Seminarios CEDE

Con el propósito de fortalecer el pensamiento crítico y difundir avances investigativos, esta propuesta abre un espacio de discusión académica organizados por el Centro de Estudios sobre Desarrollo Económico (CEDE) de la Universidad de los Andes. Abiertos a investigadores/as, estudiantes y público general, estos encuentros promueven el intercambio de ideas en torno a temas clave como el desarrollo económico, la microeconomía, la macroeconomía y la historia económica.

En cada sesión se presentan investigaciones recientes, se discuten avances académicos y se generan debates sobre los desafíos económicos más relevantes para Colombia y el mundo.

Agosto
4 - Camila Galindo, Universidad de los Andes
13 - Fabio Sánchez, Universidad de los Andes
20 - Oskar Nupia, Universidad de los Andes
27 - Mateo Uribe, Universidad de los Andes

Septiembre
3 - Heather Royer
10 - Thiemo Fetzer
17 - Sarah Janzen

Octubre
8 - Todd Schoellman
15 - Manuel Fernández, Universidad de los Andes
22 - Laurent Bouton

Noviembre
19 - Nolan Pope

Ver los seminarios CEDE de más de 2 años

Activo

Seminario CEDE - Margarita Gáfaro

This paper examines the impact of Internet expansion on banking competition and credit access in rural Colombia. Using a staggered rollout of the National Fiber Optic Program from 2013 to 2016, we analyze the effects of broadband availability on public and private bank lending. We find that Internet connectivity reduced loan disbursements from the state-run Banco Agrario de Colombia (BAC) while increasing private bank lending, particularly for small enterprises. The shift was initially driven by reduced information frictions and later reinforced by new private bank entry. The findings suggest that Internet access facilitates competition and improves borrower outcomes by increasing access to better-matching credit products.

12:30 pm

Universidad de los Andes

Activo

Seminario CEDE - Luis A. Puch

In this paper we propose a theory to investigate the importance of investment-specific technical change (ISTC) in shaping the short run response of macroeconomic aggregates to energy price shocks. In absence of ISTC, aggregate energy efficiency in an economy (i.e, the amount of energy use per unit of capital) responds to changes in energy prices. Here we show that ISTC may be a substitute of energy efficiency: embodied technical change rises the productivity of capital and endogenously increases energy efficiency (i.e., the amount of energy use required per unit of quality-adjusted capital). We estimate the model on U.S. data for the period 1960-2022 using Bayesian estimation techniques, and we assess the relative importance of energy price and ISTC shocks. The estimated model offers an explanation to the softened response of the economy to oil price shocks in recent decades compared to that in the 70s: by increasing investment in the years of high ISTC growth, the economy was increasing its energy efficiency, shielding against the impact of energy price shocks.

12:30 pm

Universidad de los Andes

Activo

Seminario CEDE - Jessica Leight

Adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices that can reduce land degradation and buffer households vis-a-vis intensifying weather fluctuations is notably low in sub-Saharan Africa, and one underexplored constraint in a context of thin labor markets and restrictive gender norms is the ability to optimally allocate labor within a spousal unit. This randomized trial in rural Ethiopia explores the salience of this constraint in the context of a bundled intervention providing training and inputs to encourage uptake of fruit trees intercropped with home gardens, and fertilized with compost. Clusters were randomly assigned to a pure control arm or one of two intervention arms: in the first arm, the intervention was targeted to women alone while in the second arm it was targeted to couples, with both spouses also engaged in a joint planning exercise to optimize labor allocations. The findings suggest that the bundled intervention on average increased the probability of adoption of CSA by at least 50%. In general, these effects are symmetric across treatment arms, but for composting --- the most time- and strength-intensive practice --- the effects are significantly larger in the couples' arm for households identified as non-cooperative at baseline, suggesting that optimal intrahousehold allocation of labor may be a meaningful constraint for effective adoption in this subsample.

12:30 pm

Universidad de los Andes

Activo

Seminario CEDE - Santiago De La Cadena

A pesar de que los cierres de las escuelas son frecuentes y afectan de manera importante los resultados educativos de los niños, la evidencia respecto a cómo proteger el logro educativo de los niños en esos contextos es aún escasa. Este artículo explora el impacto de entregar alimentación escolar para consumo en casa como una alternativa para proteger el logro educativo de los niños cuando las escuelas están cerradas. Empleando la implementación del Programa de Alimentación Escolar para aprendizaje en casa (PAEC) en Colombia, que llegó al 75% de los niños del sector educativo durante el cierre general de escuelas causado por la pandemia del COVID-19, el artículo muestra que entregar alimentación escolar en casa durante el cierre de escuelas redujo la probabilidad de desertar del sistema educativo entre el 39-54% durante el año en que estuvo cerrada la escuela, y entre 13 y 26% un año después. Este efecto puede llegar a ser el doble del impacto que tiene la alimentación escolar regular cuando las escuelas están abiertas. Los efectos encontrados son mayores en preescolar y primaria, y para poblaciones vulnerables como los indígenas, las comunidades rurales, y los niños con discapacidad. EL PAEC también redujo en 11% la repitencia, pero no tuvo efectos significativos en los niños de extra-edad, reafirmando que como es usual en la literatura a pesar de que la alimentación escolar es una intervención efectiva para fomentar la permanencia escolar, sus impactos en otras variables clave del logro educativo son más modestos.

12:30 pm

Universidad de los Andes

Activo

Seminario CEDE - Mauricio Romero

Many eligible families fail to apply for social programs due to multiple frictions such as information constraints and application complexity. This study evaluates a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) testing interventions to increase take-up of the 25% reservation for disadvantaged children in private schools under India's Right to Education (RTE) Act. Conducted across urban and rural areas in Chhattisgarh, the experiment evaluates the effects of information provision and application assistance --- both independently and in combination. The design allows us to assess complementarities between interventions and heterogeneities across socioeconomic groups and geographic areas. Preliminary findings suggest that application assistance significantly increases take-up, while information provision alone has a more limited impact. There is no evidence of complementarities between the interventions. While treatment effects vary across areas, machine learning methods fail to accurately predict these effects out-of-sample.

12:30 pm

Universidad de los Andes

Activo

Seminario CEDE - Paul Andrés Rodríguez Lesmes

Terminations of health plans are common in managed care systems around the world. This paper examines how to reassign consumers to incumbent insurers after such terminations. We propose an equilibrium model of competition in which insurers can respond to the reassignment rules through their provider networks. The setting is Colombia where the largest health insurer was terminated by the government in December 2015 and where insurers compete mainly on provider network breadth. We find that random reassignment outperforms other reassignment rules in terms of consumer welfare, health care spending, and provider network breadth because it reduces market power. However, this policy is ineffective in reducing adverse selection due to slight increases in switching rates.

12:30 pm

Universidad de los Andes

Activo

Seminario CEDE - Steven Brownstone

Agricultural mechanization plays an important role in countries productivity growth. Through labor markets, mechanizations impacts extend beyond mechanizing farmers themselves. This study presents results from a randomized experiment that studies the impact of reducing farmer barriers to mechanization at the village level. By combining government farmer training infrastructure with rentals, the intervention tripled the uptake of a technology that replaced manual rice transplanting. For farmers, labor costs decreased with no change in yields or other expenses, leading to a 6% increase in profits. At the labor market level, mechanization led to a 7% decrease in days of labor demanded for transplanting, which translated to a 6% decrease in piece-rate transplanting wages. Beyond the first-order distributional impacts, the wage effects reduce the relative profitability of further mechanization. This is illustrated in a quantitative model calibrated to the experimental results. The model shows how the same reduction in the fixed cost of adopting mechanization under a shallower labor supply curve results in larger increases in productivity with more income for workers. The study shows how labor market frictions shape how mechanization impacts workers, farmers, and economies.

12:30 pm

Universidad de los Andes

Activo

Seminario CEDE - Socorro Martinez

Effective government leadership demands skills in planning, budgeting, and personnel management, areas where business experience may be valuable. Business owners could apply their management skills in public administration to optimize resources, enhance public service delivery, or promote private sector growth. However, these skills may not translate to the public sector, where different rules prevail, and a lack of political expertise could ultimately undermine the delivery of public services. This paper studies the impact of electing business owners as mayors in Brazilian municipalities. By leveraging a national business registry from the Brazilian Federal Revenue Agency that includes information on the owners, merged with candidates data from the Electoral High Court, I identify business candidates. Using a regression discontinuity design for close elections, I find that electing a business mayor reduces municipal revenue by 7.5% and spending by 8%. Evidence suggests that the reduction in revenue may be due to challenges in accessing intergovernmental transfers, indicating that managerial experience may come at the expense of political skills. Despite the decrease in spending, business mayors do not negatively affect public service delivery or local economic activity. I find no impact on health outcomes and a small but positive effect on private sector employment. These results indicate improvement in cost-effectiveness by achieving equivalent service levels with fewer resources. I examine management as a driver of increased effectiveness and find that business mayors do not improve personnel management outcomes, suggesting a limited ability to transfer or adapt their management experience to the public sector.

12:30 pm

Universidad de los Andes

Activo

Seminario CEDE - Vinicius Cicero

This paper investigates the impact of resource booms on export value, concentration, composition, and sophistication in resource-rich developing economies. Using a shift-share instrument that leverages heterogeneous exposure to Chinese demand after Chinas 2001 WTO accession and the ex-ante composition of export baskets, I examine the causal effects on export baskets and sectoral employment of Brazilian local economies. The findings reveal increased export values and concentration in more exposed regions, with a shift from resource-based manufactures to primary products and declining export sophistication. Despite wage growth in primary and service sectors, primary employment remained stable while manufacturing jobs contracted, resembling a Dutch disease pattern. These results underscore the trade-offs of resource booms, where short-term gains in export value and sectoral wages may be offset by long-term development challenges. Given Brazils similarities to other commodity exporters, these findings may indicate similar trends emerging across developing economies.

12:30 pm

Universidad de los Andes