Abstract:In the last decade, the importance of exploiting Chile's Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) has increased significantly, as fossil fuel prices have risen and concerns regarding climate change issues grown, posing an important threat to its economy. However, to date, the advancement of Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) in the country has been very limited due to various barriers. For this reason, identifying and mitigating the main barriers that hamper the advancement of RETs is necessary to allow the successful deployment of these technologies. Based on data collected from a questionnaire survey and interviews conducted among the major renewable project developers, the authors identify and rank the major barriers to the adoption of renewable energy technologies in Chile. Our findings show that the most significant barriers include "grid connection constraints and lack of grid capacity", "longer processing times for a large number of permits", "land and/or water lease securement" and "limited access to financing". Furthermore, we discuss the most critical barriers in detail together with policy recommendations to overcome them.

Housing units with closer access to public transportation enjoy a higher market value than those with similar characteristics but poorer access. This difference can be explained by the lower cost of transport to the main workplaces and shopping areas in town. For this reason, investments in public transport infrastructure, such as building a new metro line, are capitalised totally or partially into land and housing prices. This work empirically analyses the degree of capitalisation into housing prices of the benefits of the new Line 4 of the Santiago metro system, which began operating in December 2005. We focus on anticipated capitalisation into housing prices at the moment construction of Line 4 was announced and at the moment information on the basic engineering project was unveiled, identifying the location of the future stations. We use a unique database containing all home buying and selling transactions in the Greater Santiago area between December 2000 and March 2004. The results show that the average apartment price rose by between 4.2 per cent and 7.9 per cent after construction was announced and by between 3.1 per cent and 5.5 per cent after the location of the stations was identified. These increases were not distributed evenly, but depended on the distance from the apartment to the nearest station. An indirect effect of this kind of capitalization is that property tax collections will increase if property is reappraised following the price rise. This effect is not negligible in magnitude and could represent 11 to 17 per cent of investment in the new metro line. This raises and interesting discussion on how the metro network extension is financed.

resumen | El desarrollo económico de Chile en las últimas décadas ha impactado fuertemente el crecimiento de las ciudades y la forma en que las desigualdades sociales se reflejan espacialmente en ellas. Medir con precisión la segregación urbana es, así, relevante, pues además permite diseñar políticas públicas que reduzcan sus efectos negativos. Sin embargo, mediciones previas en Chile tienen limitaciones metodológicas que restringen su validez y comparabilidad. En el presente estudio se utiliza una nueva metodología que combina datos de encuestas con información censal, a fin estimar ingresos de hogares y, con ello, indicadores precisos y estadísticamente robustos de segregación residencial. Adicionalmente, se estima un indicador de segregación que captura de mejor forma el hecho de que los ingresos son una variable continua. Los resultados muestran que la segregación de los más pobres es mayor que la de los más ricos, que aumentó entre 1992 y 2002, y que existe, además, una heterogeneidad importante en la contribución de cada comuna a la segregación en Santiago. palabras clave | áreas metropolitanas, segregación, distribución espacial. ' development abstract | Chile's economic development in recent decades has greatly impacted cities

Despite two decades of rapid growth, indigenous Chileans are disproportionately poor. However, income data obtained from non-representative surveys yield imprecise estimates of poverty and inequality. This paper therefore estimates poverty and inequality using poverty mapping methods. In contrast to previous studies, however, we use ethnicity rather than geography as a basis for disaggregation. We find that indigenous Chileans are significantly poorer than non-indigenous people, but that inequality rates are also lower for indigenous groups. These reliable estimates of poverty and inequality may augment the antipoverty targeting criteria used in Chile, helping policy-makers to better identify poor households.

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