Claudio E. Montenegro

• MA Economics - MS Statistics
• Economist/statistician - consultant at World Bank

The returns to schooling are estimated for 28 European and Central Asian countries using the Mincerian function. Our results show that while the public sector pays on average more than the private sector, the effect of education on earnings is stronger in the private sector. However, the returns to tertiary education are higher in the private secto...

The returns to schooling are estimated for 28 European and Central Asian countries using the Mincerian function. Our results show that while the public sector pays on average more than the private sector, the effect of education on earnings is stronger in the private sector. However, the returns to tertiary education are higher in the private secto...

While we have extensive information on the trends in income poverty, little is known about the trends in multidimensional poverty. The paper tries to fill this gap by assessing the changes in multidimensional poverty in 54 countries since 2000. The analysis relies on two individual-based indices, the G-CSPI and the G-M0, which combine three dimensi...

Purpose Young people experience lower employment, income and participation rates, as well as higher unemployment, compared to adults. Theory predicts that people respond to labor market information. For more than 50 years, researchers have reported on the patterns of estimated returns to schooling across economies, but the estimates are usually bas...

This paper proposes a new index of multidimensional poverty, called the Global Correlation Sensitive Poverty Index (G-CSPI), which has three interesting features. First, it encompasses three dimensions: decent work, education and access to drinking water and sanitation, which largely overlap with the list of ideal dimensions obtained by expanding t...

This paper proposes a new index of multidimensional poverty, called the Global Correlation Sensitive Poverty Index (G-CSPI), which has three interesting features. First, it encompasses three dimensions: decent work, education and access to drinking water and sanitation, which largely overlap with the list of ideal dimensions obtained by expanding t...

An adequate cross-country comparison of multidimensional poverty requires sound poverty measures. This paper focuses on two central, but often neglected, challenges: the identification of the best theoretical framework and the selection of poverty dimensions. Regarding the first problem, it is argued that Amartya Sen’s capability approach provides...

The contrasting results from previous research motivate this reexamination of the longevity-schooling relationship. The study uses a different identification strategy applied to cohort-specific data from 919 household surveys conducted between 1960 and 2012 spanning 147 countries. We find a significant positive relationship between increased life e...

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development clearly recognizes that poverty is more than just the lack of a sufficient amount of income. However, some scholars argue that an income-based measure of poverty can sufficiently capture poverty in other dimensions. Unfortunately, the available international indicators of multidimensional p...

The 2030 Agenda has provided new impetus to two facets of the struggle for poverty alleviation, which is a central goal of the international development community. First, poverty is no longer viewed strictly in monetary terms, but rather as a multidimensional phenomenon. Second, the need to reduce poverty for different social groups and not just at...

Large international differences in the price of labor can be sustained by differences between workers or by natural and policy barriers to worker mobility. We use migrant selection theory and evidence to place lower bounds on the ad valorem equivalent of labor mobility barriers to the United States, with unique nationally representative microdata o...

The first Sustainable Development Goal of the 2030 Agenda calls for ending “poverty in all its forms everywhere”, therefore recognising that poverty is more than just a lack of a sufficient income. Nevertheless, some scholars argue that an income-based measure of poverty is able to sufficiently capture poverty in other dimensions as well. This cla...

The Agenda 2030 clearly recognizes that poverty is more than just lack of a sufficient amount of income. However, some scholars argue that an income-based measure of poverty can sufficiently capture poverty in other dimensions. Unfortunately, the available international indicators of multidimensional poverty suffer from several weaknesses and canno...

O primeiro Objetivo de Desenvolvimento Sustentável da Agenda 2030 clama por "acabar com a pobreza em todas as suas formas, em todos os lugares", em reconhecimento de que a pobreza é mais que a falta de uma renda suficiente. Entretanto, alguns estudiosos defendem que uma medida de pobreza com base na renda é também capaz de abarcar suficientemente a...

O primeiro Objetivo de Desenvolvimento Sustentável da Agenda 2030 clama por "acabar com a pobreza em todas as suas formas, em todos os lugares", em reconhecimento de que a pobreza é mais que a falta de uma renda suficiente. Entretanto, alguns estudiosos defendem que uma medida de pobreza com base na renda é também capaz de abarcar suficientemente a...

Rates of return to investments in schooling have been estimated since the late 1950s. In the 60-plus year history of such estimates there have been several attempts to synthesize the empirical results in order to ascertain patterns. This paper presents unified estimates of the latest available surveys and patterns using the same specification an...

This book is about the millions of people who earn a living working full- or part-time in Europe's untaxed markets for goods, services, and labor. Their activities are not registered as part of the economy, and because they go unrecorded, they are also unregulated. This makes them illegal, although not in essence criminal. Some call this the 'under...

Resumen El trabajo presenta, a través de modelos gravitacionales y mediante una correcta definición de qué se entiende por oportunidades perdidas, un análisis de los flujos agregados de comercio con el fin de identificar los efectos de China sobre el comercio de América Latina. Los resultados obtenidos indican que no es posible hablar de oportunida...

Using a gravity model, this article presents an analysis of aggregate trade flows aimed at identifying China's impact on Latin America's trade. The results obtained indicate that: i) China ́s growth in the last years implied a growing supply of exports to this market from most countries in the World, including that of Latin American countries; ii)...

This paper presents estimations of the shadow economies for 162 countries, including developing, Eastern European, Central Asian, and high income OECD countries over 1999 to 2006/2007. According to our estimations, the weighted average size of the shadow economy (as a percentage of 'official' GDP) in Sub-Saharan Africa is 37.6%, in Europe and Centr...

Haciendo uso de modelos gravitacionales, se analizan los flujos agregados de comercio con el fin de identificar los efectos de China sobre el comercio de América Latina. Entre las principales conclusiones se encuentran las siguientes: i) El crecimiento del mercado chino no fue desaprovechado por los países de América Latina; ii) A nivel agregado no...

According to T.W. Schultz, the returns to human capital are highest in economic environments experiencing unexpected price, productivity, and technology shocks that create "disequilibria". In such environments, the ability of firms and individuals to adapt their resource allocations to shocks becomes most valuable. In the case of negative shocks, g...

This paper presents estimations of the shadow economies for 162 countries, including developing Eastern European, Central Asian, and high-income countries over the period 1999 to 2006/2007. According to the estimations, the average size of the shadow economy (as a percentage of "official" gross domestic product) in 2006 in 98 developing countries i...

We compare the wages of workers inside the United States to the wages of observably identical workers outside the United States—controlling for country of birth, country of education, years of education, work experience, sex, and ruralurban residence. This is made possible by new and uniquely rich microdata on the wages of over two million individu...

This paper develops and tests a mechanism by which job security affects the age-composition of employment. This mechanism is based on the relative costs of dismissing young versus older workers resulting from job security provisions that are related to tenure. Using 39 consecutive annual household-surveys from Chile, we find that job security is as...

Comments from Caroline Freund, Marcelo Olarreaga, Luis Serven, participants at the 8 th LACEA annual meetings, participants at the Seminarios de Economía of Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, and from an anonymous referee helped greatly to improve previous versions of the paper. The usual disclaims apply.

This paper uses a new standardized micro database for a large set of developing countries to (1) describe the patterns of labor market outcomes for youth, and (2) explain the contributions of supply and demand factors to youth outcomes. The paper shows that youth face various difficulties in transitioning to work. This is reflected in their relativ...

Este ensayo estima econométricamente el impacto del NAFTA sobre los flujos comerciales entre Estados Unidos y México y entre Estados Unidos y terceros países (grupo países). Usando un esquema tradicional de ecuación de gravitación, intentamos ver hasta qué punto los flujos comerciales bilaterales entre los Estados Unidos y distintos países difieren...

This chapter takes advantage of the unusual variance in labor market policies in Chile to examine how minimum wages and job security provisions affect different types of workers. It looks at the effects of regulations on the distribution of employment by age, and also, by skill, which has not been examined before. To this effect, the chapter uses a...

Economists have examined the impact of labor market regulations on the level of employment. But there are many reasons to suspect that the impact of regulations differs across types of workers. In this paper the authors take advantage of the unusually large variance in labor policy in Chile to examine how different labor market regulations affect t...

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) Los economistas han examinado las repercusiones de la regulación de los mercados laborales en el nivel de empleo. Sin embargo, hay muchos motivos para pensar que dichas repercusiones difieren de un tipo de trabajador a otro. En este trabajo aprovechamos la amplitud de la variación, desusadamente grande, de l...

In trying to explain institutional quality, different authors have come to conflicting conclusions. In tackling the problem themselves, the authors show three things. First, openness is positively and pretty robustly associated with institutional quality. To minimize selection bias, the authors use data sets with the greatest cross-country coverage...

Various papers trying to explain institutional quality have come to conflicting conclusions. This paper shows three things: First, openness is positively and pretty robustly associated with institutional quality. To minimize selection bias we use data sets with the greatest cross country coverage, though we also test the significance of the variabl...

This paper first provides an overview of the levels of minimum wages in Latin America and their true impact on the distribution of wages using both numerical measures and kernel density plots for eight countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, and Uruguay). In particular, it attempts to identify effects higher in the...

This paper analyzes gender differentials in the returns to education, the returns to experience, and gender wage differentials in the Chilean case. It uses the standard "Mincerian" wage equation and estimates it separately by gender using the quantile regression method. Then, using the Oaxaca decomposition, we breakdown the total wage gap into an e...

their valuable research support. In addition, we would like to thank Eduardo Lora for his suggestions and comments. Any remaining errors are of our own. This paper reflects the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Inter-American Development Bank. 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This paper reviews the regulations governing hiring, firing, ov...

Este trabajo desarrolla y prueba un mecanismo por el cual los costos de despido afectan la composición etaria del empleo. Este mecanismo se basa en el costo relativo de despedir trabajadores jóvenes versus trabajadores viejos, resultando de regulaciones laborales asociadas a la antigüedad en el empleo. Usando 39 encuestas anuales de hogares consecu...

This paper develops and tests a mechanism by which job security affects the age-composition of employment. This mechanism is based on the relative costs of dismissing young versus older workers resulting from job security provisions that are related to tenure. Using 39 consecutive annual household-surveys from Chile, we find that job security is as...

The paper estimates export demand elasticities for a large number of developing and industrial countries, using time-series techniques that account for the nonstationarity in the data. The average long-run price and income elasticities are found to be approximately -1 and 1.5, respectively. Thus, exports do react to both the trade partners' income...

The paper estimates export demand elasticities for a large number of developing and industrial countries, using time-series techniques that account for the nonstationarity in the data. The average long-run price and income elasticities are found to be approximately -1 and 1.5, respectively. Thus, exports do react to both the trade partners' income...

The paper estimates export demand elasticities for a large number of developing and industrial countries, using time-series techniques that account for the nonstationarity in the data. The average long-run price and income elasticities are found to be approximately -1 and 1.5, respectively. Thus, exports do react to both the trade partners' income...

This paper applies newly developed techniques in the estimation of earnings functions to compute private rates of return for education in Chile. Although studies concerning the rate of return for education in Chile are available, the quantile regression method used here permits a conditional breakdown of the wage structure that is of crucial import...

The benefits of nature-based tourism to biodiversity conservation are often presumed but rarely quantified. The relative value placed on attributes of nature parks is unknown, as is the contribution of biodiversity to tourists willingness to visit a particular protected area. We surveyed tourists and foreign residents in Uganda to determine how pre...

Cuban trade has been historically distorted for two reasons: its membership in the socialist trade pact (CMEA) and the US embargo. Using a gravity model, this article explores the degree of distortion of the current Cuban trade structure and predicts its evolution, in the event the economy is liberalized. The econometric approach uses information o...

After laying dormant for two decades, regional integration (RI) is on the roll again, several recent initiatives suggesting that the world trading system may be divided into three trading blocs built around the EC, the US, and Japan. The paper first evaluates the RI arrangements, old and new, showing that conditions are different today from those d...

After lying dormant for two decades, regional integration is on the rise. Recent initiatives suggest that the world trading system may be moving toward three trading blocs clustered around Japan, the European Community, and the United States. Some view this development as a move toward a less fragmented world trading system; others, as a threat to...

Après deux décennies de léthargie, l'intégration régionale (IR) connaît actuellement un regain de faveur, plusieurs initiatives récentes donnant à penser que le système commercial mondial pourrait évoluer vers une division en trois blocs articulés autour de la CEE, des Etats-Unis et du Japon. Pour les pays en développement, la question est de savoi...

In Chile, gender discrimination appears to be an important factor in the wage distribution (Paredes, 1982; Paredes and Riveros, 1994; Montenegro, 1999). Gender wage gaps have felt over the last twenty years in Chile, what can be associated with lower discrimination against women. However, the studies analyzing the magnitude of the wage gap have not...