Browsing by Author "Domínguez Rivera, Patricio"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Combining discrimination diagnostics to identify sources of statistical discrimination
    (2022) Domínguez Rivera, Patricio; Grau, N.; Vergara, D.
    Statistical discrimination is usually flagged by economists as a potential source of treatment disparities. The literature, however, lacks reduced-form tests that provide information about the relative importance of statistical discrimination in explaining aggregate patterns. This article explores whether combining three different diagnostics of aggregate discrimination – those being, unconditional treatment disparities, benchmark tests, and outcome tests – can provide insights into sources of statistical discrimination. We discuss the difficulties concomitant with this exercise and argue, using an identification result that relies on restrictive (and presumably implausible) assumptions, that the answer is most likely negative.
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    Crime-time: how ambient light affects crime
    (2023) Domínguez Rivera, Patricio; Asahi, Kenzo; CEDEUS (Chile)
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    Employment Loss in Informal Settlements during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Chile
    (2021) Gil Mc Cawley, Diego; Domínguez Rivera, Patricio; Undurraga Fourcade, Eduardo Andrés; Valenzuela Carvallo, Eduardo
    The Covid-19 pandemic has reached almost every corner of the world. Despite the historical development, approval, and distribution of vaccines in some countries, non-pharmaceutical interventions will remain an essential strategy to control the pandemic until a substantial proportion of the population has immunity. There is increasing evidence of the devastating social and economic effects of the pandemic, particularly on vulnerable communities. Individuals living in urban informal settlements are in a structurally disadvantaged position to cope with a health crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Estimates of this impact are needed to inform and prioritize policy decisions and actions. We study employment loss in informal settlements before and during the Covid-19 pandemic in Chile, using a longitudinal panel study of households living in Chile's informal settlements before and during the health crisis. We show that before the pandemic, 75% of respondents reported being employed. There is a decrease of 30 and 40 percentage points in May and September 2020, respectively. We show that the employment loss is substantially higher for individuals in informal settlements than for the general population and has particularly affected the immigrant population. We also show that the pandemic has triggered neighborhood cooperation within the settlements and that targeted government assistance programs have reached these communities in a limited way. Our results suggest that individuals living in informal settlements are facing severe hardship as a consequence of the pandemic. In addition to providing much-needed support, this crisis presents a unique opportunity for long-term improvements in these marginalized communities.
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    Immigration and Labor Market (Mis)Perceptions
    (2022) Ajzenman, Nicolás; Domínguez Rivera, Patricio; Undurraga, Raimundo
    Exposure to immigrants often triggers sentiments of hostility and backlash among native-born populations. Among the main concerns identified by surveys, labor market conditions typically rank at the top. We combine a two-way fixed effects model with a Bartik-type 2SLS model to causally estimate the effects of immigration on labor outcomes in Chile, where the foreign-born population almost tripled in five years. While immigration did not systematically affect employment levels, it did cause an increase in unemployment-related concerns. Our results provide a plausible hypothesis to explain the backlash against immigrants: misperception regarding the effect of immigrants on labor market conditions.
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    Immigration, Crime, and Crime (Mis)Perceptions
    (2023) Ajzenman, Nicolás; Domínguez Rivera, Patricio; Undurraga, Raimundo
    This paper studies the effects of immigration on crime and crime perceptions in Chile, where the foreign-born population tripled in less than ten years. We document null effects of immigration on crime but positive and significant effects on crime-related concerns and on preventive behavioral responses, such as investing in home security. We explore several channels and provide suggestive evidence related to low- versus high-education immigrants, ethnicity-related intergroup threats, and the role of local media. (JEL D83, D91, J15, K42, L82, O15, O17)
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    Inequality in Air Pollution Monitoring and Exposure: Evidence from Four Latin American Cities
    (2025) Hoffmann, Bridget; Domínguez Rivera, Patricio; Medina, María Paula
    We study inequality in monitoring and exposure to particulate matter air pollution in four metropolitan areas of Latin America, Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City, Mexico, Gran Santiago, Chile, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. We find that the population residing in close proximity to at least one monitoring station in Bogota, Mexico City, and Sao Paulo generally have higher educational attainment and income. In contrast, in Gran Santiago, education levels are generally higher further from monitoring stations. In Bogota, Mexico City, and Sao Paulo, the distance to the closest monitoring station declines and the number of monitoring stations within 3 km increases as the mean education level of the census geographic unit increases. Considering only census ge- ographic units that contain a monitoring station, we find that areas where individuals with lower educational attainment reside tend to be exposed to higher pollution lev- els. While we find small and mostly insignificant disparities in mean annual concen- trations of particulate matter, we find that lower education quintiles experience sig- nificantly more hours of extreme pollution relative to the highest education quintile. Non-linear effects of pollution imply that the small disparity in mean concentrations likely masks large disparities in the negative impacts of air pollution. Our findings indicate that in Bogota, Mexico City, and Sao Paulo, air pollution exposure is likely to be better monitored for those with higher educational attainment and income, and in all four cities, lower income and education groups have greater exposure to extreme levels of air pollution.
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    Victim Incentives and Criminal Activity: Evidence from Bus Driver Robberies in Chile
    (2022) Domínguez Rivera, Patricio
    This paper analyzes crime as a function of the interaction between offenders and victims. I study robbery of bus drivers, a crime that remains common in cities throughout the world. Exploiting the timing of a Chilean public transportation reform and detailed administrative data, I show how victims' propensity to resist an attack can alter the level and nature of criminal activity. I also find a large decline in crime after the implementation of a technological innovation that eliminated cash transactions on buses. My results suggest a strong relationship between victim incentives, cash, and crime.
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    Willingness to pay for crime reduction: evidence from six countries in the Americas
    (2022) Domínguez Rivera, Patricio; Scartascini, Carlos
    Crime levels are a perennial development problem in Latin America and a renewed concern in the United States. At the same time, trust in the police has been falling, and questions abound about citizens’ willingness to support government efforts to fight crime. We conduct a survey experiment to elicit willingness to contribute toward reducing crime across five Latin American countries and the United States. We compare homicide, robbery, and theft estimates and find a higher willingness to contribute for more severe crimes and for higher crime reductions. In addition, we examine the role of information on the willingness to contribute by conducting two experiments. First, we show that exposing respondents to crime-related news increases their willingness to pay by 5 percent. Furthermore, while we document a 7 percent gap in willingness to pay for crime reduction between people who under- and over-estimate the murder rate, we find that this gap can be wholly eliminated by informing them about the actual level of crime. On average, our estimates suggest that households are willing to contribute around $ 140 per year for a 20 percent reduction in homicide. This individual-level predisposition would translate into additional investment in public security efforts of up to 0.5 percent of GDP.