Ego-relevance in team production

We study how individuals’ effort contribution to a team production task varies depending on whether the task is ego relevant or not. We conduct an experiment to test the effect of egorelevance when the team production depends on the team’s top- or bottom-performer. Egorelevance is manipulated by calling the Raven IQ Test an “IQ Task” […]

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 […]

Building inclusive institutions in polarized scenarios

We study how the polarization of voters and platforms influences political participation and the political inclusion of others in a series of lab-in-the-field experiments run in Colombia. We present a novel experimental methodology to understand the endogenous generation of political institutions in a polarized scenario. Participants in our experiment donate a substantial amount of money […]

Multivariate Cointegration and Temporal Aggregation: Some Further Simulation Results

We perform Monte Carlo simulations to study the effect of increasing the frequency of observations and data span on the Johansen (J Econ Dyn Control 12(2–3):231– 254, 1988; Likelihood-based inference in cointegrated vector autoregressive models, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995) maximum likelihood cointegration testing approach, as well as on the bootstrap and wild bootstrap implementations […]

Measuring the size and growth of cities using nighttime light

This paper uses nighttime luminosity to estimate a globally comparable measure of the size of metropolitan areas around the world for the years 2000 and 2010. We apply recently-proposed methodologies that correct the known problems of available nighttime luminosity data including blurring, instability of lit pixels overtime and the reduced comparability of night light images […]

Credit and saving constraints in general equilibrium: A quantitative exploration

In this paper we build an incomplete-markets model with heterogeneous households and firms to study the aggregate effects of saving constraints and credit constraints in general equilibrium. We calibrate the model using survey data from Colombia, a developing country in which informal saving and credit frictions are pervasive. Our quantitative results suggest that reducing savings […]

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 […]