Whether public lending to firms effectively eases credit constraints has been widely studied for very small businesses. The evidence documented for larger firms refers to lending that is significantly subsidized and targeted to these businesses, so the estimated positive effects may reflect poor...

This study analyzes the institutions that shape public private collaboration for the design and implementation of productive development policies in Colombia. Colombia is an interesting case because productive development policies are increasingly designed, in principle, in the context of formal...

Using a rich dataset of Colombian manufacturing establishments, we illustrate scarring effects of recessions operating through inefficient exit induced by heterogeneous credit constraints. We show that financially constrained businesses may be forced to exit the market during recessions even if...

The literature has come to no agreement about the empirical validity of the so-called weak government hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, political fragmentation should lead to higher government expenditure. With the aim of reconciling the empirical evidence with theory, in this paper we...

Following the seminal work of Hsieh and Klenow (2014), there is growing consensus that a key difference between the U.S. and developing economies is that the latter exhibit slower employment growth over the life cycle of the average productive establishment. At the same time, the distribution of...