Browsing by Author "Toledo Roman, Gabriela"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Hidden welfare effects of tree plantations
    (CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS, 2021) Anriquez Nilson, Gustavo; Toledo Roman, Gabriela; Arriagada Cisternas, Rodrigo
    Subsidies to promote tree plantations have been questioned because of negative impacts of the forestry industry. Quantitative evidence on the socioeconomic impacts of afforestation subsidies or of tree plantations is elusive, mainly due to data scarcity. We assess the overall impact of a tree plantation subsidy in Chile, using our original 20-year panel dataset that includes small area estimates of poverty and the subsidy assignment at the census-district scale. We show that forestry subsidies - on average - in fact, do increase poverty. More specifically, using difference in difference with matching techniques, and instrumental variables approaches, we show that there is an increase of about 2 per cent in the poverty rate of treated localities. We identify employment as a causal mechanism explaining this finding, since we found a negative effect of tree plantations on employment, and therefore, on poverty. We suggest reassessment of the distributional effects of the forest subsidy and forestry industry.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Over-estimating the effects of teacher attributes on school performance in the Chilean education system
    (2015) Toledo Roman, Gabriela; Pablo Valenzuela, Juan
    This article investigates the biases involved in estimating the effects of teacher attributes on school's performance. The study was performed for Chilean educational system, where student distribution is differentiated by schools and teachers are not randomly assigned to them. Findings showed that teacher attributes which favored learning appeared more frequently alongside higher socioeconomic status students. When correcting the bias, results showed that the effects of teacher attributes have been overestimated for the vast majority of characteristics. Nonetheless, attributes such as teaching experience, being a woman, having short-term specific professional training, and having a greater curriculum coverage continued to have positive impacts on the performance of 4th grade students.