Inclusión financiera en las zonas rurales de Colombia: Una aproximación cuantitativa

Este trabajo de investigación analiza las decisiones de ahorro y en deudamiento de los hogares rurales colombianos. Para ello, seutiliza un modelo de equilibrio general dinámico con agentes heterogéneos calibrado con datos de la Encuesta Longitudinal Colombiana (ELCA). Los resultados revelan que el número de hogares con créditos aumenta, en especial en el sector formal, […]

The Fiscal Impact of Immigration: Labor Displacement, Wages, and the Allocation of Public Spending*

We reexamine the effect of immigration on public finances by accounting for second-order effects. We exploit exogenous variation in immigration across Colombian metropolitan areas between 2013 and 2018, resulting from the large increase in Venezuelan immigrants, and instrument immigrants’ residential location using preexisting settlement patterns and the distance between origin-destination flows. Our findings indicate that […]

Immigrant Networks in the Labor Market

Using unique survey data linked to social security records and the large influx of Venezuelan immigrants to Colombia in recent years, this paper provides evidence on the empirical relationships between referral networks and labor market outcomes of immigrants by focusing on the spatial dimension of social interactions. By explicitly accounting for both the urban and […]

Matching and City Size Wage Gaps under the Shadow of Informality: Evidence from Mexico

Larger labor markets provide workers and firms with better opportunities to find each other, enhancing positive assortative matching. We measure the extent of these agglomeration externalities in Mexico, where informal work represents a large share of employment and coexists with formal labor markets. Using a matched employer-employee dataset comprising the near universe of formal workers […]

Convergence in retail gasolina: Insights from Canadian cities

This paper investigates the extent of convergence club formation in retail gasoline prices. Our study provides new insights through the use of a large disaggregated panel database for Canada that comprises three types of gasoline grades, namely regular, medium and premium, for a sample of 44 cities over a period of almost two decades. The […]

Segregación residencial en el oriente de Cali y comuna 18

A partir de cálculos de los índices de Duncan y Duncan se muestran los niveles de segregación socioespacial para la zona oriente y ladera (comuna 18), lo que coincide con la localización de grupos étnicos, su condición de pobreza y bajo nivel educativo.

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 […]

A Peace Baby Boom? Evidence from Colombia’s Peace Agreement

Violent environments affect household fertility choices, demand for health services and health outcomes of newborns. Using administrative data from Colombia and a difference-in-differences strategy, we study how the end of the 5-decade long conflict with the FARC insurgency affected fertility outcomes in areas traditionally affected by FARC’s violence relative to the rest of the country. […]

Visualization, Identification and Estimation in the Linear Panel Event-Study Design

Linear panel models, and the «event-study plots» that often accompany them, are popular tools for learning about policy effects. We discuss the construction of event-study plots and suggest ways to make them more informative. We examine the economic content of different possible identifying assumptions. We explore the performance of the corresponding estimators in simulations, highlighting […]