arXiv subjects

Ricardo Alonzo Fernández Salguero

Publications and source records attributed to Ricardo Alonzo Fernández Salguero.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

LPG Subsidy Reform, Energy Compensation, and Social Risk in Bolivia: A Machine-Learning Agent-Based Microsimulation

This study evaluates alternative designs for reforming Bolivia's liquefied petroleum gas subsidy using a machine-learning agent-based microsimulation framework. The analysis harmonizes household survey data, expenditure data, demographic and health information, and monthly hydrocarbon production and commercialization series to simulate fiscal savings, poverty effects, energy substitution, administrative costs, and social risks under multiple reform scenarios. The model compares uncompensated subsidy removal, fixed energy transfers, full compensation for vulnerable LPG users, voucher-based compensation, maternal-child transfers, clean-energy transition kits, and hybrid policy packages. Machine-learning models are used to learn household vulnerability, fuel-use patterns, food insecurity risk, and behavioral propensities that feed into a monthly agent-based simulation. The results show that eliminating the subsidy without compensation generates the largest fiscal savings but increases poverty, extreme poverty, and pressure toward solid-fuel substitution. Full monetary compensation for Q1-Q2 LPG users substantially reduces social harm while preserving significant fiscal savings and dominates an equivalent voucher design under normal market conditions because of lower administrative friction. The most socially robust design combines targeted monetary energy compensation, maternal-child reinforcement, and clean-energy kits for households using solid fuels. The findings support a gradual replacement of the universal LPG subsidy with targeted, administratively lean, and behaviorally informed compensation mechanisms.

econ.EM↗

arXiv2026

Bolivia and an IMF Extended Fund Facility: Financial Sustainability, Verifiable Social Sustainability, and Net Financing Additionality

This paper evaluates stabilization scenarios for Bolivia under external-financing stress by jointly modeling financial sustainability, verifiable social sustainability and the net additionality of multilateral financing. The main correction is that financing already received, contracted or expected from multilateral institutions cannot be counted as a marginal benefit of a hypothetical IMF Extended Fund Facility. Already secured resources are moved to the baseline; only incremental, liquid, timely and non-displaced financing is rewarded. The analysis combines corrected scenario scoring, poverty and inequality measures, maternal-child mortality indicators, public investment multipliers, self-defeating consolidation diagnostics, Monte Carlo uncertainty, leave-one-criterion-out tests and adverse execution assumptions. The results do not support an orthodox IMF-first strategy or front-loaded fiscal consolidation. The strongest designs are concessional multilateral packages with verified net additionality, productive execution, social-health floors and protection against poverty and maternal-child deterioration. An IMF arrangement is valuable only if it adds resources or credibility that were not already secured. The conclusion is that sustainability must be evaluated as a joint financial and social condition: closing cash gaps by weakening growth, poverty, inequality or maternal-child outcomes can be macroeconomically self-defeating.

econ.EM↗

arXiv2026

IMF Programs and Growth: A Source-Informed Robustness Reanalysis

This article reassesses the meta-analytic evidence on the effect of International Monetary Fund programs on economic growth. The point of departure is the influential meta-analysis by Balima and Sokolova, which assembles 994 estimates from 36 studies and reports a positive average effect with substantial heterogeneity. The reanalysis presented here imposes four stricter requirements. It treats the study, rather than the reported estimate, as the primary inferential unit; it uses a source-informed classification of causal credibility; it models within-study dependence through study aggregation, correlated-effects sensitivity, multilevel CR2 inference, and robust variance estimation; and it evaluates publication-bias sensitivity through Egger, PET, PEESE, WAAP-like top-precision analysis, p-curve diagnostics, trim-and-fill, and exploratory selection models. The central result is not that IMF programs reduce growth everywhere, nor that the true effect is exactly zero. The result is narrower and stronger: the positive average effect in the aggregate literature is not robust once dependence, publication selection, heterogeneity, and credibility of identification are treated as first-order concerns. In the most defensible specifications, the average effect is statistically indistinguishable from zero, while equivalence to a substantively negligible effect is only partially supported and depends on the chosen equivalence bound.

econ.EM↗

arXiv2026

Testing Centralized and Polycentric Computational Planning

This paper presents a reproducible synthetic benchmark comparing a computational planner, an agent-based market, and a hybrid meta-market within a common simulated economy. The benchmark incorporates input-output production networks, heterogeneous firms, capacity constraints, endogenous prices, welfare metrics, structural shocks, adversarial stress testing, and information-reporting experiments. Across training, holdout, and adversarial scenarios, the planner consistently achieves lower welfare losses than the decentralized alternatives. The main contribution is methodological rather than ideological. While the benchmark demonstrates a falsifiable framework for comparing economic coordination mechanisms, it does not establish the empirical superiority of planning. Several design choices mechanically favor the planner, including informational asymmetries, incomplete market representation, and simplified institutional assumptions. The results should therefore be interpreted as validation of a synthetic experimental architecture and as a prototype for future research. The paper concludes by outlining a validation agenda based on empirical calibration, structural holdouts, sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification, mechanism-design tests, and independent replication.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2025

Effectiveness of Carbon Pricing and Compensation Instruments: An Umbrella Review of the Empirical Evidence

The growing urgency of the climate crisis has driven the implementation of diverse policy instruments to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Among them, carbon pricing mechanisms such as carbon taxes and emissions trading systems (ETS), together with voluntary carbon markets (VCM) and compensation programs such as REDD+, are central components of global decarbonization strategies. However, academic and political debate persists regarding their true effectiveness, equity, and integrity. This paper presents an umbrella review of the empirical evidence, synthesizing key findings from systematic reviews and meta-analyses to provide a consolidated picture of the state of knowledge. A rigorous methodology based on PRISMA guidelines is used for study selection, and the methodological quality of included reviews is assessed with AMSTAR-2, while the risk of bias in frequently cited primary studies is examined through ROBINS-I. Results indicate that carbon taxes and ETS have demonstrated moderate effectiveness in reducing emissions, with statistically significant but heterogeneous elasticities across geographies and sectors. Nonetheless, persistent design problems -- such as insufficient price levels and allowance overallocation -- limit their impact. By contrast, compensation markets, especially VCM and REDD+ projects, face systemic critiques regarding integrity, primarily related to additionality, permanence, leakage, and double counting, leading to generalized overestimation of their real climate impact. We conclude that while no instrument is a panacea, compliance-based carbon pricing mechanisms are necessary, though insufficient, tools that require stricter design and higher prices. Voluntary offset mechanisms, in their current state, do not represent a reliable climate solution and may undermine the integrity of climate targets unless they undergo fundamental reform.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2025

The effects of International Monetary Fund programs: a systematic review with narrative synthesis on poverty, inequality, and social indicators

This systematic review with narrative synthesis examines the social impacts of International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs. We systematically searched five academic databases and grey literature following PRISMA guidelines and included 53 empirical studies that met predefined eligibility criteria. For each study we assessed risk of bias, with particular attention to how endogeneity, selection bias, and confounding were handled. Because of substantial heterogeneity in outcomes and research designs, results were synthesized narratively rather than through meta analysis. We find that a minority of studies, often using methods with higher risk of bias such as propensity score matching, report no systematic adverse social effects. By contrast, a large body of work using stronger quasi experimental designs, especially instrumental variable strategies, links IMF conditionality to higher income inequality, worse health outcomes (notably tuberculosis and child mortality), and growth of the informal economy. Overall, the best available evidence indicates that IMF programs, particularly those centered on fiscal austerity and structural reforms, impose significant social costs and that a redesign of conditionality is needed to protect social spending and advance the Sustainable Development Goals.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2025

The Crisis Simulator for Bolivia (KISr-p): An Empirically Grounded Modeling Framework

This document presents a detailed technical report of the ``Crisis Simulator for Bolivia (KISr-p),'' a quarterly stochastic model designed to evaluate the impact of various macroeconomic policy strategies in an environment of high uncertainty and structural constraints. Unlike standard general equilibrium frameworks, this simulator is grounded in the consolidated empirical findings of a vast collection of meta-analyses, adopting the theoretical architecture of a Keynesian Intertemporal Synthesis (KIS) with a Constant Elasticity of Substitution (KIS-CES) production function. The calibration of each model block -- real, fiscal, monetary, external, labor, and distributional -- is described in detail, with parameters justified by quantitative evidence on the hierarchy of fiscal multipliers (Gechert and Rannenberg, 2018), the complementarity of production factors (Gechert et al., 2022), monopsony power in the labor market (Sokolova and Sørensen, 2021), and the dynamics of exchange rate and interest-rate pass-through. The model integrates these empirical regularities to generate non-linear dynamics such as state-dependent multipliers, asymmetric responses to shocks, and business-cycle phase interactions. Simulation results highlight the trade-offs between fiscal adjustment, external financing, debt restructuring, and structural reforms -- such as aggressive spending reallocation and targeted public investment. Scenarios show that pragmatic policy approaches that prioritize the \textit{composition} of spending over its aggregate level and that recognize institutional frictions yield superior macroeconomic and welfare outcomes compared to doctrinaire, one-size-fits-all prescriptions.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2025

From Murals to Memes: A Theory of Aesthetic Asymmetry in Political Mobilization

Why have left-wing movements historically integrated participatory art forms (such as murals and protest songs) into their praxis, while right-wing movements have prioritized strategic communication and, more recently, the digital culture of memes? This article introduces the concept of aesthetic asymmetry to explain this divergence in political action. We argue that the asymmetry is not coincidental but the result of four interconnected structural factors: the organizational ecosystem, the moral and emotional framework, the material supports, and the historical tradition of each political spectrum. While the left tends to use art in a constitutive manner to forge community, solidarity, and hope, the contemporary right tends to use it instrumentally to mobilize polarizing affects such as humor and resentment. Drawing on comparative literature from the Theatre of the Oppressed to analyses of alt-right meme wars, we nuance this distinction and show how the aesthetic logic of each pole aligns with its strategic objectives. The article culminates in a prescriptive model for artistic action, synthesizing keys to effective mobilization into emotional, narrative, and formatting strategies. Understanding this asymmetry is crucial for analyzing political communication and for designing cultural interventions capable of generating profound social change.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Austerity in Crisis?: A Narrative Review of Its Economic, Social, and Political Effects in Times of Crisis

The 2008 global financial crisis marked the beginning of a decade dominated by fiscal austerity policies in much of the developed world. This paper presents a qualitative narrative review of an extensive collection of academic literature to synthesize evidence on the multifaceted effects of austerity. Following a thematic approach inspired by PRISMA guidelines, the economic, social, and political consequences of these measures are examined. The analysis reveals a majority consensus regarding the recessive effects of austerity, especially when implemented during economic crises, with negative fiscal multipliers that often exacerbate GDP contraction. Socially, austerity is associated with rising inequality, negative impacts on public health, disproportionate gender consequences, and a weakening of social safety nets. Politically, evidence links austerity to the erosion of trust in institutions, a rise in populism, and electoral instability. Despite the political narrative presenting austerity as an inevitable necessity for fiscal sustainability, academic literature underscores its high costs and questionable efficacy, advocating for more contextualized and equitable economic policy approaches.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2025

A Synthetic Theory of Socio-Epistemic Structuration: Capital, Ideology, and Agency in the Age of Digital Inequality

This article proposes a synthetic theory of socio-epistemic structuration to understand the reproduction of inequality in contemporary societies. I argue that social reality is not only determined by material structures and social networks but is fundamentally shaped by the epistemic frameworks -- ideologies, narratives, and attributions of agency -- that mediate actors' engagement with their environment. The theory integrates findings from critical race theory, network sociology, social capital studies, historical sociology, and analyses of emerging AI agency. I analyze how structures (from the ``racial contract'' to Facebook networks) and epistemic frameworks (from racist ideology to personal culture) mutually reinforce one another, creating resilient yet unequal life trajectories. Using data from large-scale experiments like the Moving to Opportunity and social network analyses, I demonstrate that exposure to diverse environments and social capital is a necessary but insufficient condition for social mobility; epistemic friction, manifested as `friending bias' and persistent cultural frameworks, systematically limits the benefits of such exposure. I conclude that a public and methodologically reflexive sociology must focus on unpacking and challenging these epistemic structures, recognizing the theoretical capacity of subaltern publics (``reverse tutelage'') and developing new methods to disentangle the complex interplay of homophily, contagion, and structural causation in a world of big data.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2025

SIMPOL Model for Solving Continuous-Time Heterogeneous Agent Problems

This paper presents SIMPOL (Simplified Policy Iteration), a modular numerical framework for solving continuous-time heterogeneous agent models. The core economic problem, the optimization of consumption and savings under idiosyncratic uncertainty, is formulated as a coupled system of partial differential equations: a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation for the agent's optimal policy and a Fokker-Planck-Kolmogorov (FPK) equation for the stationary wealth distribution. SIMPOL addresses this system using Howard's policy iteration with an *upwind* finite difference scheme that guarantees stability. A distinctive contribution is a novel consumption policy post-processing module that imposes regularity through smoothing and a projection onto an economically plausible slope band, improving convergence and model behavior. The robustness and accuracy of SIMPOL are validated through a set of integrated diagnostics, including verification of contraction in the Wasserstein-2 metric and comparison with the analytical solution of the Merton model in the no-volatility case. The framework is shown to be not only computationally efficient but also to produce solutions consistent with economic and mathematical theory, offering a reliable tool for research in quantitative macroeconomics.

q-fin.CP↗

arXiv2025

A Keynesian Intertemporal Synthesis (KIS) Model: Towards a unified and empirically grounded framework for fiscal policy

This paper develops a new generation of the Keynesian Intertemporal Synthesis (KIS) Model, a macroeconomic framework designed to reconcile the empirical strengths of the Post-Keynesian (PK) and New Keynesian (NK) traditions. The central innovation of this work is the abandonment of the traditional Cobb-Douglas production function in favor of a Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) specification. This modification is directly motivated by the compelling evidence from the meta-analysis by Gechert et al. (2021), which emphatically rejects the hypothesis of a unit elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. We integrate this finding with the conclusions from a wide range of meta-analyses on the state-dependent heterogeneity of fiscal multipliers (Gechert and Rannenberg, 2018), the productivity of public capital (Bom and Ligthart, 2014), the effectiveness hierarchy of spending instruments (Gechert, 2015), and the empirical failure of Ricardian Equivalence (Stanley, 1998). The resulting KIS-CES model, while based on intertemporal optimization, incorporates household heterogeneity, non-standard preferences that value wealth and penalize debt, and a monetary policy constrained by the zero lower bound. The mathematical derivations reveal that the elasticity of substitution, calibrated to an empirically plausible value of $σ< 1$, becomes a key parameter that modulates income distribution and magnifies the crowding-in effect of public investment. The model generates an endogenous MPC, a nonlinear fiscal multiplier that increases dramatically in crises, and a multiplier for public investment that is structurally higher than that for consumption, thus offering a unified, rigorous, and, above all, empirically disciplined theoretical framework.

econ.TH↗