Working Papers

2017 | Interaction between crop insurance and technology adoption decisions: The case of wheat farmers in Chile

César Salazar, Marcela Jaime, Cristián Pinto, and Andrés Acuña.

Environment for Development (EfD) Discussion Paper EfD DP 17-09.

Abstract: This paper examines relationships between crop insurance participation and input technology decisions among Chilean wheat farmers. Using nation-wide farm-level data from the National Agriculture and Forestry Census (INE 2007) a bivariate probit model is estimated. In this regard, we investigate the extent to which the adoption of certain production input technologies is associated with the participation of farmers in the state-promoted agriculture climate risk insurance program. We find that relationships between insurance and technology decisions are significant among family farmers, but this is not the case for large-scale farmers. Evidence also suggests that modern irrigation reduces the likelihood of adopting crop insurance, suggesting that Chilean farmers perceive these two options as substitutes. The latter implies that those using traditional irrigation methods preferentially participate in the insurance program, which can be taken as evidence of adverse selection in the Chilean insurance market.

2017 | Does being (un)registered to vote make any difference? Re-examining the private and social costs of voter registration

Andrés Acuña-Duarte.

SSRN Working Paper No. 2965016.

Abstract: Voter-registration laws have played a key role in eradicating electoral frauds, increasing electoral engagement among youth and minorities, and consolidating emerging democracies. Nevertheless, the conceptual study of voter enrollment has not been prolific despite its relevance to democratic legitimacy. This paper proposes a theoretical framework for the decision of voter registration, which recovers the classical insights that democracy is a public good, government actions are motivated by the public interest, and citizens act rationally in politics. The private and social solutions of the model entail three types of Nash equilibrium (null, partial, and full enrollment rate), where the real cost of voter enrollment and how valuable is democracy to people are crucial determinants. Policy analysis suggests that reducing or removing registration costs will not avoid a crisis of representation. Finally, the addition of ideological preferences and a pricing mechanism based on electoral engagement allows to discuss the potential costs of being unregistered to vote.

2014 | Margin of victory vs. opportunity-cost of time as voting motivators in the Biobio Region

Andrés A. Acuña.

Ideas RePEc, MPRA Paper No. 52848.

Abstract: The apathy for electoral and political participation in Latin America shows an increasing trend that deserves the scholar community’s attention. In this sense, this paper models the voter registration decision in a mandatory voting system that includes the margin of victory as a potential motivator of voter enrollment. The empirical test is focused on the Biobio region, Chile, during the period 2003-2011. The results indicate that voter enrollment is negatively influenced by the margin of victory only if the model is separately regressed for presidential and mayoral elections. Marginal effects from W2LT regressions are lower in mayoral than in presidential elections, which indicates that the electorate participates depending on what is the political office in question. The citizen participation and racial effects are larger for men than women, which could reorient the design of public policy aimed to encourage the civic involvement of male indigenous population. Finally, the discrepancy between the W2LT results from two distant periods suggests a structural change in the Biobio’s electorate during the last decade.

2013 | Mean-variance versus stochastic dominance: Consistency in investment performance indicators for the Chilean mutual funds market

Cristián F. Pinto and Andrés A. Acuña.

Ideas RePEc, MPRA Paper No. 59418.

Abstract: In this paper we analyze the consistency of financial investment ordering based on mean-variance and stochastic dominance (SD) approaches in the context of an emerging financial market. We take 47 Chilean mutual funds and compute Sharpe index and the algorithms to verify first (FSD), second (SSD), and third degree (TSD) stochastic dominance relationships. We find evidence that both approaches generate similar sets of efficient investments. However, there are important dissimilarities between the rankings elaborated according to mean-variance and TSD criteria. TSD criterion presents itself as a complete method for evaluating the risk profile of an investment, as it takes into consideration risk-relevant characteristics of the return probability distribution that are not visible in mean-variance indicators.