We develop a political economy model where some politicians have a comparative advantage in undertaking a task and this gives them an electoral advantage. This creates an incentive to underperform in the task in order to maintain their advantage. We interpret the model in the context of fighting...

This article compares the treatment of Colombia in large cross-country conflict datasets with the information of a unique dataset on the Colombian conflict (CERAC). The big datasets display a strong tendency to record fewer killings than does CERAC. Moreover, when the big datasets provide annual...

We study the causal effect of recent landmark events of the Colombian armed conflict on the foreign perception of sovereign risk, as measured by the price of the Credit Default Swap (CDS) of Colombian bonds. We construct a Synthetic Control Group to use as the non-conflict counterfactual of the...

This is a critical review of the empirical literature on the relationship between violence and economic growth in Colombia, an interesting case study for social scientists studying violence, conflict, crime, and development. We argue that despite the rapid development of this literature and the...