
Benjamin Villena-RoldanAndrés Bello University | UNAB
Benjamin Villena-Roldan
PhD in Economics
About
33
Publications
4,272
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233
Citations
Introduction
Labor markets, especially online job boards.
Labor market transitions and their impact on sorting, efficiency, and inequality.
Search and insurance.
Social Capital and Public Policies.
Voting behavior.
Education
September 2004 - June 2009
University of Rochester
Field of study
- Economics
Publications
Publications (33)
In emerging economies, policymakers should care not only about the informality level but also about its persistence, which also has key welfare implications. Considering worker flows that drive people into informality is important for developing effective public policies. Using a Markov representation of worker flows and correcting for time aggrega...
Employers hire more selectively between heterogeneous productivity workers when applicants' queues are longer. Consistently, CPS data reveal a positive and concave relation between unemployment rates and wage inequality. We rationalize intuition and evidence altogether using a nonsequential search model in which selective hiring stretches out the r...
Employers hire more selectively between heterogeneous productivity workers when applicants’ queues are longer. Consistently, CPS data reveal a positive and concave relation between unemployment rates and wage inequality. We rationalize intuition and evidence altogether using a nonsequential search model in which selective hiring stretches out the r...
We use online job board data to document novel facts regarding unemployment and on-the-job searches. We define a relevant set of job ads using the bipartite network between ads and applicants and show how applications are affected by demographics such as gender, age, and marital status as well as timing variables like unemployment duration, job ten...
We demonstrate that regression models can be estimated by working independently in a row-wise fashion. We document a simple procedure which allows for a wide class of econometric estimators to be implemented cumulatively, where, in the limit, estimators can be produced without ever storing more than a single line of data in a computer's memory. Thi...
Libro de la Comisión Desafíos del Futuro, Ciencia, tecnología e Innovación del Senado de la República de Chile 2018-2022
https://www.bcn.cl/publicaciones/ediciones-bcn/detalle_libro?id=10221.1/85083
Using proprietary data from a Chilean online job board, we compute sorting between workers and job positions during the application stage (ex ante) and predict sorting in the flow and stock of created matches (ex post) for different type measures. We find strong evidence for positive and procyclical correlations between workers and job types. Since...
La curva de Beveridge es una relación estadística negativa entre vacantes -una medida de la demanda por trabajadores- y los postulantes -una medida de la oferta de trabajadores-: un alto valor de vacantes se asocia a menos postulantes, y viceversa. Esta regularidad empírica se observa en Chile y en otros mercados laborales.La coexistencia de emplea...
Labor markets become more efficient in theory if jobseekers direct their search. Using online job board data, we show that high-wage ads attract more applicants as in directed search models. Due to distinctive data features, we also estimate significant but milder directed search for hidden (or implicit) wages, suggesting that ad texts and requirem...
We use an unusually rich data from a Chilean job board to document novel facts regarding job search for unemployed and employed seekers. We show how application behavior is influenced by (1) demographics such as gender, age, and marital status, (2) alignment between applicant wage expectations and wage offers, (3) applicant fit into ad requirements...
Using proprietary data from a Chilean online job board, we compute sorting between workers and job positions types at the application stage (ex ante) and predict sorting in the flow and stock of created matches (ex post) for different type measures. We find strong evidence for positive and procyclical correlations between workers and job types. Sin...
Using proprietary data from a Chilean online job board, we find strong, positive assortative matching at the worker-position level, both along observed dimensions and on unobserved characteristics (OLS Mincer residual wages). We also find that this positive assortative matching is robustly procyclical. Then, we use the generalized deferred-acceptan...
We study how the local institutional context shapes local government decisions about responses to perceived threats of natural disasters and climatic change. We draw on institutional theories and field observations to develop hypotheses about the effects of municipal institutional arrangements, social capital, and multilevel governance. To test the...
We study how the local institutional context shapes local government decisions about responses to perceived threats of natural disasters and climatic change. We draw on institutional theories and field observations to develop hypotheses about the effects of municipal institutional arrangements, social capital, and multilevel governance. To test the...
We draw on neo-institutional theories to understand the impact of local governance
performance, government decisions, social capital, and their role in driving local efforts
to reduce risks associated with climate change and future disasters. We propose that
institutional municipal arrangements and characteristics such as national policies,
multile...
The purpose of this study is to identify institutional factors and processes that foster local government decisions about disaster risk reduction, especially critical infrastructure investments and maintenance. We propose that municipal institutional capacities, organization, leadership, and multilevel governance will affect critical infrastructure...
Labor markets become more efficient in theory if jobseekers direct their search. Using online job board data, we show that high-wage ads attract more applicants as in directed search models. Due to distinctive data features, we also estimate significant but milder directed search for hidden (or implicit) wages, suggesting that ad texts and requirem...
As suggested in the Climate Change literature (Field et al . 2012; Smit et al. 2014), we highlight multiple aspects of climate change responses and adaptation. First, we focus the decisions of local governments to manage risks and climate change adaptation as an investment decision, given contextual social, economic and politico-institutional chara...
This paper introduces a rational choice model for multiple kinds of participation to empirically investigate several theoretical determinants of social capital (SC) formation. The framework is rich enough to investigate the importance of individual variables, social/peer effects, endogenous trust, political-institutional, and inequality factors as...
This paper introduces a rational choice model for multiple kinds of participation to empirically
investigate several theoretical determinants of Social Capital (SC) formation. The framework is
rich enough to investigate the importance of individual variables, social/peer effects, endogenous
trust, political-institutional, and inequality factors as...
This paper introduces an ordinal rational choice model for multiple kinds of social participation intensities to empirically investigate the relevance of several theoretical determinants of formation of Social Capital. Using Chilean Data, we find that politico-institutional factors are jointly important to account for SC formation, as well as socia...
Proposers strategically formulate legislative bills before voting takes place. However, spatial voting models that estimate legislator's ideological preferences do not explicitly consider this fact. In our model, proposers determine the ideology and valence of legislative bills to maximize their objective functions. Approaching to the median legisl...
Proposers strategically formulate legislative bills before voting takes place. However,
spatial voting models that estimate legislator’s ideological preferences do not explicitly
consider this fact. In our model, proposers determine the ideology and valence of legislative
bills to maximize their objective functions. Approaching to the median legisl...
We estimate life-cycle transition probabilities between employment, unemployment and inactivity for U.S. workers. We assess the importance of each worker flow to account for participation and unemployment rates over the life-cycle. We find that inactivity exit and entry matter, but the empirically relevant margins defy conventional wisdom. High youth...
This paper introduces an ordinal rational choice model for multiple kinds of social participation intensities to empirically investigate the relevance of several theoretical determinants of formation of Social Capital (SC) introduced in the literature. The framework is rich enough to investigate the importance of demographic individual variables, s...
Many social scientists hypothesize that the time mothers spend with their children is crucial for children’s cognitive development. Unlike most studies that investigate maternal employment effects on children, we estimate direct casual effects of time-diary measured maternal time using the CDS – PSID dataset. Considering maternal time allocation en...
The calibrated model can replicate moments of the distribution of wages and unemployment durations in CPS data. Using this parametrization, I also show that an increase of screening costs reduces inequality and productive efficiency, and decreases negative externalities on other employers.
This paper empirically investigates several theoretical determinants of formation of Social
Capital (SC), in a context of discrete rational choice of participation intensity, social interactions,
endogenous trust, political and institutional factors for Chilean municipalities. We find
that politico-institutional factors are jointly important to acc...
This paper empirically investigates several theoretical determinants of formation of Social
Capital (SC), in a context of rational choice of participation intensity, social interactions, endoge-
nous trust, and institutional factors for Chilean municipalities. We �nd that institutional factors
are jointly important to account for SC formation, as w...
We develop a simple spatial voting model where the proposer of legislative bills controls their ideological content and valence. Due to this feature, the proposer might be willing to give in her preferred ideological point and to generate valence in order to overcome gridlock. We simulate the model via Monte Carlo and we show that individual ideolo...
The model also predicts (i) residual wage dispersion of level wages increasing in productivity; (ii) residual wage dispersion of log wages decreasing in productivity; (iii) a negative relation between unemployment and residual wage dispersion and (iv) positive relation between productivity dispersion and residual wage dispersion. To assess these em...