We document manipulation of a targeting system which used a poverty index score to determine eligibility for social welfare programs in Colombia, including health insurance. We show strategic behavior in the timing of the household interviews around local elections, and direct manipulation when...

We examine whether the Colombian government, when instituting and expanding social programs in the early nineties, inadvertently created incentives for people to become informal. We use data from repeated cross-sections of the Colombian Household Survey for periods before and after...

Following Hsieh and Klenow (2009), this paper studies productivity dispersions in Colombian industrial establishments using the Colombian Annual Manufacturing Survey (AMS) from 1982 to 1998. The United States is used as a benchmark to estimate the reallocation of capital and labor to equalize...

This paper estimates the effect of enrollment in a large scale anti-poverty program in Colombia, Familias en Acción (FA), on intent to vote, turnout and electoral choice. For identification we use discontinuities in program eligibility and variation in program enrollment across voting booths....

This paper estimates the effect of enrollment in a large scale anti-poverty program in Colombia, Familias en Accion, on intent to vote, turnout and electoral choice. For identification the analysis uses discontinuities in program eligibility and variation in program enrollment across voting...

Following Hsieh and Klenow (2009), this paper studies productivity dispersions in Colombian industrial establishments using the Colombian Annual Manufacturing Survey (AMS) from 1982 to 1998. The United States is used as a benchmark to estimate the reallocation of capital and labor to equalize...

We document how manipulation of a targeting system for social welfare programs evolves over time. First, there was strategic behavior of some local politicians in the timing of the household interviews around local elections. Then, there was corrupt behavior with the sudden emergence of a sharp...

This paper examines whether the Colombian government's expansion of social programs in the early 1990s, particularly the publicly provided health insurance, discouraged formal employment. Using household survey data and variation across municipalities in the onset of interviews for the SISBEN,...

En el estudio se identificaron los principales problemas que Colombia afronta para lograr un desarrollo económico consolidado y se sugirieron recomendaciones de política pública de corto, mediano y largo plazo para superarlos. Los cinco elementos en los cuales se basó el análisis fueron:...