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I am an Associate Professor at the Institute for Economic Policies, Universidad Andres Bello (Santiago, Chile).
My current research interests are Macroeconomics, Labor Economics, and Political Economy.
Here you can find my C.V.
I am also co-director of the SABE project (Sistema de Análisis de Bolsas de Empleo), which gathers and harmonizes real-time data from job ads and applicants from multiple online job boards in Chile and classifies demand and supply side into occupations using machine learning techniques.
These are profiles in: Google Scholar, RePeC, SSRN, Research Gate, ORCID, Scopus.
Contact: benjamin.villena.r (at) gmail.com
News
News
October 17, 2026: I wrote a column for Ex-Ante, "Nobel 2026: El rol de las expectativas en la política económica," on the contributions of Robert Hall and Michael Woodford, the 2026 Nobel laureates in economics, to the role of expectations in economic policy, and on what Hall's view of hiring as an investment says about unemployment in Chile.
October 15, 2026: I wrote a column for La Segunda, "Contratar también es invertir," on Robert Hall's view of hiring as an investment and what it implies for the slow recovery of employment in Chile and for the design of employment policy.
October 13, 2026: Ex-Ante covers my Reporte de Dinámica y Transiciones Laborales for the June-August 2026 rolling quarter: 88 thousand formal jobs were lost in a year, the unemployed find informal work less often, and youth unemployment reaches 18.3%.
October 1, 2026: T13 airs my assessment of the Government's Chile Despega employment plan: the focus is right, but the effect on the unemployment rate will be limited, since most of the new spending is executed only in 2027.
October 1, 2026: El Mercurio quotes my view that seasonality usually lowers the unemployment rate by 4 or 5 tenths of a point between December and February, but that a larger drop is unlikely because activity forecasts keep being revised downward.
September 30, 2026: Emol and Nuevo Poder gather my comments on the 9.6% unemployment rate: unemployment now rises because jobs are being lost, informality has stopped absorbing those who lose a formal job, and the risk of a double-digit rate is highest in the autumn and winter of 2027.
September 30, 2026: La Segunda quotes my remark that informality has stopped cushioning the loss of formal jobs.
September 30, 2026: Radio Cooperativa broadcasts my comments on why the labor agenda in Congress, the Sala Cuna bill, and a wider window for averaging working hours should keep moving alongside the government's employment plan.
September 30, 2026: Hora12 and Portal Innova publish my analysis of the Chile Despega plan: about $0.9 billion of its $1.3 billion USD is truly new fiscal spending, and the unemployment rate would fall by about 0.3 percentage points.
September 29, 2026: El Mercurio reports my projection that the unemployment rate could approach 8.5-9% in the October-December quarter and hover around 8.5% during 2027 if the cycle recovers moderately and the approved investment materializes.
September 28, 2026: La Tercera includes my view on hiring subsidies as the tool at hand for the short run: they work best when unemployment is high and when targeted at vulnerable groups, while the long-run remedies are investment and labor regulation that favors productivity and adaptability.
September 28, 2026: Emol reports my estimate that, even if the Government's plan meets its 100,000-job target, unemployment would fall by only about 0.3 percentage points, because roughly half of those entering formal jobs come from informality and about 20% from inactivity.
September 27, 2026: El Mercurio features my views on youth employment in the digital era: the high job turnover of young workers and the lasting scar that unemployment between jobs leaves on wages.
September 25, 2026: El Mercurio gathers my views on the government's employment plan: a boost to public investment directly raises hiring, especially in construction, but without structural policies it will not substantially reduce unemployment, particularly among women and older workers.
September 24, 2026: BioBioChile mentions my El Mercurio column "Intenciones versus resultados" and quotes my remark on insufficient flexibility while working hours are being reduced in a country where productivity has essentially not grown in a long time.
September 24, 2026: I wrote a column for El Mercurio, "Intenciones versus resultados," on legislating by the ethics of conviction rather than the ethics of responsibility, with the rigid design of Chile's 40-hour law as the case in point.
September 14, 2026: CNN Chile broadcasts my comments on the long duration of unemployment, which now exceeds eight months on average.
September 10, 2026: Interview on A Bordo, La Tercera's videopodcast, alongside Jorge Berríos, on the reasons behind the highest unemployment rate in five years.
September 7, 2026: Chilevisión Noticias Central includes an excerpt of my interview in its report on youth unemployment.
September 2, 2026: Ex-Ante covers my Reporte de Dinámica y Transiciones Laborales for the May-July 2026 rolling quarter on a labor market that creates fewer jobs but a larger share of formal ones.
September 2, 2026: I wrote a column for La Tercera on the transitions behind the 9.5% unemployment rate, arguing that unemployment keeps rising because the collapse of informal hiring outweighs the improvement in formal hiring.
September 2, 2026: Interview with Radio Agricultura on the state of the labor market, unemployment, informality, and the bills currently before Congress.
September 2, 2026: A new edition of my Reporte de Dinámica y Transiciones Laborales, for the May-July 2026 rolling quarter, is available. It shows that the weekly probability of moving from unemployment into a formal job rose from 2.1% to 2.5%, while the informal channel fell from 2.9% to 1.8% (revised Sept 8th)
August 28, 2026: Emol gathers my views on whether the rebound in economic activity expected for spring and summer will be strong enough to pull the labor market out of the crisis.
August 27, 2026: El Mercurio quotes my views on the bill regulating hourly contracts and its potential to move short-hours work in Chile into formal employment.
August 27, 2026: I presented at the Annual Meeting of the Chilean Economic Society (SECHI) the paper "Skill premia for AI and computer requirements: evidence from online job ads."
August 12, 2026: Ex-Ante covers my Reporte de Dinámica y Transiciones Laborales for the April-June 2026 rolling quarter, on the quiet precarization of employment in Chile.
August 10, 2026: I posted a LinkedIn article on the flows behind Chile's labor market, showing that the current high unemployment owes mostly to weak job creation rather than to layoffs and quits, based on the rotating-panel microdata of the Encuesta Nacional de Empleo (ENE).
August 4, 2026: Our paper Do high-wage jobs attract more applicants? Directed search evidence from the online labor market (Journal of Labor Economics, 2019, with Stefano Banfi) surpassed 200 citations.
August 2, 2026: Portal Metropolitano cites my perspectives on the evolution of unemployment in the coming months.
July 31, 2026: Radio Universidad de Chile plays some comments on unemployment figures.
July 31, 2026: Publimicro mentions a comment on the future of unemployment in the coming months.
July 31, 2026: Diario Financiero highlights my observation on the reduction of potential inactive persons and its relationship with the unemployment outlook.
July 31, 2026: TVN and Canal 24 horas highlight excerpts from my interview on the recent unemployment figures.
July 31, 2026: Radio Cooperativa broadcasts some of my comments on unemployment figures.
July 31, 2026: Emol highlights my comments on the weakness of the labor market and the situation of female employment.
July 20, 2026: Together with the members of the Labor Reactivation Board (Mesa de Reactivación Laboral), we wrote this column published by La Tercera.
July 13, 2026: El Mercurio portrays my perspectives on employment in upcoming months in Chile.
July 10, 2026: Interview with Radio Dulce (V Región) about the recommendations of the Labor Reactivation Committee.
July 7, 2026: I posted a LinkedIn article explaining the required reforms in the National Training System Agency (SENCE) in line with the Labor Reactivation Committee (Mesa de Reactivación Laboral) appointed by the Ministry of Labor Affairs in Chile.
July 7, 2026: A new version of our paper Labor Markets, Inequality, and Hiring Selection (with A. Pizzo) is available.
July 4, 2026: I wrote a column for Ex-Ante about the reform suggested by the Labor Reactivation Committee about expanding the time window to compute legal hours in Chile.
July 3, 2026: I posted a LinkedIn article on the proposed use of employment subsidies in Chile to deal with the crisis in the labor market in line with the Labor Reactivation Committee (Mesa de Reactivación Laboral) appointed by the Ministry of Labor Affairs in Chile.
July 2, 2026: My comments on the government's announcements of job creation subsidies in La Tercera.
July 2, 2026: Diario Financiero asked me about the situation of unemployment of young and college-educated workers in the context of the labor market crisis in Chile.
July 2, 2026: Interview on Radio Agricultura and Radio Sonar on the potential recession, employment perspectives, and recommendations by Labor Reactivation Committee.
July 1, 2026: A LinkedIn post on the proposals to children's daycare coverage to spur the female labor market in Chile in line with the Labor Reactivation Committee (Mesa de Reactivación Laboral).
July 1, 2026: Interviews in several radio stations to talk about recommendations of the Labor Reactivation Committee (Mesa de Reactivación Laboral) (Radio Futuro, Radio USACH, Radio Infinita, Radio Agricultura)
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