Dante Contreras

dcontrer@fen.uchile.cl

Dante Contreras holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Chile. Throughout his career, he has held several senior leadership and policy positions, including Director of the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Executive Director at the World Bank, Vice President of the National Copper Corporation of Chile (CODELCO), officer at the United Nations Development Programme, and Director of the Department of Economics at the University of Chile.

He has also served as an advisor to a range of national and international institutions, including the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the Ministry of Labor, the National Women’s Service, the Ministry of Social Development, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

His research focuses on the economics of education, inequality, and social mobility, with particular emphasis on how institutions, policies, and large-scale shocks shape human capital accumulation over the life cycle. His recent work examines high-stakes educational decisions, gender gaps and child penalties in the labor market, teacher incentives, returns to higher education and student debt, and the effects of social unrest and social identity on economic outcomes. His research combines large-scale administrative data with quasi-experimental methods and has been published in leading international journals such as the Journal of Labor Economics, Labour Economics, Economics and Human Biology, Social Networks, Journal of Development Economics, Economic of Education Review and World Development.

Research Agenda

My work asks how institutions and unexpected shocks shape the accumulation of human capital over the life cycle, and why the resulting disparities prove so persistent in Latin America. One line studies the selection mechanisms that sort students across schools and into higher education: centralized admission lotteries, high-stakes entrance exams, college major choice, and the returns to student debt. A second examines teachers and school inputs, and what kinds of incentives actually change what students learn.

A third line, more recent, turns to shocks that arrive from outside the education system and are absorbed within the family: severe illness in a parent or a child, social unrest that disrupts a national examination, and large-scale migration. A fourth looks at gender, from child penalties in the labor market to the diversity gap in mathematics, and at how new technologies such as generative AI substitute for or complement student effort. Throughout, I rely on linked administrative data covering entire national populations, and on quasi-experimental methods: differences-in-differences, event studies, regression discontinuity, and randomized assignment.

Selected Publications

Getting Teachers Back to Study: Input-Based Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement. Journal of Labor Economics. Forthcoming.

Elites in times of social crisis: Attitudes toward inequality during Chile’s 2019 uprising. Socio-Economic Review. Forthcoming.

Education Spending and Economic Growth: Short- and Long-Term Effects in a Global Panel. Review of Development Economics (2026)

Early maternity and paternity: Effects on educational trajectories. Journal of Development Economics (2025)

Is private education worth it? Evidence from school-to-work transitions in Chile. Labour Economics (2024)

What makes elites more or less egalitarian? Variations in attitudes toward inequality within elites in Chile. Socio-Economic Review (2024)

The effects of mass migration on the academic performance of native students. Economics of Education Review (2022)

Labor market returns to student loans for university education. Journal of Labor Economics (2020)

Working Papers 

Bigger Than We Thought: Methodological Choices and the Magnitude of Child Penalties in Chile. With Jaime Aranguiz, Camila Carrasco and Maria Isidora Palma.

The Wage Impact of Revealed LGBT Community Participation: Evidence from Chile. With Ignacio Galvez and Cristián Valenzuela. Under review.

College Major Choice, Payoffs, and Gender Gaps. With Christopher Campos, Pablo Muñoz and Alonso Bucarey. Under review.

The Effectiveness of Private Schools in Chile: Evidence from Centralized Assignment Lotteries. With Matías Morales, Felipe Subiabre and Fidel Bennett. Under review.

The Gender Diversity Gap in Mathematics. With Francine Montecinos. Under review.

Substitute or Complement? Generative AI Use and Student Achievement: Evidence from PISA 2025. With Ignacio Lepe. Under review.

Exam-Day Disruptions, Test Performance, and University Admission: Evidence from Chile's Social Unrest. With Matias Chacon and Martín Lehmann. Under review.

The Intergenerational Cost of Parental Illness: Children's School Engagement in Chile. With Emilia Brito and Nicolás Libuy. IDB Working Paper.