PUBLICATIONS

My research agenda has been focused on emerging countries, particularly in Latin America, covering environmental economics, finance, macroeconomics, trade, and policy analysis. 

My current research interests lie at the intersection of development policy, natural resource economics, and remote sensing. In my Ph.D. dissertation, I apply big data coding, machine learning, passive and active remote sensing approaches, econometric tools, and economic analysis to explore oil-dependent countries and developing economies facing severe crises.

Below, you can find links to my publications in English or Spanish.

Peer-Reviewed Publications & Chapters:

This paper uses nighttime light imagery and gridded population datasets to estimate 2000–2020 rural poverty rates for Venezuela at the state and municipality levels. Then, I examine if there has been a significant change in rural poverty during the economic collapse ongoing since 2013–2014. The main finding reveals that most of the Venezuelan territory experienced a considerable increase in rural poverty rates between 2014 and 2020. Furthermore, I confirm how new rural poor areas appear across the country in clusters, surrounding municipalities with moderate to high poverty rates. This suggests that in recent years, more Venezuelans have sunk into darkness.

In the 2022 World Bank (WB) country classifications by income level, Venezuela is classified as an upper-middle-income country. Due to the lack of reliable official economic information from the Venezuelan regime, the WB ranked the country using its gross national income (GNI) of 2013. However, after 2013 Venezuela started to experience one of the largest economic collapses observed in Latin American history. We use three different approaches (the Atlas method, extrapolation, and an adjusted deflator) to obtain consistent and robust estimates of the GNI per capita for Venezuela up to 2021. Our findings reveal that Venezuela has been a lower-middle-income country since 2018 and suggest a 2021 GNI per capita of US$ 1,826 using the Atlas method, US$ 2,070 applying an extrapolation technique, and US$ 2,079 following an adjusted deflator. These results are substantially lower than the US$ 11,970 and US$ 13,080 reported by the WB for 2013 and 2014, respectively. Reconsidering Venezuela's WB income-level classification could facilitate access to concessional conditions to internationally supported mechanisms.

This paper explores the relationship between nighttime lights and economic activity and analyzes whether there is a different relationship in oil-producing regions versus non-oil producing regions. Oil regions may differ in how changes in lights intensity relate to variations in economic activity because the oil industry has specific features that may strongly influence institutional, financial, and political subnational frameworks. I harmonize satellite datasets of night lights to construct a panel for eight oil-producing countries with regional data from 1992 to 2019. I find differences in the predictive power of lights by region and confirm how light data could improve economic growth measures. Even in an extreme scenario in which lights have no improvement in measuring true -with no measurement errors- growth in oil regions, they still improve estimates for non-oil areas.

This note explores the presence of a gender pay gap in Venezuela. Using household surveys between 1985 and 2015, I test for gender disparity on wages in the formal sector. Firstly, I use a dummy variable technique in Ordinary Least Squares regression and quantile regressions. Secondly, I apply a two-fold decomposition approach following Blinder-Oaxaca, Cotton, and pooled model assumptions. Finally, I decompose the differences in distribution using quantile regressions. The main finding suggests a significant gender pay gap. On average, women earn about 21% less than men, and this inequality is more evident in 2015 for low quantiles.

This paper explores the potential growth of Central America and the Dominican Republic after the 2008-2009 crisis to shed light on their 2020 pre-pandemic macroeconomic vulnerability and to ascertain that the observed path is deviating more than before from its potential. Using Hodrick-Prescott filter by constrained minimization, production function, regime-switching models, and Bayesian model averaging, the main findings suggest a pre-pandemic regional slowdown. By country, there are mixed results. This scenario was not only driven by international factors but by particularities; on the one hand, statistical models show higher potential growth, and, in a less favorable context, the region would be closer to the structural performance; on the other hand, individual factors are hindering potential growth.

This paper explores international trade data, classified by technology-intensiveness and type of products, to identify stylized facts, strengths, and weaknesses of the trade patterns in the region of Central America and the Dominican Republic, between 1975 and 2016. I focus the analysis not only on the total export of the region but on its exports to the United States (main trade partner). I examine export concentration, comparative advantages, trade specialization, and relative quality of the export basket (characterizing zones with high tax incentives in the region, free zones). The main findings suggest that the region has made little progress in improving trade accounts. The gains in diversification are being lost, the comparative advantages have historically remained in traditional exports, and the region does not appear to export quality to the world. The model of tax incentives is not generating local spillovers, and the relative quality of exports, as well as the specialization patterns, revive the idea of adjusting promotion schemes for local industry and direct investment. It is time for a competitiveness agenda.

The macroeconomic context of Central America and the Dominican Republic has been characterized by positive perspectives. The economic recovery of United States, lower commodity prices, and the low and stable international interest rates were the main determinants of this behavior. However, even though the recent economic forecast for United States has been positive, the last three years updates have suffered downward adjustments. The economic integration with the rest of the world, can exposure the region to international context changes. It is worth to mention that the world economic perspectives, the increasing in trade aversion, changes in commodity prices, as well as Federal Reserve decisions regarding interest rates, are some of the variables that would impact the region economic perspectives. Thus, taking advantage of lower energy prices could benefit the households disposable income and firms costs, and these in turn, economic growth. On the other hand, the region could take advantage of its relative young population, the population shift could by itself, increase the economic dynamic, but it can also be maximized through transversal policies, in which future workers are trained with the necessary tools to enhance their productivity, with the idea to insert them in high added value employment.

Central America and the Dominican Republic are enjoying a favorable external environment. The U.S. economic recovery, the main trade partner of the region, and the marked fall in oil prices has made it possible to keep up flows of remittances and investment, improve the terms of trade, and to contribute to the strengthening of the external position of the region and its economic growth. However, the relative quality of the regional export basket has receded and few advances have been made in its modernization, which has limited the gains. In this environment, risks remain. Economic deceleration in China or upward adjustment of the U.S. interest rate could negatively impact the balance of payments of the countries. Meanwhile, in the framework of the Free Trade Agreement between the Dominican Republic, Central America and the United States, some agricultural products protected until 2015 will begin to enter markets free of tariffs, which could unveil the fragility of regional competitiveness. The above urges both to prioritize structural reforms to exploit trade complementarities and to coordinate policies with the private sector. The promotion scheme for local industry and direct investment should be reviewed, avoiding the use of tax breaks to compensate for competitive weaknesses. It is pertinent to develop the non-traditional export basket with the aim of drawing more benefit from U.S. growth, diversifying trade risk and generating local horizontal spillovers. Facing threats of less favorable conditions, external scenarios testing the regional performance are explored. Each country should decide between being bystanders of external swings or protagonists of policies which lead to lasting national benefits.

The region comprising Central America, Panama, and the Dominican Republic is on the path towards a favorable economic environment, characterized by higher growth in the United States (its main trade partner), lower oil prices, and still low financing costs. This environment represents a window of opportunity for the region to overcome the vulnerabilities inherited from the financial crisis and assure long-term growth. The first legacy of the crisis has been higher public debt, which in turn raised risks of deteriorating credit quality. The second legacy involves higher external flows, which led to greater financial complexity and created new channels of contagion. This report identifies risks and lays forward guidelines to mitigate them. In addition, it further illustrates how a deterioration in the external environment can generate lower growth prospects for the region, emphasizing the importance of advancing with the aforementioned reforms.

El trabajo se orienta a explicar la influencia que han tenido la demanda y la oferta en el ciclo del mercado de créditos para el consumo en Venezuela entre 2002 y 2010, bajo un enfoque de desequilibrio del mercado. En principio, se realiza un análisis teórico para identificar posibles determinantes en ambos lados del mercado. Luego, sobre series mensuales se emplea el método de mínimos cuadrados en dos etapas para hallar excesos de demanda y oferta y verificar su influencia sobre el ciclo real de crédito para el consumo. Los resultados apuntan a que el rol de la oferta fue esencial para motorizar o contraer el ciclo, sugiriendo la presencia de racionamiento bancario.

This article evaluates the presence of dynamic inconsistency in decisions of discretionary environmental policy and its incidence on social welfare. It is assumed that an environmental authority minimizes a social welfare loss function by controlling freely -on each period- a tax rate by unit of contaminant product in its objective of reducing the quota of industrial production and increasing welfare. In a scenario of rational expectations on the tax rate is confirmed the occurrence of an instrumental bias separated the optimal results from the social desires. In addition, with a positive exogenous and stochastic shock on the stability of policy decisions -some kind of favorable and unexpected news- the tax burden will be reduced, and the industrial supply will become promoted. At that moment, if the optimum tax rate is lower than the demanding social tax rate, there will be pollution beyond the socially tolerable. To eliminate the bias, it will be necessary to reach a cooperative solution where the environmental authority adopts the commitment to apply an optimum policy in each period, with a long-term vision, and where the society forms its expectations in accord with the commitment.

Este trabajo busca revelar si existe o no una relación significativa entre el proceso inflacionario venezolano y la dinámica de producción externa. Para ello se construye la brecha del producto local y versiones ponderadas de la brecha del producto externo, según el comercio de bienes no petroleros, representando el proceso de globalización. Se estiman al menos dos versiones ampliadas de la curva de Phillips, una con un componente autorregresivo de la inflación y otra explicando la brecha inflacionaria, para un rango temporal con datos mensuales (1998:1-2010:12), trimestrales (1998:1-2010:4) y anuales (1970-2010). Los resultados sugieren que con frecuencia mensual sólo las condiciones de producción externa influyen sobre el comportamiento cíclico de la inflación local; esto no fue verificable ni trimestral ni anualmente.

El artículo se basa en la Encuesta de Hogares de Propósitos Múltiples para estimar una variable de ingreso poblacional estadal promedio que amplíe, a términos locales, el análisis descriptivo convencional de la profundización financiera entre los años 1980-2006 mediante el uso de la razón Crédito/PIB y sobre el supuesto de que la evolución positiva del producto estadal trae consigo un mayor nivel de ingreso promedio per cápita. Se identifican aquellos estados con alto y bajo grado de financiamiento y cuya captación de fondos prestables permita un incremento importante en el apalancamiento nacional. Miranda y Distrito Federal resultaron con brechas superiores de financiamiento con respecto al resto del país. Se presentan los resultados del desempeño de la profundidad relativa y la elasticidad Crédito-PIB como medición causal del apalancamiento y del respaldo monetario de los agentes regionales.

El artículo se enfoca en investigar los determinantes de la demanda de crédito de las firmas en Venezuela a partir de una perspectiva de endogeneidad de la oferta monetaria, mayormente avanzada por autores post keynesianos. Se realiza una evaluación teórica previa que deriva en una especificación funcional de demanda de crédito real, seguido de un proceso econométrico de cointegración, con series mensuales, a partir de 1999, incluyen el último período de “boom crediticio”, es decir, hasta finales de 2007. Esto para indagar sobre la significancia de las variables que inciden en las decisiones de las firmas prestatarias e identificar una potencial relación de largo plazo, la dinámica de corto plazo y el ajuste hacia el largo plazo respecto de los posibles determinantes. Pruebas de exogeneidad hicieron evidente, al menos, una exogeneidad débil en la tasa de interés activa, justificando el no racionamiento crediticio y la viabilidad de usar el canal de tasas como mecanismo de transmisión de política monetaria.

En el reporte de presentan, de manera simple y resumida, los aspectos más relevantes del sector de la energía en Venezuela. Esta edición corrresponde al período 2007-2008 y está dividida en cuatro secciones que contienen las cifras y cambios más importantes ocurridos durante estos dos años en el ámbito energético venezolano.

El objetivo del presente trabajo es investigar cuáles son los determinantes de la demanda de dinero de largo plazo en Venezuela. Para ello se realizará un análisis econométrico sobre variables, con periodicidad mensual, que se piensan inciden en el sistema decisorio de los agentes económicos demandantes de liquidez real. La imposibilidad de distinguir a priori entre variables endógenas y exógenas, permite desarrollar un Vector Autoregresivo (VAR) como paso previo de aplicar la Metodología Dinámica de Cointegración para identificar la relación de largo plazo. Se incorpora la evolución de la variabilidad de los precios del mercado real y la expresión del resto del mundo sobre un mercado alterno de divisas. Rasgos de exogeneidad débil en la demanda de dinero dificultó la verificación de la relación dinámica en contraste con la endogeneidad conseguida en variables que reflejan el coste de oportunidad.

WORK IN PROGRESS

In this section, you can find a list of my research in progress. 

If available, you can also find links to presentations and the most recent versions of papers currently under review.

In Progress & Presentations: