Research

This paper analyses Marshallian and Jacobian localisation externalities in creative industries using a panel of Chilean municipalities. We exploit variation in creative industry specialisation across municipalities to identify the causal effect on sales and firm entry in the same sector (Marshallian) and in other sectors (Jacobian). While specialisation in creative industries raises own-sector outcomes, we find no evidence of cross-sector spillovers — calling for caution in policy prescriptions that justify creative industry support on the basis of broader economic spillovers.

We study a pilot programme in Santiago, Chile, in which police officers and government officials distributed security leaflets near a shopping mall. Using a difference-in-differences strategy comparing workers near the mall with those further away, we find that the programme reduced overall fear of crime and actual victimisation among workers in the treated area. Paradoxically, among individuals who were directly approached and handed a leaflet, measured fear of crime increased. These opposing effects highlight the complexity of crime-prevention communication and the importance of targeting in public safety policy.

We study the effects of different types of obstacles to innovation on the probability of obtaining different firm-level innovation outcomes. We consider financial, knowledge, cooperation, regulatory and demand-related obstacles, which we separate into two categories: market structure, and lack or uncertainty about demand. Using a pooled sample of four Chilean innovation surveys and an instrumental variables approach novel to this literature to address endogeneity, we find that only demand and financial barriers seem to have a negative effect on the probability of generating innovations. When financial or demand barriers are present, they seem to be binding and take prevalence over all other obstacles, and when they are absent, other barriers become significant. We provide evidence of heterogeneous effects on different sectors, considering not only manufacturing and services but also primaries, a comparison that has not been previously conducted and holds relevance for developing economies. We show that knowledge obstacles are relevant to manufacturing and market structure and regulatory obstacles are relevant in the services sector, while demand and financial obstacles appear to matter across the board. The pervasiveness of financial and demand obstacles, their relationship with the remaining barriers, and the observed sectoral differences have important policy implications.

The global energy transition requires vast amounts of minerals, including copper, lithium, cobalt, and rare earths. This creates significant economic opportunities for resource-rich developing countries, yet it also intensifies social and environmental conflicts associated with mining expansion. We argue that transitions research has largely overlooked this "dark side," focusing on decarbonising energy systems while neglecting the social and environmental costs embedded in the supply chains that make those transitions possible. We develop a conceptual framework integrating development and transitions perspectives, and draw on evidence from Latin America to illustrate the tensions and trade-offs involved.

We study how Chinese import competition affects the product scope of domestic multi-product plants, focusing on the supply chain channel. Using Chilean plant-product data matched to input-output tables, we show that a fall in demand for a final good reduces the variety of inputs that domestic plants produce to supply that sector. The effect is concentrated in small plants with low productivity and low markup products, consistent with firms dropping their least competitive product lines first. This network transmission of competition represents an additional margin of adjustment often overlooked in the trade and employment literature.

We examine how the real exchange rate level and volatility affect export variety across a large panel of countries over three decades. Using heterogeneous long-panel estimators that allow for cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity, we find that a more depreciated exchange rate is associated with greater export variety, while higher volatility reduces it. These effects are heterogeneous across product categories, being particularly pronounced for technologically intensive goods. The results suggest that exchange rate policy can shape the extensive margin of exports and, in turn, the long-run structure of comparative advantage.

We study the survival of new export products using a panel of Chilean multi-product exporters. Exploiting within-firm variation in the distance of new export products from a firmu2019s existing competence basket, we show that exports closer to a firmu2019s core competences survive significantly longer. The effect is concentrated in the first year of export and is robust to controlling for firm, product, and destination fixed effects. The results suggest that export diversification is constrained by organisational capabilities, with implications for trade and industrial policy.