Documentos CEDE
Accede a las publicaciones que reúnen trabajos de profesores/as e investigadores/as de la Facultad de Economía, basados en información del Centro de Datos CEDE. Presentan análisis económicos y resultados preliminares que aportan evidencia y abren discusiones académicas sobre temas relevantes para el país.
Documento CEDE 2024-16
JEL: D11, D60, D62, D70
This article presents a theory of lifetime welfare, considering the corresponding cycles, trend, and span. The model suggests that economic agents should focus more on improving, smoothing, and stabilizing the welfare trend of individuals, than on improving, smoothing, and stabilizing their consumption and income, since they are not the same. Given that private and public decisions can generate internalities and externalities, and thus, inefficiencies, these results can justify individual, social, and government interventions, for example in lifestyle, and the education, health, pension, and insurance markets. It is argued that this approach can be a complement to the worldwide efforts to improve the coverage and sustainability of the health and pension systems; help explain the so-called Easterlin paradox, and contribute to the wellness set point debate in psychology.
16-05-2024
Documento CEDE 2024-15
JEL: D13, J16, J22, Q54
This paper is the first to estimate the causal effect of extreme temperatures on time reallocation from a gender perspective. To this end, I exploit exogenous variation in temperature over 12 years within Colombian municipalities. I find that men increase the time allocated to childcare by around 13.4% in the presence of children ages 0 to 5, and by 8% in the presence of children ages 6 to 11 when exposed to heat waves. Meanwhile, women’s time is unresponsive to extreme temperatures. The results suggest that men reallocate time from paid labor to childcare when exposed to extreme heat since fatherhood is leisure-based while motherhood is still deeply linked to routine care. Given that recreational activities are not a substitute for routine care, the increase in men’s childcare hours does not reduce women’s unpaid work load.
15-05-2024
Documento CEDE 2024-14
JEL: J13, J16, J22, J46
This study analyzes the labor supply behavior of female Uber driver-partners in Bogota, Colombia, in response to the 2017 teacher’s strike. Using the Triple Differences approach, I compare men’s and women’s time worked and payment before and during the strike. I also compare the results based on their experience, and I find that the driver’s expertise significantly determined the extent of the strike’s effect. During the strike, both general and experienced female drivers worked 10.68 and 17.69 minutes more than men, respectively. The demographics of female Uber drivers suggest that the primary mechanisms behind the impact could have been the low dynamic ride prices and the change in their relative cost of time due to the teachers’ strike rather than increased childcare responsibilities. I use the concept of loss aversion and the income-targeting model to suggest that with the experience, female drivers tend to set a target income and are more averse than men to achieving outcomes below that benchmark. Thus, due to the strike’s negative effect on their income, they took advantage of the flexibility offered by Uber to soften the strike’s impact by working more between 4 a.m. and 10 a.m.
14-05-2024
Documento CEDE 2024-13
JEL: N36, N56, N96, O13
In this article, the economic and sociopolitical characteristics of the indigenous groups that inhabited the territory of present-day Colombia before Spanish colonization are explored, as well as the geography of the regions in which they coexisted or settled. It is argued that the geographical features of the territory were associated with the productive structure of precolonial indigenous societies. In consequence, this structure influenced the social and political organization of these societies. It is shown that the suitability of the territory for cultivating high-calorie foods, such as potatoes, is positively correlated with the level of sociopolitical complexity of indigenous societies. Thus, the Muisca civilization -one of the most complex and specialized at the arrival of the colonizersthrived in the cundiboyacense highlands leveraged by the cultivation and storage of potatoes. On the other hand, maize and cassava were more common in regions inhabited by hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies, although they were also important crops for the initial settlements, demographic growth, and expansion of populations inland. From the 16th century onwards, the level of economic and sociopolitical complexity achieved by the different indigenous groups would exert a decisive influence on the interaction of these groups with European colonizers.
13-04-2024
Documento CEDE 2024-12
JEL: E31, E71, F31, G41
We estimate the causal effects of a shift in the expected future exchange rate of a local currency against the US dollar on a representative sample of firms in an open economy. We survey a nationally representative sample of firms and provide the one-year-ahead nominal exchange rate forecast published by the local central bank to a random sub-sample of firm managers. The treatment is effective in shifting exchange rate and inflation expectations and perceptions. These effects are persistent and larger for non-exporting firms. Linking survey responses with administrative census data, we find that the treatment affects the dynamics of export and import quantities and prices at the firm level, with differential effects for exports to destination countries that use the US dollar as their currency. We instrument exchange rate expectations with the variation induced by the treatment and estimate a positive elasticity of a future expected depreciation in import expenditures.
12-04-2024
Documento CEDE 2024-11
JEL: D73, D74, H71, N46, P48
We study the fiscal and political consequences of state modernization in the Spanish colonial empire in Latin America. We focus on the introduction of a new corps of provincial governors called intendants in the late 18th century. Leveraging the staggered adoption of the reform and administrative fiscal microdata, we show that the intendancy system sizably increased Crown revenue by strengthening state presence in the periphery and disrupting local elite capture. Politically, the reform reduced rebellions by previously exploited indigenous peoples. However, naming patterns reveal that the intendants heightened anti-Spanish sentiment among Creole elites, plausibly contributing to the nascent independence movement.
11-04-2024
