Benjamin Villena-Roldan

Aggregate Implications of Employer Search and Recruiting Selection

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.

Unemployment, Participation and Worker Flows Over the Life‐Cycle

We estimate and report life cycle transition probabilities between employment, unemployment and inactivity for male workers using Current Population Survey monthly files. We assess the relative importance of each probability in explaining the life cycle profiles of participation and unemployment rates using a novel decomposition method. A key robust finding is that most differences in participation and unemployment over the life cycle can be attributed to the probability of leaving employment and the probability of transiting from inactivity to unemployment, while transitions from unemployment to employment (the job finding probability) play secondary roles. We then show that a simple life cycle extension of a three-state labor search model with leisure shocks can qualitatively replicate the empirical unemployment and participation life cycle profiles, without introducing age or worker heterogeneity in market abilities. We conclude that models that seek to explain life cycle work patterns should not ignore transitions to and from inactivity.

Causal Effects of Maternal Time-Investment on Children's Cognitive Outcomes

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 endogenous, the effect of an increase of maternal time associated with a rise in childcare prime (IV estimate) is an order of magnitude larger than OLS estimates for Applied Problems and Word-Letter identification tests. Evidence also shows that the effect is larger for children living college educated mothers and in two-parent household. JEL codes: D1, J13, C36.

Opening the Black Box of Social Capital Formation

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 sources of participation. We show that the aforementioned contextual factors explain SC formation for Chile, but their relative importance varies for each kind of participation. Our second application compares individual-level determinants of SC formation among the largest democracies in the Americas. Gender, age, education, and race show heterogeneous effects across countries. Overall, negative interpersonal trust shocks generate participation increments, and possibly motivate engagement in trustworthy networks. Idiosyncratic factors behind participation and trust are positively correlated, suggesting a common SC stem that manifests in multiple ways. Hence, our empirical approach to SC formation uncovers factors hidden by assumptions in some previous literature.

Participation in Organizations, Trust, and Social Capital Formation: Evidence from Chile

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, social/peer effects interactions, endogenous trust, and politico-institutional factors as sources of participation. Using Chilean data, we find that politico-institutional factors are jointly important to account for SC formation, as well as social interactions. Trusting community is a highly significant factor behind political participation and non-participation in religious activities. In addition, there are clear interrelated decisions among different kinds of participation. The evidence shows that SC formation is a multidimensional complex process, as advocated by prevailing theories in the literature.

Institutional drivers of adaptation in local government decision-making: evidence from Chile

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 these ideas, we analyze a unique dataset with over-time observations for almost all local governments in Chile. Our analysis shows multiple institutional conditions supporting proactive local adaptation: municipalities with relatively robust institutional settings tend to devote more resources to environmental risk management and adaptation. We use our quantitative model to show that altering institutional settings can make a difference for increasing local government investments in this area. Although few local governments in Chile currently enjoy favorable institutional conditions for risk reduction and adaptation, our findings identify ways through which external actors may contribute to a more propitious institutional climate.

A Spatial Model of Voting with Endogenous Proposals: Theory and Evidence from the Chilean Senate

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 legislator ideology and increasing costly valence increases the passing probability, but usually decreases the proposer’s payoff. Using quantile utility proposer preferences, the model becomes tractable and estimable. In this way, we deal with the bill sample selection problem to estimate legislator’s preferences and also, the ideology of proposers, the proposed valence change, and the ideological stance of the statu quo in a common scale. Using Chilean Senate 2009 - 2011 roll call data, our results suggests that (1) political party affiliation significantly affects Senators’ ideology, (2) popular, young and male Senators are more extremist, and (3) proposers during Bachelet and Pinera’s terms have similar ideologies. Key words:

Wage Dispersion and Recruiting Selection

In this paper I introduce a novel source of residual wage dispersion. In the model, workers are heterogenous in productivity and randomly apply to ex ante identical posted vacancies. Each employer simultaneously meets several applicants, offers the position to the best candidate and bargains with her about the wage. Since the outside option of the employer is to hire the second-best worker, the wage paid to the best applicant decreases in the productivity of her closest competitor. Because the assignment of workers to vacancies is random in equilibrium, each worker faces a nondegenerate distribution of wages given her productivity before applying to a job. The framework suggests that the capability of search models to generate residual wage dispersion must be restricted to match-specific shocks. 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 empirical predictions, I calibrate the model to match the mean and variance of the log wages in CPS data 1985-2006. The models predictions are strongly supported in the data.