Rafel Tiarra
THESIS: “Housing and social integration: Estimation of the externality effects of a public social housing project in Chile”
Understanding the indirect impact of social housing projects on host neighborhoods is relevant for the design of urban policies, which can guarantee adequate spatial integration in cities. Using administrative data, surveys, and aerial images of the set of Metropolitan Region neighborhoods where housing projects were implemented during the 2017-2020 period, this study seeks to estimate the effect of externalities generated by these projects on the housing decisions of the residents who have historically inhabited these neighborhoods.
Sebastián Inostroza
THESIS: “Consequences of a constitutional change on short-term growth”
The current discourse on constitutional change has created intense debate. One such topic is the economic effect that would eventually result from a constitutional change. Therefore, the investigation intends to understand if, in the short term, a constitutional change has economic effects. The idea is to compare countries with and without constituent processes and assess if the constitutional change has consequences on growth variables in the short run. This research is a contribution to this discussion and the literature on the economic effects of a constituent process. The research will study the constitutional changes and their effect on the economy, concluding if these changes generate, for example, short term economic instability or the disappearance of uncertainty after the new rules come into play.
MIPP Chile 2024