Tesis de Maestría en Economía

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Sex-ratios in dating apps: the dating equilibrium-shift hypothesis
(2025?) Gonzo, Damian Antonio
This study explores the impact of perceived sex ratios on dating behavior and mating strategies, introducing the Dating Equilibrium-Shift Hypothesis (DESH). DESH posits that individuals of the less numerous sex gain greater bargaining power in romantic interactions, thereby shaping the mating strategies of the more abundant sex. To test this hypothesis, a laboratory experiment was conducted with 136 participants (79 men, 57 women) using a simulated dating app. Participants were assigned to one of three manipulated sex ratio conditions: male-scarce, female-scarce, and balanced (control). They evaluated 50 profiles based on attractiveness, indicating their interest with a like, and assessed their willingness to commit to a long-term relationship. The results revealed that in female-scarce conditions, men exhibited lower selectiveness, with an 11.89% decrease in the likelihood of giving a like. Conversely, in male-scarce conditions, men became more selective relative to the female-scarce group, showing a 17% lower likelihood of giving a like, consistent with DESH predictions. Although no statistically significant differences were observed in the willingness to commit to long-term, the data suggest a pattern that aligns with theoretical expectations. Due to technical issues, data for women in male-scarce conditions were incomplete, limiting the interpretability of findings for this group. Despite this constraint, the study integrates evolutionary and economic perspectives to advance our understanding of mating dynamics and underscores the influence of sex ratios on dating decisions in digital environments.
Forecasting one day stock returns in Latin American markets: a horserace
(2025-06) Sampron Noel, Alfredo Ignacio
We investigate the predictive power of Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH), Vector Autoregression (VAR), and Hidden Markov Models (HMM) for forecasting stock returns in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Our research extends prior work by considering the impact of volatility and foreign exchange (FX) variations, including the implicit exchange rate between American Depository Receipts (ADRs) and local stock prices, particularly relevant for Argentina's capital controls. We address three key questions: which model offers superior predictive accuracy, whether incorporating exchange rates enhances predictive power, and which return denomination (local currency or USD) is easier to predict. Findings reveal that model rankings remain consistent across local currency and USD-denominated assets. Broad market indices are best captured by VAR models. Our results align with the finding that more sophisticated models tend to outperform benchmarks, yet performance varies significantly.
Optimal e-cigarettes regulation: a theoretical approach to initiation, cessation, and incomplete- government information
(2025-06) Imbrosciano, Delfina
Impacto del desarrollo minero en la priorización de inversiones en infraestructura de transporte en el noroeste argentino
(2025-02) Ferrarini, Laura Rocío
Esta tesis analiza el impacto del desarrollo minero en la priorización de inversiones en infraestructura de transporte en el noroeste argentino (NOA). En particular, se enfoca en el auge de la minería del litio como motor de transformación logística y económica en la región. Mediante un enfoque cuantitativo, se proyecta la demanda de transporte de carga para 2045 bajo diferentes escenarios, considerando tanto los productos generados como los insumos necesarios para la actividad minera. El análisis utiliza matrices origen-destino (MOD) y evalúa la derivabilidad de carga desde rutas hacia el sistema ferroviario, destacando las oportunidades de eficiencia logística. Los resultados muestran que la producción de litio y otros sectores emergentes generan una presión creciente sobre la infraestructura vial y ferroviaria del NOA. En un escenario conservador, se identifica la necesidad de pavimentar rutas clave y modernizar ramales ferroviarios estratégicos como la Línea Belgrano. En un escenario de expansión, se evidencia el potencial del transporte multimodal para reducir costos logísticos y mejorar la competitividad regional.
Land reform, ethnicity and political participation: evidence from Peru
(2025-02) Condor Iturrizaga, Ronny Martin
This paper examines the effects of Peru’s 1969 Land Reform on the political representation of marginalized ethnic groups in local elections. Using electoral data from 1963 to 1983, I employ surname analysis and a skin color detection algorithm to identify ethnic groups. Using a diff-in-diff framework, I show that greater exposure to land reform increases the candidacy of marginalized ethnic groups, but has no effect on their electoral success. I explore potential channels and find the creation of political parties of peasant origin could be plausible mechanisms for the presence of more candidates from marginalized ethnic groups.
¿Estabilidad o estancamiento?: la movilidad laboral argentina en la encrucijada
(2025-02) Sanchez, Guido Emanuel
Este estudio analiza el mercado laboral formal de Argentina utilizando un enfoque basado en los flujos de empleo y la teoría de búsqueda. A partir de datos del Sistema Integrado Previsional Argentino (SIPA), se calculan los flujos de contrataciones y desvinculaciones en el sector privado desde 2007, lo que permite un análisis detallado de la movilidad laboral. Los hallazgos resaltan dos resultados clave. Primero, la movilidad laboral en Argentina es significativamente menor que en Estados Unidos, donde las tasas de rotación laboral son un 50% más altas. Segundo, la relación entre la movilidad laboral y el crecimiento salarial en Argentina es débil, lo que sugiere que permanecer en el mismo empleo podría ser más beneficioso para la progresión salarial a largo plazo que cambiar de empleador. Se sugiere como una causa plausible de ambos fenómenos a la idea sustentada en la literatura que el alto grado de protección contra el despido podría generar incentivos para extender la duración del empleo, lo que fomenta una mayor inversión en capacitación específica para el puesto, pero al mismo tiempo desalienta la rotación.
Competition and innovation in the pharmaceutical industry: the case of generic drugs in Europe
(2025-01) Bronstein, Milton Andrés
Does competition foster innovation? Within the theoretical discussion on competition, there is still no consensus on how it affects innovation. Thus, from a theoretical approach, it is not clear what competition does to firms when it comes to efforts and expenditures on R&D. I contribute by taking an empirical approach to address this question in the pharmaceutical industry, where firms rely heavily on R&D. This study finds that generic drug regulations had a mixed impact on R&D expenditures in the pharmaceutical industry in Central, Northern, Southern, and Western Europe. In the short term, they curtailed such expenditures while they increased them in the long term. These results suggest that the relationship between competition and innovation may change over time. Having considered the late market penetration of generic drugs, laws allowing or mandating INN prescribing and authorizing generic substitution seem to have a negative impact on R&D expenditures two years after their approval. However, the same laws that allowed INN prescription and generic substitution show increases in R&D expenses five years after their passage. In the medium term, companies may spend less on R&D and more on advertising their current products. However, in the long term, they will redirect these resources to the development of new products that will distance them from competitors. As a result, both consumers and policymakers might be facing a trade-off between more affordable prescribed drugs and new or better medicines available earlier.
The economic effects of free contraceptive distribution: evidence from Argentina’s ENIA plan on the marriage market
(2025-01) Podestá, Rosario
This paper examines the economic effects of free long-acting contraceptive access on key socioeconomic variables, including marriage, education and labor market outcomes, using Argentina’s Plan Nacional de Prevenci´on del Embarazo No Intencional en la Adolescencia (ENIA) family planning program. The program involved the distribution of long-acting free contraceptives and the enhancement of sexual health services for adolescents. Implementation was targeted at counties with higher adolescent pregnancy rates. Using a difference-in-difference and event study approach, I find that access to free contraceptives led to an increase in marriage rates. The results support the parallel trends assumption and remain robust in an event study design and a placebo test. Additionally, a heterogeneity analysis reveals that the effects vary based on the lethality rate of COVID-19 across provinces. These findings highlight the relationship between reproductive health policies and economic outcomes, offering valuable insights for gender equality and development initiatives.
Selection of optimal window size and ensemble methods for rental price estimation with XGBoost: Evidence from Buenos Aires
(2024?) Sosa, Juan Bautista
In the context of forecasting rental prices of residential properties, the fact that the relationship between rents and property characteristics may be subject to significant changes over time can hinder the predictive performance of models that do not adjust to these changes. Previous studies have tested the accuracy of different statistical models in predicting rent prices, but none has focused on how the definition of the estimation window of observations used in the training stage can affect predictive performance. This paper explores the impact of selecting different window sizes in a forecasting experiment of rent prices in the City of Buenos Aires from 2020 to 2022 using the machine learning algorithm XGBoost. The results obtained for out-of-sample one-month-ahead forecasts indicate that the decision to use an expanding window or rolling windows is not trivial in terms of the achieved predictive performance. Among a set of rolling window sizes, the model with a size of 6 months yields the lowest error in terms of root mean square error and mean absolute error. Additionally, three methods that dynamically combine the predictions of models with different window sizes are tested. An ensemble method that outputs a weighted average of the predictions using time-varying weights based on the inverse of previous forecasting errors emerges as the superior strategy, producing a mean absolute percentage error of 19.7%. Overall, these results underscore the need to take into account the temporal dimension when selecting observations for training if the goal is to maximize out-of-sample predictive performance.
Something is coming: meteorite sightings and religious preferences
(2024?) Navajas Jauregui, Juan Sebastian
Can meteorite sightings intensify religious sentiments? This paper exploits the exogenous variability of meteorite sightings in the United States to investigate the causal relationship with religious intensity at the county level. The results show that meteorite sighting increases religiosity in the treated counties, as measured by the names children receive from their parents at birth. The historical perspective of this phenomenon allows me to analyse a society with a low dynamic in the flow of information, which is crucial for such a phenomenon to be seen as unpredictable and inexplicable. The hypothesis underlying this result is that religion serves as a response to the existentialist feelings aroused by such events. The results are in line with coping theory.
Impacto de las ciclovías protegidas sobre el mercado inmobiliario en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires
(2024-12) Daboin Contreras, Carlos José
La Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (CABA) cuenta con una red de ciclovías protegidas de más de 300 kilómetros de longitud. Esta investigación presenta una evaluación cuasi-experimental del impacto de estas ciclovías sobre el precio de los inmuebles adyacentes, explotando la variación exógena en la fecha de construcción de sus tramos y datos georreferenciados de inmuebles publicados para la venta en plataformas de comercio electrónico durante el período 2018-2019. Estimaciones vía el método TWFEDD sugieren que la intervención no tuvo un impacto significativo sobre el precio de los inmuebles adyacentes. Sin embargo, un desglose de los efectos a nivel de comuna revela impactos positivos en la Comuna 6, negativos en la Comuna 13, y positivos en el mercado no residencial de la Comuna 14.
A drawing is worth a thousand words : analyzing children’s projective techniques with machine learning
(2024-12) Banfi, Catalina
Child maltreatment is a critical global issue with long-lasting physical, psychological, and social consequences. A major challenge in addressing this problem is substantial underreporting, as most cases occur within the home, preventing timely intervention and leaving many children without support. While detection tools exist, they are typically applied only to cases already within the system, resulting in a reactive rather than proactive approach to identifying at-risk children. The main objective of this thesis is to develop a machine learning algorithm to proactively enhance the detection of child maltreatment through the analysis of projective techniques applied to primary school children. Using data from an Inter-American Development Bank project, the study automates the evaluation of graphical indicators in children’s drawings, simulating psychologists’ cognitive processes to generate risk alerts and identify cases requiring further psychodiagnostic evaluation. The resulting algorithm achieved high accuracy metrics, enabling large-scale implementation while maintaining efficiency. The intervention costs approximately $2 USD per child and significantly reduces future costs associated with the long-term consequences of child maltreatment. This proposal, designed as a public policy for primary schools, trains teachers to identify key indicators in drawings, embedding detection into the educational system and optimizing resource allocation.
Statistical discrimination during the 1871 yellow fever epidemic in Buenos Aires
(2024-11) Millas Caputo, Juan Francisco
This paper aims to assess the existence (and if so, estimate the magnitude) of a discriminatory bias against low-income and immigrant households in the context of the 1871 yellow fever epidemic in Buenos Aires. The argument presents the previous anecdotal evidence on discrimination based on socioeconomic outcomes and nationality from government-appointed commissioners, and proposes this investigation as an econometric approach that assesses and quantifies the existence of this phenomenon using historical data. The identification strategy consists of commissioner-level fixed-effects models to control for individual-specific unobservable variables. The main takeaway is that, in line with previous anecdotal evidence presented by other authors, these households’ (conventillos) probability of being fined when non-compliant of hygiene norms was 14 p.p. higher than other types of households and the monetary value of the fines they received were 159 $m/c (pesos moneda corriente) higher.
The Effect of Bikesharing on Subway Ridership
(2024-10) De Martini, Santiago
Accessibility to public transportation is a key determinant of transport mode choice. When the distance to or from a public transport hub is beyond walking range, commuters tend to dismiss trip alternatives that require walking to such a hub. This paper examines whether bikeshare systems can improve accessibility to subway stations, thereby expanding their catchment areas and increasing ridership. I study this problem in the context of the City of Buenos Aires, where more than 400 bike stations opened in staggered dates. Following a differences-in-differences design, I estimate that when a bikeshare station opens within 400m of a subway station, the daily volume of passengers of the latter increases by 14.5%. Moreover, this effect is stronger in non-working days, where I register an increase of 20.7%. Furthermore, I find that for each additional subway station receiving a nearby bikeshare station, the ridership of its subway line increases by 13.6%, indicating that the results are not influenced by spillover effects. Finally, I propose a discrete-choice model that could be used to estimate the optimal locations for bikeshare stations, contingent on the availability of additional data. These results highlight the potential of bikeshare systems to boost subway ridership in urban areas, thereby reducing congestion and emissions through the promotion of sustainable transportation.
Cyclicality meets rigidities
(2024-10) Ruiz Orrico, Pilar
Economic academia often warns against the dangers of procyclicality in public spending. However, the realization of these risks depends on asymmetries in the degree of cyclicality throughout the business cycle. Governments incur deficits only if they fail to reduce spending during downturns as much as they increase it during preceding booms. This study explores these asymmetries in the context of goods and services and compensation to employees, the components of public consumption, for a large panel of advanced and emerging economies. We conduct our empirical analysis using panel regressions, and validate our results with a trade-weighted growth instrumental variable, focusing on identifying associations rather than establishing causal relationships. In advanced economies, output growth is associated to a small positive effect on public consumption. In contrast, in emerging economies, output growth is connected to a more than proportional positive effect on goods and services, while becoming acyclical during recessions, exhibiting an overall semi-procyclical behavior. Furthermore, compensation to employees in emerging markets is related to a less than proportional increase during economics expansions, indicating possible rigidities associated with this category. This phenomenon, referred to as "downward rigidity" in public consumption, not only paves the way for fiscal stress during economic downturns but also leads to sustained growth in the size of the state.
Falta de seguimiento médico regular, reducción del gasto asociado a la salud y aumento en la tasa de mortalidad
(2024-10) Hedemann, Malena
Esta investigación analiza datos de una obra social en el sur del Gran Buenos Aires, Argentina, recopilados entre 2013 y 2022, con un total de 415,688 observaciones. Se evalúan el gasto en salud, consultas médicas, planes, defunciones y distribución etaria de los afiliados. Mediante modelos de regresión lineal, se explora la relación entre gasto en salud y mortalidad, con énfasis en el impacto de la pandemia de COVID-19. El estudio se enfoca en la asociación entre el año 2021 y las tasas de mortalidad, considerando la reducción en el gasto en salud en 2020. Los resultados muestran que la disminución del gasto en 2020, estimada en \$2,458.8 (p<0.01), se asocia con un aumento en la mortalidad en 2021, con un incremento de 0.00335 en la tasa de mortalidad (p<0.01). Este análisis evidencia cómo las restricciones de la pandemia afectan la salud pública y subraya la importancia de mantener inversiones en salud para mitigar el impacto en la mortalidad en contextos de crisis.
¿Qué rol juegan los descuentos en contextos de alta inflación?: consecuencias de la alta volatilidad en los precios en los mercados de búsqueda
(2024-09) Morandi, Micaela
La inflación es un fenómeno bien conocido y estudiado por la literatura. La alta volatilidad de los precios reales trae aparejada múltiples distorsiones en los mercados que alejan a la economía del ´optimo, entre ellos, el mercado de búsqueda. La pérdida del contenido informativo de los precios aumenta el precio de reserva de los agentes y colapsa la dimensión intertemporal del problema de búsqueda, a la vez de que permite que firmas ineficientes participen en el mercado. En este contexto de incertidumbre, la introducción de un descuento resulta una estrategia de equilibrio para las firmas.
Beyond Pain Relief: Assessing OxyContin’s Impact on Foster Care New Entries
(2024-07) Bullano, Maria Emilia
In this study, I assess the causal impact of the early stages of the opioid crisis on new entries into foster care, focusing on the introduction of OxyContin in 1996 and the influence of Triplicate Prescription Programs (TPP) in the United States. My findings indicate a composition effect: in states without TPP, where OxyContin had greater market penetration, children entering foster care are more likely to come from households where parents abuse drugs. These results underscore the complex interplay between public health policies and child welfare outcomes, highlighting the need for integrated strategies addressing the broader implications of drug policy on vulnerable populations.
Do ambassadors matter? The effect of ambassadors on trade promotion
(2024-07) Riottini Depetris, Franco Jesús
This thesis examines the impact of ambassadors on trade promotion, utilizing the 2012 Paraguayan political crisis as a natural experiment. Using highly disaggregated customs data and a difference-in-differences approach, we analyze how the unexpected withdrawal of Argentina's ambassador affected bilateral trade patterns. Our findings reveal that the ambassador's absence led to a significant decrease in Paraguay's imports from Argentina, primarily driven by reductions in the extensive margin of trade. We observed a 3% decline in the number of suppliers and a 5% decrease in the number of imported products. To elucidate the mechanisms, we analyze data on commercial and specific actions undertaken by the Argentine embassy in Paraguay. Results indicate that the ambassador's absence corresponded with a substantial decrease in both major trade events and smaller, targeted activities, despite no change in the embassy's budget allocation. Our analysis is robust to various specifications, including different regional samples and trade volume thresholds. This research contributes to the literature on economic diplomacy by providing causal evidence of ambassadors' role in facilitating international trade, particularly in establishing new trade relationships.
Effects of Weather Shocks on Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Argentina
(2024-07) de Marcos, Inés
How do weather shocks affect labor market outcomes in Argentina? This study examines the effect of five types of weather shocks —droughts, heatwaves, cold waves, and intense and excessive rainfall— on labor market outcomes in Argentina from 2001 to 2010. In the context of increasing climate variability, this study is particularly relevant for economies like Argentina, which are highly dependent on agriculture and have significant segments of the population vulnerable to these shocks. The study presents a unique data set that merges 50 years of high-resolution climatic data with the 2000 and 2010 national censuses. Additionally, it includes imputed income data derived from the 2005 and 2010 Household Survey (EPH) using a survey-to-census methodology. By employing a differences-in-differences approach, the study examines the effects of drought, heatwaves, cold waves, and intense and excessive rainfall on employment status, labor force participation, and labor income. Results show that drought, heatwaves, and cold waves have significant negative effects on labor market outcomes. Importantly, these effects are disproportionally adverse for poorer income quintiles and less-educated individuals, potentially exacerbating existing social vulnerabilities. The study contributes to the climate-economy literature, particularly on labor markets, by extending beyond the usual single weather approach and, methodologically, utilizing a survey-to-census income imputation technique. The findings highlight the critical importance of quantifying weather impacts to inform the design of public policies for increased resilience to weather shocks in middle-income countries like Argentina.

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