We document the evolution of labor markets of five Latin American countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, with emphasis on informal employment. We show, for most countries, a slump in aggregate employment, mirrored by a fall in labor participation, and a decline in the informality rate. The...

Using a novel biographical database including all Presidents and presidential candidates in Colombia for the period 1833-2010 I show that the value of a political connection can be quantified in terms of the votes transferred within a political network. I consider three types of political...

In this paper we use manufacturing data on Colombian exports and bank financing to estimate the credit elasticity of exports. The data allows us to construct a supply side instrumental variable for the credit of manufacturers that we use to address a possible reverse causality problem. We find...