This paper asks how academic breaks after high school affect individuals' college and labor market outcomes. We exploit a policy that altered academic calendars in two regions of Colombia, which caused thousands of high school graduates to have to wait an extra semester to start college. Using...

How much can employers in low and middle-income countries suppress wages below marginal productivity? Using plant and customs data from Colombia, we exploit predetermined variation across plants in sales export destination combined with variation in exchange rates to generate plant-specific...

We exploit a large and unexpected increase in the Colombian insurance threshold to investigate how depositors respond to higher deposit insurance. Monthly depositor-level records from a major bank show that the level and growth rate of deposits rise with higher coverage. Individuals who were...

This paper develops a new method for estimating production-function parameters that can be applied in differentiated-product industries with endogenous quality and variety choice. We take advantage of data on physical quantities of outputs and inputs from the Colombian manufacturing survey,...