This paper studies the effect of strengthening democracy, as captured by an increase in voting rights, on the incidence of violent civil conflict in nineteenth-century Colombia. Empirically studying the relationship between democracy and conflict is challenging, not only because of conceptual...

Free media may not favor political accountability when other democratic institutions are weak, and may even bring undesirable unintended consequences. We propose a simple model in which candidates running for office may engage in coercion to obtain votes. A media scandal exposing these...

Spanish Abstract: En Colombia el conflicto armado generó múltiples tensiones políticas que llevaron a que los ciudadanos de las regiones más golpeadas por el conflicto participaran menos en las elecciones. El Acuerdo de paz con las FARC, firmado en 2016, ha generado cambios que podrían...

Spanish Abstract: En Colombia las minas han sido usadas por los grupos armados ilegales para proteger los cultivos de coca y controlar el territorio. Nuestro trabajo es el primero en explorar los efectos del Desminado Humanitario sobre los cultivos de coca en Colombia. A través de un modelo de...

I study the causal effect of violence against social leaders on coca cultivation and land restitution requests in the Colombian context from 2012 to 2018. Using the timing of unexpected killings of social leaders in an event study approach, I provide evidence that the start of the violence...

Spanish Abstract: El presente capítulo describe y analiza un proceso participativo llevado a cabo con el propósito de apoyar la construcción de acuerdos colectivos y un sistema de monitoreo ciudadano para el manejo sostenible de las cuencas de los ríos Suratá, en Santander, y Zulia y...

Spanish Abstract: Con la salida de las FARC, el grupo guerrillero que monopolizó el mercado de la cocaína y el mayor causante de violencia en el país, se vuelve relevante estudiar el comportamiento del mercado de las drogas y los cambios en las dinámicas de violencia. El propósito de este...

Previous work has documented a negative correlation between internal conflict and state capacity. We attempt to shed light on mechanisms that underlie this relationship, using data for Colombian municipalities. We rely on identifying heterogeneous effects of different types of violent events on...

In this paper, we study how between-group wealth and size heterogeneity affect success probabilities as well as aggregate rent-seeking efforts when two groups compete for the allocation of a pure public good. Unlike with previous models, we measure the utility cost of rent-seeking in terms of...

If property rights in land are so beneficial, why are they not adopted more widely? I propose a theory based on the idea that limited property rights over peasants' plots may be supported by elite landowners (who depend on peasants for labour) to achieve two goals. First, like other distortions...