Javiera Selman

Assistant Professor

department of Economics, University of Chile

My fields are urban and public economics, with a special interest in behavioral economics.

You can contact me at jselman@fen.uchile.cl

Download my CV here

SELECTED ACADEMIC PAPERS

  • Information Frictions in Rental Voucher Programs: Experimental Evidence from Chile

    with Pablo Celhay

  • “Rental Voucher Programs in Middle Income Countries: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Chile”

  • “Neighborhood spillovers in rental voucher program participation: Evidence from Chile”

    with Bárbara Flores

  • “Skipping the Bag: The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Disposable Bag Regulation”

    with Tatiana Homonoff, Lee-Sien Kao and Christina Seybolt

    Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, vol 41(1), 2022.

ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECTS

  • Sexual Orientation Discrimination in Mortgage Lending

    with Patrick Button, David Schwegman, Hussain Hadah, Catherine Balfe, and Tran Nguyen-Phuong

    This research uses an email correspondence experiment to test if mortgage loan originators discriminate against married spouses based on their sexual orientation and race (African American vs. white). We send emails requesting information about home loans to licensed mortgage loan originators (MLOs) in the United States. The emails come from fictitious married couples who are either same-gender female, same-gender male or different-gender, and either both have white-sounding names, or both have African American names. We test for differential treatment by MLOs by comparing response quality and response rates. We will then test for statistical discrimination and other explanatory factors by determining how discrimination varies by factors such as credit scores, local demographics and social attitudes, discrimination laws, and MLO characteristics.

    In the field 2024-2025.

  • Information Frictions in Rental Voucher Programs: Experimental Evidence from Chile

    with Pablo Celhay

    We developed an online counseling program “Aprendo y Arriendo” to assist rental voucher holders in Chile and study barriers to voucher utilization. We provided randomly assigned information to 11,149 voucher holders to examine whether a lack of information about the program, neighborhood characteristics, and unawareness of positive neighborhood effects for children, affect voucher utilization.

  • Administrative Barriers in Rental Voucher Programs: Experimental Evidence From Chile

    with Pablo Celhay

    This research project develops an online platform to randomly vary information for local housing officials in Chile to uncover administrative barriers hindering rental voucher utilization.

    In the field 2024-2025

  • Social Interactions on the demand and supply sides of the Chilean Rental Subsidy

    with Bárbara Flores and Felipe Link

    This project studies the effects of spacial social interaction of applicants and landlords of the Chilean rental subsidy on their participation decision. We are interested in social interaction within and between voucher recipients and landlords. This project received funding from the Center of Conflict and Social Cohesion.