This paper examines the effects of mineral extraction on human capital formation in Colombia, a country rich in natural resources but struggling with low college attendance, high youth unemployment, and high informality in the labor market. Leveraging the allocation of natural resources as a...

This paper analyzes extractive industries in Colombia and their connections to other economic activities in the country. We use detailed social security data on all formal employees to create an industry-relatedness measure using labor flows between industries. Drawing on the vast network...

Abstract The new millennium brought with it a new challenge. Students reaching higher education were not only greater in number, they were also less prepared than their predecessors. This caused a sharp deterioration in the quality of the entire higher education system, which in turn affected...

It is unclear whether public sector teachers are under or overpaid relative to other occupations due to lack of knowledge about teachers' outside labor market options and other unobserved attributes related to compensation. We estimate causal labor market returns to novice public teachers in...