Work in Progress
Copper booms and regional growth in Chile: shared at first, concentrated later
Luis Pino-Sandoval
Resumen
This letter studies how copper price shocks spread across Chilean regions. Using annual real GDP for 13 regions over 2005–2025, spliced across three national accounts bases, and panel local projections, I compare regions with different pre-sample mining intensity. An unanticipated 10% rise in the copper price raises output by about 0.5–0.9% in both mining and non-mining regions during the first two years. The gains then fade in non-mining regions but persist and grow in mining regions, where output is 1.4% higher after four years. A one-standard-deviation higher mining share implies a response 0.3–0.5 percentage points larger three to four years after the shock. The pattern survives excluding the pandemic years, dropping Antofagasta and controlling for gold price shocks. Copper windfalls are shared nationally in the short run, but their medium-run gains concentrate where copper is mined.