A central claim in favor of decentralization is that it will improve access to public services, but few studies examine this question empirically. This paper explores the effects of decentralization on access to health and education in Colombia. We benefit from an original database that includes...

In this paper, we derive and estimate a New Economic Geography model for the Colombian departments.2 We first derive an econometric specification relating wages to a distance weighted sum of the volumes of economic activities of the surrounding locations. Them, we test our econometric...

During the last decade, conditional cash transfer programs have expanded in developingcountries as a way to increase school enrollment and deter youth from dropping out of school. However, despite evidence of these programs´ positive impact on school enrollment and attendance, little is known...

En el año 2007 se llevo a cabo el proyecto Construyendo Confianza y Capital Social para reducir barreras de exclusión", el cual se desarrolló en seis ciudades capitales latinoamericanas: Bogotá, D.C, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Lima, Montevideo y San José de Costa Rica. Este estudio se propuso...

Using up to nine different ways to represent a homogeneous technology, this paper proves explicit one to one identities between most of those different representations of a technology, outlining the homogeneity properties of each representation. These identities, which allow to shift from one...

Con el proceso de consolidación bancaria de los últimos años, el número de entidades financieras ha caído y su cuota de mercado ha aumentado. De acuerdo con la teoría estructural de la organización industrial, un incremento en la concentración de una industria eleva el poder de mercado...

Keynes contents in General Theory that the monetary market logic of the aggregate real wage in the monetary production economy conveys: (i) the determination of the average real wage rate, the level of employment, and the possibility of involuntary unemployment through the interaction of the...

Colombia is an interesting case study within emerging countries. Through 150 years of democratic tradition and seven decades of sound fiscal and monetary policies, the country has displayed institutional strength and economic growth, in spite of strong external shocks, rent- seeking by sectoral...

Using a unique combination of household and violence data sets and a duration analysis methodology, this paper estimates the effect that exposure to armed conflict has on school drop-out decisions of Colombian children between the ages of six and seventeen. After taking into account the possible...

We characterize entrepreneurship in developing economies through a case study for Colombia. We document self-employment and business ownership since the 1980s; while the relative size of these groups within the labor force is stable across time, they differ significantly in important observable...