Roberto Pasten

• PhD
• Researcher at San Sebastián University

Could climate change and child marriage be related? At first, it may seem unlikely, but if we consider the impact of climate change on poverty and income, the connection becomes more plausible. In this paper we use a structural equation model to investigate this relationship. Our results indicate that increased "climate vulnerability," as measured...

In diesem Kapitel wird erläutert, warum wir in der Ökonomie in Bezug auf Eigentumsrechte zwischen von Menschen hergestellten Produkten und natürlichen (von der Natur geschaffenen) Ressourcen unterscheiden sollten, wie dies erstmals von Henry George erörtert wurde. Im konventionellen ökonomischen Denken sind private Eigentumsrechte für die Erreichun...

Die Expansion der Forstindustrie in Chile hat seit ihrer starken Entwicklung in den 1980er-Jahren erhebliche Auswirkungen auf das ökologische und soziokulturelle Gleichgewicht in Zentral- und Südchile. Wie bei jeder menschlichen Tätigkeit, und hier ganz insbesondere bei der industriellen, müssen sowohl die positiven als auch die negativen Auswirkun...

We study the conditions under which increasing risk raises the optimal control variable when the budget constraint is nonlinear. In contrast to the case when the budget constraint is linear, nonlinearities alter the risk attitudes of the economic agent; that is, the agent’s risk behavior is driven by the interaction between the shape of the utility...

We explore the effect of raising economic uncertainty on local and global carbon emissions. Most economic models under uncertainty focus on the effect of risk on the supply of a control variable (e.g., emissions). Here we explore the effect of risk on both the supply and demand of local and global carbon emissions and, therefore, on their equilibri...

Chapter 12 assesses climate change impacts and risks, vulnerability as well as barriers and options for adaptation and climate resilient development in Central and South America.

To what extent is it permissible to provoke an economic crisis, the extent, and effects of which we know quite a lot about, if in return the "bad" to be limited is not known in its extent? Which restriction of fundamental rights (freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and democracy) may be used to reduce a group's mortality risk? Are measures permi...

In 2016, in the Chilean commune of Puerto Montt, located in the Los Lagos region, the natural disaster known as the Red Tide took place due to the proliferation of one or several species of microalgae. This phenomenon has led to diverse losses affecting economic output, the level of household income, and employment. Numerous studies have analyzed t...

Se evaluó la factibilidad económica de implementar iniciativas de restauración de bosques del Tipo Forestal Siempreverde, incorporando un análisis de costos y beneficios asociados a la ejecución de las actividades de manejo forestal y los retornos económicos potenciales por la comercialización de madera y de los servicios ecosistémicos secuestro de...

The expansion of the forest industry in Chile has generated a significant impact on the ecological and socio-cultural balance in central and southern Chile since its strong development in the 1980s. Like every human activity, and especially those of industrial character, it is necessary to constantly assess both the positive and negative impacts it...

This chapter explains why, in economics regarding property rights, we should distinguish between man-made products and natural (nature-made) resources as first discussed by Henry George. In conventional economic thinking, private property rights are indispensable in the achievement of allocative efficiency, regardless of the nature of the goods. Al...

How income risk affects social attitudes toward the environment? Despite their paramount role in environmental policy, there are no models of economic growth and the environment considering risk and uncertainty into their formulation. This is surprising because models of economic growth and the environment share much in common with saving and labor...

A structural shift in the trend toward higher deficits had emerged by the middle of the 1860s in Chile. For some authors, this was the result of increased spending owing to a fastgrowing economy. Another common explanation is the higher spending required to finance and then recover from the war against Spain, which began in 1864. This article provi...

This paper examines and compares the extent to which ecosystem services have been incorporated in Canadian and Chilean environmental law and policy. The focus is on the adjudication of environmental disputes but the analysis is contextualized by the broader environmental law and policy developments of each country. As will be seen, Canada's judicia...

Several authors have argued that forest ecosystems serve as a hedge against extreme climatic events at a local scale. Consequently, the local climate regulation ecosystem services provided by forests can be economically valued by evaluating the reduction (increase) in the insurance premium that risk-averse individuals are willing to pay when forest...

A government budget deficit can exist for at least two possible reasons: tax smoothing and/or tax tilting. Under tax-smoothing, deficits are temporary phenomena resulting from the decision not to vary the tax rate in response to fluctuations in government spending (as a share of output). This is done in order to minimize the distortionary cost of t...

This study analyses the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth, using annual panel data from 16 Latin American countries over the period 1971-2001. We use a random coefficient (RC) method to control for both finite sample and sample-heterogeneity biases. Our results show (1) a long-run relationship between real GDP, energy cons...

Theoretical models of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) almost universally assume additive preferences; we demonstrate that under non-additive preferences the sufficient condition to sign the economy's income-pollution path depends on the elasticity of substitution between consumption and environment (and not on the elasticity of marginal utili...

This article examines the effect of visual information on people’s willingness to pay (WTP) for improvements to the infrastructure and water quality of an urban recreation site. We applied the contingent valuation methodology to two groups of people in the City of Talca, Chile. The control group received written information about improvements to be...

Starting from the framework proposed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) − which conceptually links nature's services with human wellbeing − we design and also apply empirically what we have called the total economic value calculating matrix (TEVCM) to estimate the monetary value of the annual flow of benefits provided by Chile's national...

This paper reviews and summarizes most of the literature on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), focusing mainly on disentangling and clarifying the key concepts underlying the two classes of existing theoretical explanations for the EKC occurrence - those driven by technology and those driven by preferences- as well as the technical formalizatio...

A government budget deficit can exist for at least two possible reasons: tax smoothing and/or tax tilting. Under tax-smoothing, deficits are temporary phenomena resulting from the decision not to vary the tax rate in response to fluctuations in government spending (as a share of output). This is done in order to minimize the distortionary cost of t...

This article uses a present value test to examine whether the Chilean government has smoothed taxes optimally since 1973. An important portion of the Chilean government's revenue is the result of royalties it earns from the extraction of copper. An appropriate test for tax-smoothing therefore must recognize that this part of the government's revenu...

This paper uses an inter temporal model of public finances to show that political instability can cause taxes to be tilted to the future, resulting in a fiscal deficit that is suboptimal and only weakly sustainable (in the sense of Quintos). This occurs because political instability gives the government an incentive to implement a myopic fiscal pol...

This paper uses an intertemporal model of public finances to show that political instability can cause taxes to be tilted to the future, resulting in a fiscal deficit that is suboptimal and only weakly sustainable (in the sense of Quintos). This occurs because political instability gives the government an incentive to implement a myopic fiscal poli...

Cross-country estimations of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) to empirically analyze the relationship between income and pollution have generally assumed a common structure for all countries. Since this latter feature is not supported by economic theory, this paper uses the Random Coefficient Model proposed by Swamy (1970) and empirically esti...

Cross-country estimations of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) to empirically analyze the relationship between income and pollution have generally assumed a common structure for all countries. Since this latter feature is not supported by economic theory, this paper uses the Random Coefficient Model proposed by Swamy (1970) and empirically esti...

El concepto de sustentabilidad o de desarrollo sustentable se ha convertido en un paradigma dentro del campo del crecimiento y desarrollo económico en las últimas décadas. En el presente artículo se revisan las bases conceptuales económicas de la sustentabilidad y se analizan los desafíos metodológicos para su aplicación práctica como indicador eco...

In a recent paper in this journal Nuñez et al. [Nuñez, D., L. Nahuelhual, and C. Oyarzun, 2005. Forest and water: the value of native temperate forests in supplying water for human consumption. Ecological Economics 58: 606-616] presented a model to estimate the economic value of Chilean temperate forests in their function to contribute to maintain...

Cross-country estimations of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) to empirically analyze the relationship between income and pollution have generally assumed a common structure for all countries. Since this latter feature is not supported by economic theory, this paper uses the Random Coefficient Model proposed by Swamy (1970) and empirically esti...

If fiscal deficit is stationary around a mean, the government is intertemporal budget constraint (GIBC) holds and no adjustment to the debt process is necessary. If fiscal deficit is non-stationary, or if it is stationary around a positive trend, the ability to pay the debt is compromised and a sudden change in the debt process is expected in order...

Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alabama, 2006. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-117).