The response of illegal mining to revealing its existence
New monitoring technologies can help curb illegal activities by reducing information asymmetries between enforcing and monitoring government agents. I created a novel dataset using machine learning predictions on satellite imagery that detects illegal mining. Then I disclosed the predictions to government agents to study the response of illegal activity. I randomly assigned municipalities to one […]
Market access and agricultural land use: Does distance matter? Insights from Colombia
A rich dataset, based on the agricultural census, characterizing Colombian agricultural units is usedto examine the relationship between market access and market influence, on one hand, and theintensity of land use for productive purposes as instrumented as the share of usable land withrespect to the total area of the production unit, on the other. We […]
Price discrimination in informal labor markets in Bogotá: an audit experiment during the 2018 FIFA World Cup
We conducted an audit experiment to examine whether street vendors in Bogotá (Colombia) exert price discrimination based on buyers’ attributes, such as gender and nationality, and based on product characteristics, such as the increasing marginal valuation of items needed to complete a collection. We exploited the seasonal demand for album stickers related to the FIFA […]
Discrimination in post-conflict settings: Experimental evidence from Colombia
After a civil war, community support for the reintegration of ex-combatants is crucial for peace-building. Using a crowdfunding campaign to promote trainees’ business ideas, we investigate whether university students discriminate against ex-combatants in Colombia. Our results show that there is no discrimination against ex-combatants in terms of donations compared with other trainees, but there is […]
Local incentives and national tax evasion: The response of illegal mining to a tax reform in Colombia
Achieving a fair distribution of resources is one of the goals of fiscal policy. To this end, governments often transfer tax resources from richer to more marginalized areas. In the context of mining in Colombia, we study whether lower transfers to the locality where the taxed economic activity takes place dampen local authorities’ incentives to […]
Interest rate convergence across maturities: Evidence from bank data in an emerging market economy
Against a background of financial liberalisation reforms, we assess the extent of market integration and competition in Colombian retail deposits and loans markets. We employ a dataset comprising bank-level interest rate data for different financial products across a range of banks. We utilise and further develop the Phillips and Sul convergence club approach by estimating […]
Transit infrastructure and informal housing: Assessing an expansion of Medellín’s Metrocable system
Transportation policies have a valuable influence on the allocation of resources within cities. Therefore, investigating the impacts of transit interventions is relevant, especially in developing countries where informal housing is highly prevalent and spatial disparities are noteworthy. We study the impact of a transit expansion of the Metrocable system in Medellín, Colombia, as a natural […]
Estimating cost-effectiveness thresholds under a managed healthcare system: experiences from Colombia
Like most of the world, low- and middle-income countries have faced a growing demand for new health technologies and higher budget constraints. It is necessary to have technical instruments to make decisions based on real-world evidence that allows maximization of the population’s health with a limited budget. We estimated the supply-based cost-effectiveness elasticity, which was […]
One step ahead of the law:The net effect of anticipation and implementation of Colombia’s illegal crops substitution program
Pre-announced policies often generate unintended consequences due to individuals’ acting to take advantage of the policy conditions. Little is known about the extent to which unintended consequences from the early announcement of a policy can be larger than the implementation effect, especially in contexts of weak state capacity. We use detailed 1 km grid square […]
The fertility-inhibiting effect of mosquitoes: Socio-economic differences in response to the Zika crisis in Colombia
We estimated the impact of the Zika virus outbreak on birth rates and demand for health care services in Colombia. Our analysis exploits the variation in the level of natural protection against mosquito transmitted diseases across the country. This characteristic induced exogenous variation in Zika incidence, which allows us to construct a control group of […]