Benjamín Villena Roldán

• June 4, 2026: Interviewed in La Tercera/Radio Duna alongside David Bravo to discuss Chile's labor emergency and the urgent need for private investment to restore formal employment. Read on La Tercera.

• June 3, 2026: Joined Radio Agricultura to discuss long-term unemployment scarring effects, hidden underemployment statistics, and regulatory barriers slowing down female labor formalization. Watch on YouTube.

• May 31, 2026: Interviewed on TVN regarding Chile's rising 9.1% unemployment rate, highlighting gender gaps, structural challenges, and labor informality. Watch on YouTube.

• May 31, 2026: Published a column in Ex-Ante addressing labor market reactivation challenges and strategic training policies within the Ministry of Labor's technical committee framework. Read on Ex-Ante.

• May 30, 2026: Published an op-ed in La Segunda analyzing the Ministry of Finance's proposal to eliminate the SENCE tax credit for labor training, suggesting a co-payment alternative instead.

• May 8, 2026: Appointed by the Minister of Labor to join the newly formed Labor Reactivation Task Force to design urgent policies tackling unemployment and informality. Read Official Announcement.

• May 7, 2026: Honored to be the main speaker at the Trabajando.com corporate event, debating labor market adaptability, productivity, minimum wage gaps, and AI impacts alongside the Undersecretary of Labor and other. LinkedIn.

• Apr 29, 2026: Commented for EMOL, Diario Financiero, and La Segunda on deteriorating employment figures and the worrying 17.4% expanded unemployment rate including inactive job seekers.

• Apr 26, 2026: Published an op-ed in El Mostrador discussing the minimum wage dilemma in Chile amid a 15-year stagnation of labor productivity. Read on El Mostrador.

• Apr 24, 2026: Invited to participate as a discussant of a paper at a workshop on labor informality in Latin America organized by CAF, Buenos Aires.

• Apr 15, 2026: I gave an interview at Radio Agricultura on the effects of the war in the Middle East and the trade-offs that the government faces when reducing corporate taxes to boost investment and employment.

• Apr 9, 2026: El Mostrador posted my opinion on the Chilean government's decision on not smoothing the gasoline price due to the war in the Middle East.

• Apr 7, 2026: I presented our paper Remote Work, Competition, and Wages: Disentangling Demand and Supply Influences (with S. Choi, S. Davis, and O. Jaramillo) at the Department of Economics of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. I am also visiting here during the rest of the week.

• Mar 31, 2026: My column in La Tercera on the pricing of skills in the Chilean labor market, including AI usage and programming.

• Mar 31, 2026: I presented our paper "Working hours policy reform: micro and macro impacts" (with M. Tejada) at the 18th WEAI Conference in Bangkok, Thailand.

• Mar 26, 2026: My coauthors and I got a Revise & Resubmit at the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics for our paper "Wage Cyclicality Revisited: Evidence from High-Quality Vacancy Data"

• Mar 17, 2026: After Professor Chad Syverson (U. Chicago) gave a presentation on the effect of AI on productivity, I joined him and Pablo García, the president of the National Committee on Productivity and Evaluation, in a roundtable discussion. The event was organized by the Becker Friedman Institute - Latin America, UNAB, and the Central Bank of Chile.

• Mar 6, 2026: My column in La Tercera explaining the rationale behind a prudential ceiling for the Chilean public debt.

• Mar 3, 2026: My brief explanation about the impact of the war in the Middle East on the exchange rate and asset prices in Radio Agricultura.

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