Renato Aguilar

The Chinisation of Africa: The Case of Angola

(1249) Renato Aguilar and Andrea Goldstein The relationship between the Asian Drivers and Angola has attracted an attention only paralleled by the one surrounding interactions with Sudan. Three closely related perspectives are important. First, the rapid expansion of the Chinese and Indian economies has sustained the world price for oil, of which Angola is the second‐largest producer in sub‐Saharan Africa. In the process, China has also become Angola’s third‐largest trading partner, with a sizeable trade surplus favouring Angola. Second, from an international financing perspective, China’s keen interest to diversify the portfolio of assets in which to invest its huge international reserves is only matched by Angola’s need to find alternatives to normal and concessional sources of international financing, from which it is excluded due to the lack of progress in negotiating with the Bretton Woods institutions. Third, all these issues must be understood in the broader and possibly more complex scenario of the political economy of the relationship between Angola and the world. Because of the country’s size and control over huge oil resources, the growing presence of China in Angola has reverberations across the rest of Africa. And Angola has also joined OPEC in late 2006.

The value of air quality and crime in Chile: a hedonic wage approach

We estimate the implicit prices of the crime rate and airborne pollution in Chile, using spatially compensating price differentials in the housing and labor markets. We evaluate empirically the impact of different estimation strategies for the wage and rent equations, on the economic value of these two amenities. The results show that increments in the crime rate or in air pollution have a negative impact on welfare and that the estimated welfare measures and their variances are sensitive to selection bias, endogenous amenities and clustering effects. In contrast, the welfare measures do not seem to be very sensitive to the simultaneity bias.

The Discrete Charm of Chilean Agriculture

Agriculture has played a central role in Chile’s economic development during most of its history. After a relatively short period during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Chile was essentially a military outpost covering Peru’s frontier, the country become a basically agricultural economy. The economic outcome depended heavily of a series of agricultural exporting cycles; first hides and fat, and then grains. It is not until the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that mining became a significant economic and exporting activity. After the Second World War, together with general awareness about the problems of economic development, an attitude against agriculture became apparent. The sector was considered a major hindrance for development and its performance the main explanation for inflation, an endemic problem during the period.

Debt Repayment Capacity in Argentina and Uruguay

The problem of external indebtedness is central to the Latin American discussion on economic policy. The problem is also central to the political discussion in Latin America today. Nevertheless, the problems associated with the external indebtedness of the under-developed countries are poorly perceived. The theoretical development of the problem is insufficient and the necessary theoretical tools have not been found. The statistical data on external indebtedness is rather uncertain.

Qualitative Response Estimations of the Selling Behaviour in the Swedish Market for Owner-Occupied Houses

The probability that a household will sell its house in a specific year is assumed to be a function of, principally, changes in the characteristics of the household subsequent to purchase. Probit models are estimated from Swedish register data. Leads and lags in the behaviour of the households are introduced. The empirical results indicate that changes in the characteristics of the households do matter. A decrease in income seems to enhance the probability of selling more than an increase in income of the same magnitude. Leads equations exhibit at least as good fit as lags equations. The significance of leads appear to be attached mainly to changes in income while there is a weak indication that lags might be more important concerning the influence of changes in the number of children.

Realized supply of owner‐occupied houses in Sweden An exploratory study ∗

The probability of selling owner‐occupied houses in Sweden is studied. It is assumed that while there is a functional relationship between the level of characteristics of the household and, on the other side, the households demand for housing, there is a functional relationship between changes in such characteristics and the probability of selling. Different variants of a linear probability model are estimated. The data are taken from official registers. According to our estimates a decrease in real disposable income since the year of purchase adds more to the probability of selling than an increase of the same magnitude. There is also an indication, although not unequivocal, that an increase in the number of children means more than a corresponding decrease. Divorce seems to add more to the selling probability than death of the spouse, marriage, or separation without formal divorce. In all equations, however, the estimated intercept is rather large and contributes about three quarters to the mean value ...