In Bogotá the 1991 reforms obstructed a market for votes. Clientelism lost itseffectiveness; citizens developed a vote of opinion and the city showed an outstanding performance in the provision of public goods and social services. This story is illustrated with a novel panel data at the...

Utilizando la enorme variación relativa del IVA en Colombia como estrategia de identificación este trabajo busca cuantificar el impacto del IVA sobre el gasto de los hogares. Para tal efecto se correlaciona el IVA con el gasto de los hogares según se reportan en la Encuesta Continua de...

Large natural disasters (LNDs) are ubiquitous phenomena with potentially large impacts on the infrastructure and population of countries, and on their economic activity in general. I examine the occurrence pattern of several types of disasters on a panel of 113 countries and its relationship...

We use an experimental field approach to understand better the pro-social preferences andbehavior of both individuals involved in the provision of social services (public servants) and the behavior of those potential beneficiaries, the poor. We conducted field experiments using the Dictator,...

La reducción de la fecundidad ha ocurrido en todos los países de la región Latinoamericana, como consecuencia de un descenso en la fecundidad deseada y un aumento en el uso de métodos modernos de planificación familiar. Los descensos en fecundidad -deseada y observada- no han sido...

Powerful local elites are quite common in developing countries. Thus, whether decentralization reduces or not the level of corruption in the presence of these elites is a relevant issue for these economies. We motivate this paper with some empirical evidence. Using cross-country information we...

Se trata de un documento dedicado a revelar los principales rasgos del mercado de crédito para Vivienda de Interés Social, VIS, para la población pobre en Colombia y a analizar los resultados de la política durante lo corrido del presente milenio. La primera mitad del estudio estudia la...

This paper estimates the impact of random terrorist attacks (landmines) in Colombia onthe health of babies born between 1998 and 2003. The results suggest that these types of terrorist activities that occur during a woman´s first trimester of pregnancy have a negative and significant impact on...

This paper develops a model where heterogeneous agents compete for the best available jobs. Firms, operating with different technologies, rank job candidates in the human capital dimension and hire the best available candidate due to complementarities between the worker´s human capital and...

Este estudio desarrolla la relación entre la expansión de la oferta de tierras y el desarrollo exportador a finales del siglo XIX e intenta explicar la lánguida inserción de la economía colombiana a la economía mundial durante la ola de globalización que se inició a mediados del siglo...