We explore the impact of encomienda, a forced-labor institution imposed by the Spanish throughout Latin America during three centuries, on long-term development outcomes in Colombia. Despite being a classically extractive institution, municipalities that had encomiendas in 1560 have higher...

The Spanish encomienda, a colonial forced-labor institution that lasted three centuries, killed many indigenous people and caused others to flee into nomadism. And yet we show that Colombian municipalities with encomiendas in 1560 enjoy better outcomes today across multiple dimensions of...

The paper analyzes the effects of land reform on social development - poverty and land distribution - at the local level. Land reform in Colombia, understood as the allocation of public land to peasant, has granted 23 million hectares which comprises around 20% of Colombian territory and about...

This paper estimates the impact of a postgraduate merit-based financial aid program in Colombia. Exploiting a regression discontinuity design using rich survey and administrative data, we find three main results by. First, credit constraints are binding and important even for talented...

This study evaluates the impact of a national level subsidized loan program, ACCES, on a number of higher education outcomes (i.e., increase in enrollment rates, decrease in dropout rates, and increase in academic performance) of low-income students in Colombia. We use national level data along...

Spanish Abstract: Esta investigación analiza el efecto, en las universidades, de recibir la acreditación institucional de alta calidad sobre variables relacionadas con la calidad educativa. Como metodología se plantean dos modelos: un modelo generalizado de diferencias en diferencias y un...

Spanish Abstract: En los países en desarrollo, el desafío de producir conocimiento científico y desarrollar tecnologías modernas es inmenso. En Colombia, alrededor del 95% de la producción científica se lleva a cabo en las universidades. Utilizando una base de datos novedosa que permite...