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Esteban Puentes

Chair, Department of Economics, Universidad de Chile

Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Universidad de Chile

Email: epuentes@fen.uchile.cl

About me: 

My research lies at the intersection of labor economics, applied econometrics, and social policy in Chile and Latin America. A central strand of my work focuses on labor market institutions — collective bargaining, wages, and unionization — and their effects on workers and firms. I also study household economic behavior, including savings decisions and the role of behavioral interventions and nudges among low-income households. I also work on the formation of human capital in early childhood, studying how socioeconomic disparities shape children's cognitive and socio-emotional development using longitudinal survey data from Chile. Across all these areas, I rely on causal inference tools — randomized experiments, difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, and structural modeling — to evaluate social policies.

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