Felipe Carrera 

Department of Economics

Reed College

3203 SE Woodstock Blvd

Portland, OR 97202-8199, USA 


Vollum Hall, Rm 225

fcarrera@reed.edu  

about

I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at Reed College. 

My research focuses on Industrial Organization and Economic History.  

Please find my CV here. 

working papers


We use evidence from a slum clearance program implemented in Santiago, Chile, between 1979 and 1985, to study the long-term effects of moving to a high-poverty neighborhood on children’s adult earnings. During the country’s dictatorship, slum families were mandated to relocate to public housing in low-income areas. Two-thirds were relocated to new housing projects on the periphery of the city, and the rest received housing at their initial location. We construct a novel dataset that combines archival records with administrative data to estimate a displacement effect 20 to 40 years after the policy. We compare the outcomes of displaced and non-displaced children from slums with the same probability of being cleared, and find negative effects: On average, displaced children have 14% lower earnings and 0.64 fewer years of education as adults compared to non-displaced children. Moreover, displaced children are more likely to later work in informal jobs. We find different mechanisms operate by age at baseline. Young children are more likely to be affected by a neighborhood effect due to lower home values and the lack of schools, but teenagers are also affected due to the disruption of networks. Even though displaced children are less likely to live in their assigned neighborhoods, they live in higher-poverty areas as adults. 

Coverage: World Bank


This paper studies the effect of cartels on the quantity and quality of new firms in an industry with low barriers to entry. Since cartels generate artificially high profits, low productivity firms may be tempted to enter a cartelized industry, eroding the industry's productivity and reducing total surplus in the long-run. I use cartels in the early twentieth-century Chilean nitrate industry to quantify these effects. Results show that cartels increase the number of new plants by more than four plants per year, and that production units that entered during cartels were significantly less productive, in a magnitude equivalent to a reduction in revenue of roughly 1/3 for a median-sized plant in the industry. Counterfactual simulations establish that, had cartels not occurred, 25% of the new plants would have postponed or canceled their entry to the industry. Moreover, low barriers to entry are shown to cause a reduction of 39% of total cartel profits for incumbent cartel members. Results point to a complex interaction between barriers to entry, productivity, net entry, and cartel profits, with important potential policy implications for antitrust agencies.


This work studies how firms learn to collude. Between 1884 and 1909, Chilean nitrate of soda producers organized cartels on five separate occasions. Specific industry characteristics and the public nature of collusion in this industry allow us to explore how collusive agreements evolved as producers accumulated relevant knowledge. We find that contracts progressively became more complete, more efficient in allocating cartel production quotas, and better at regulating the transition from competition to collusion.


We study the effects of forced displacement on adults’ mortality. We use evidence from a slum clearance program implemented in Santiago, Chile, between 1979 and 1985 that forced slum families to relocate to public housing in low-income areas. Two-thirds of families were relocated to new housing projects on the periphery of the city, and the rest received housing at their initial location. We compare the outcomes of displaced and non-displaced adults from slums with the same probability of being cleared, and find dis- placement increases mortality: Displaced adults die 30% more per year and the effect is relatively constant across 35 years after the intervention. Increases in mortality appear in the entire age distribution for both men and women, but causes vary by gender. Women are more likely to die of disease-related causes such as heart disease or cancer, and men are more likely to die of external/violent causes and alcohol and tobacco addiction. Because of higher segregation and lower access to jobs in destination neighborhoods, our results suggest poverty could be the channel to increased mortality among displaced individuals. 

work in progress

I use detailed information on cartel contracts and plant-level output decisions from the Chilean nitrate cartels to quantify the effect of transferable market shares on cartels' production efficiency. After World War I, nitrate producers adapted to changing market conditions in world fertilizer markets by organizing cartels that included transferable market shares, which had been explicitly banned in previous collusive episodes. To estimate the effect of this change in rules, I collect an original data set that includes plant-month output observations for all plants in the industry between the years 1918 and 1924. 


Using a combination of empirical work and a theoretical model, we study the interaction between financial networks, liquidity provision, and central bank design, using the case of the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. We document empirical facts of the period between the Federal Reserve creation and the stock exchange crash in 1929: banks abruptly reduced their reserves, and only a small fraction of state banks joined the Federal Reserve. Then, we develop a theoretical model of bank bargaining that accounts for the observed features of the system and sheds light on some negative unintended consequences of the Federal Reserve System design.