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 2023-38
JEL: R000, K140, K400
This article examines the impact of the complex environment in Medellín, a city with 2.5 million inhabitants, on local small and medium-sized enterprises (PYMEs), where formal and informal economic activities coexist alongside legal and illegal actors. Despite outnumbering large enterprises, PYMEs operate on a smaller scale and exhibit more informal organizational characteristics, being less prominent in the public sphere. The need for collective responses to violence is crucial for these businesses, but organizing joint actions can be challenging. Drawing on an analysis of oficial documents, academic literature, field visits, and 39 interviews, we develop a three-part typology of PYME responses to violent actors: acquiescence, evasion, and mitigation. The study suggests that the majority of Medellín's PYMEs have adapted to the complexities of legality, illegality, formality, and violence, employing strategies such as acquiescence, evasion, and mitigation in response to violent actors. It is emphasized that while cooperation with illegal actors may ensure short-term viability, it poses long-term challenges for community empowerment, institutional strengthening, and inclusive economic development. Ultimately, the article suggests that some PYME strategies are more effective than others for survival and growth in violent environments.
08-12-2023
Documento CEDE 2023-37
JEL: I22, I24, I25, I26, J24, J46, O12
In Latin America and the Caribbean, crime is a persistent and costly phenomenon involving young men, both as victims and perpetrators. Why do young people in the region become involved in criminal activities? In Latin America, not only are the potential profits from crime high, but the context of inequality, social immobility and limited opportunities make legal opportunities seem a distant reality for many young people. In this context, in 2014 the Ser Pilo Paga program was introduced in Colombia. The program awarded around 10,000 scholarships annually between 2014 and 2018 for low-income and high academic performance students. How does the introduction of a program that increased the possibility of obtaining higher education for a group of high-performing, low-income youth in Colombia affect their likelihood of involvement in crime? In this paper we use the Discontinuous Regression methodology, which exploits a change in the probability of accessing higher education according to the eligibility conditions for the Ser Pilo Paga program. My results are consistent with a lower participation in criminal activities when entering higher education, although some of these results are not significant.
07-12-2023
Documento CEDE 2023-36
JEL: P16, P48
This document describes the structure, content, and construction process of the data repository entitled ”A historical characterization of political parties in Colombia: 1958-2022”. In it, all political parties, movements, and coalitions have competed in elections for mayors, municipal councilors, assembly deputies, governors, lower house representatives, senators, and presidents in Colombia for which there are records are classified into five dimensions: their ideology, the identity groups they represent, their traditionality, their degree of nationalization, and longevity. We also provide a collection of primary and secondary sources that contain additional information on the political groupings studied.
16-11-2023
Documento CEDE 2023-35
JEL: F22, G21, O15, O16
I investigate how the formal credit market equilibrium is affected by a migration shock in the receiving country, specifically focusing on the dynamics of formal credit in Colombian municipalities caused by the Venezuelan migration. To isolate exogenous variations in migration flows, I use two identification strategies: a Bartik-type instrument and a Differences-in-Differences model. The results reveal that the value of the credit portfolio in the receiving municipalities decreased due to the arrival of Venezuelans. A one-standard-deviation increase in predicted flows decreased the total value of disbursements by 3.2 percentage points. Additionally, in high-migration municipalities, the credit portfolio decreased by 7.6 percentage points on average after the intensification of the migration shock in mid-2015. I explore two mechanisms by which migration affects credit market equilibrium: the effect of risk perception and uncertainty on the effective risk level of the credit portfolio, and the effect of a shock to migrant demand from an amnesty program granted in 2018.
25-10-2023
Documento CEDE 2023-34
JEL: J12, J16, O13, O18
The global prevalence of violence against women makes characterizing the environments that affect the likelihood of being a victim essential for the design of policies that seek to eradicate this behavior. This research examines the impact of improved access to electricity on domestic violence against women in Colombia. By leveraging the introduction of electrical substations from 2011 to 2019 as a source of external variation leading to improved electricity access, I find that this improved access is associated with higher rates of reported cases of domestic violence, intimate partner violence, and violence against girls and adolescents to Medicina Legal. Moreover, I provide evidence supporting the notion that this rise can be attributed to an increased likelihood of women reporting such incidents, rather than an escalation in gender-based violence, overall violence levels, or state presence. Additionally, utilizing individual-level data spanning from 2005 to 2010, I offer suggestive evidence in support of increased female empowerment as a potential underlying mechanism for these findings.
24-10-2023
Documento CEDE 2023-33
JEL: C14, C46, C52
This paper introduces a new estimator for continuity-based Regression Discontinuity (RD) designs named the estimated Oracle Local Polynomial Estimator (OLPE). The OLPE is a weighted average of a collection of local polynomial estimators, each of which is characterized by a unique bandwidth sequence, polynomial order, and kernel weighting schemes, and whose weights are chosen to minimize the Mean-Squared Error (MSE) of the combination. This procedure yields a new consistent estimator of the target causal effect exhibiting lower bias and/or variance than its components. The precision gains stem from two factors. First, the method allocates more weight to estimators with lower asymptotic mean squared error, allowing it to select the specifications that are best suited to the specific estimation problem. Second, even if the individual estimators are not optimal, averaging mechanically leads to bias reduction and variance shrinkage. Although the OLPE weights are unknown, an “estimated” OLPE can be constructed by replacing unobserved MSE-optimal weights with those derived from a consistent estimator. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that the estimated OLPE can significantly enhance precision compared to conventional local polynomial methods, even in small sample sizes. The estimated OLPE remains consistent and asymptotically normal without imposing additional assumptions beyond those required for local polynomial estimators. Moreover, this approach applies to sharp, fuzzy, and kink RD designs, with or without covariates.
23-10-2023
