Gonzalo R. Ramírez Muñoz de Toro

Yerba mate is one of the most widely consumed infusions in South America and is an important food product in Argentina. This study analyzes the factors associated with reductions in online yerba mate prices in Argentina between 2015 and 2026. A database of 27,046 weekly price records, organized into 762 product–store series, is used. Price reductions, identified relative to the previous observation, occur in 5.1% of the records, and their probability is analyzed through logit models including product characteristics, macroeconomic variables, temporal controls, and store and product fixed effects. Yerba mate with sticks is associated with a 4.27 percentage point higher probability of price reduction, whereas products labeled as special selection and those sold in bilaminated or flexible packages show a lower probability. The contemporaneous change in the official exchange rate is negatively associated with price reductions, while some of its lags are positive. Fuel price increases in previous weeks are mainly associated with fewer price reductions. Significant differences are also found across years, months and weeks of the month, and during the COVID-19 lockdown. These findings provide evidence on the factors associated with retail price reductions in a food market characterized by persistent inflation.

Damages for personal injuries is a field prone to gender biases. Empirical exploration of the issue, however, is far from being simple, especially in Civil Law countries, given a pervasive lack of transparency and explicitness on the details of reasoning and treatment of numerical values. Accounting for that feature, our research sketches a canon of analysis that goes beyond the words. To deal with risks of cherry picking and inaccurate sample design, our database encompasses all the decisions made during the span time selected (more than 20,000) by an Appellate Court. Scrapers designed ad hoc have been instrumental to that aim. In our case study, the well-known earnings gap, usually assumed a cause of other, second order gaps, ought not to be mirrored in magnitude by pecuniary damages, because the “shadow price” of non-remunerated activities must be computed together with earnings lost, what should counterbalance the latter derivative gap. Nonpecuniary damages, in turn, must be independent of earnings, being theoretically free from that effect. Nonetheless, we found differences with statistical significance in any of them, in favor of men. Some reverse engineering in search of the primary source of the gap leads to find a systematic bias in percentages of disability against women, even in cases where the predictable result should be the opposite. In more general terms, the said obscurity on the treatment of numerical values, usually covered by rhetoric, renders difficult any honest scrutiny of systematic biases on the matter without the assistance of high technology and some sophistication, and shields decisions to criticism. Accordingly, it helps perpetuate gaps whenever existed.

En este trabajo se analizan las variaciones semanales en el precio de 300 presentaciones de yerba mate publicadas en línea, para el período comprendido entre diciembre de 2015 y febrero del 2021, considerando atributos propios del producto, eventos temporales, costos y fluctuaciones cambiarias, recurriendo a estimaciones econométricas basadas en Efectos Aleatorios (EA) y Mínimos Cuadrados Generalizados. Factibles (MCGF). Los resultados derivados estas estimaciones, presentan significatividad para todos los grupos de variables explicativas consideradas. El impacto de cada una de ellas resulta ser desigual sobresaliendo el tipo de cambio oficial y logaritmo del precio promedio como las que mayor influencia tienen sobre la decisión de variar el precio de venta.

Argentina has long been a tea provider with diverse types and variants dispatched to the internal market and abroad. The drink and its variants are a popular complement to other infusions such as yerba mate and coffee. We scraped an extensive online price database for analyzing the tea products offered in local supermarkets. We use a panel data modeling approach and test if attributes are associated with pricing and price discounting in the retail tea market. We control the estimations for time effects and exchange rate metrics because of the unstable macroeconomics. Time effects are highly significant and robust across estimations: we detect weekly, seasonal patterns, and yearly cycles. Attributes such as brand and variety play a weaker role in pricing but a stronger one in promotions.

Proporcionamos información sobre el aceite de oliva virgen extra (AOVE) en una región de Argentina donde los olivares y su industrialización representan un pequeño sector en crecimiento, por lo que el proceso de diferenciación por atributos emerge como relevante. Analizamos el rol de los atributos y diversas otras variables de control sobre la variación semanal de precios del AOVE; al respecto, suponemos que la baja demanda del producto aún hace que sus compradores carezcan de información y, por ende, no valoren esos atributos. Presentamos información econométrica en un contexto de alta inestabilidad macroeconómica, cuyos resultados muestran que la mayoría de los atributos de producto no resultaron significativos por lo que se infiere que las empresas asocian sus precios al único atributo significativo: su marca. Luego, las variables que indican inestabilidad macroeconómica resultaron en su mayoría significativas configurando una situación de fijación de precios más asociada a sortear la inestabilidad macroeconómica que a utilizarlo como una efectiva política de comercialización.

Los modelos de precios hedónicos permiten detectar relaciones latentes entre el precio de un bien y diversas características del mismo. Utilizamos datos de sitios en línea de Argentina sobre autos usados para ajustar un modelo amplio. Encontramos como significativas diversas características de prestaciones y propias del tipo de vehículo y su equipamiento. Se observan diferencias regionales de precios así como una persistente asociación de los vehículos de producción nacional con precios bajos.