We estimate the causal effect of the Colombian land restitution program on access to microcredit for agriculture. We use the timing of the restitution as the source of identification in an event study approach. Using administrative data from the program and all formal credit transactions, we show a significant increase in access to agricultural microcredit. The effects are stronger two years after the restitution when individuals acquire full property rights.

La Política para la Reactivación y el Crecimiento Sostenible e Incluyente tiene por objetivo desarrollar capacidades en los hogares, el aparato productivo el marco institucional y el desarrollo digital para que, en el corto plazo, el país pueda retomar la ruta de desarrollo que estaba recorriendo cuando fue golpeado por el COVID-19 y que, en el largo plazo, transite hacia un crecimiento más sostenible e incluyente que además tenga la habilidad para responder adecuadamente a choques futuros de gran impacto.

Governments across the developing world rely on their armed forces for domestic policing operations. Advocates of these “mano dura” (iron fist) policies view them as necessary to control crime, while detractors claim they undermine human rights. We experimentally evaluate a military policing intervention in Cali, Colombia, the country’s third largest city and among its most violent. The intervention involved recurring, intensive military patrols targeting crime hot spots, randomly assigned at the city block level.

Con el objetivo de conseguir que la población de América Latina y el Caribe ahorre para su vejez, el BID puso en marcha el Laboratorio de Ahorro para el Retiro en Colombia, Chile, México y Perú, en 2016. Esta iniciativa busca soluciones innovadoras para fomentar el ahorro mediante intervenciones basadas en la economía del comportamiento y uso de nuevas tecnologías, con el fin de generar evidencia confiable a través de evaluaciones de impacto rigurosas. 
 

We investigate the impact of land dispossession of peasants on the origin of the civil conflict in Colombia. Using a matching-pair instrumental variable approach, we show that the historical dispossession of peasants’ lands by landlords that led to the rise of peasant grievances is associated with the presence of the rural guerrilla movement -The Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC)- during the first stage of the Colombian civil conflict (1974-1985).

In this paper, we estimate the effects of a labor market flexibilization policy that allowed part-time contributions to the social security system in Colombia, a country with high levels of informality. We evaluate the impact of the reform along various margins, with a special focus on the effects on formal employment since increasing formality was among the reform’s main goals.

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COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating effect on both lives and livelihoods in 2020. The arrival of effective vaccines can be a major game changer. However, vaccines are in short supply as of early 2021 and most of them are reserved for the advanced economies. We show that the global GDP loss of not inoculating all the countries, relative to a counterfactual of global vaccinations, is higher than the cost of manufacturing and distributing vaccines globally.

This paper examines the persistent effects of colonial legal institutions (or Real Audiencia) in Mexico. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, I find that households in regions exposed to stronger colonial courts exhibit higher historical and contemporary economic prosperity. In contrast to conventional wisdom, court records suggest that dispute resolution made property rights more secure for native populations and discouraged agrarian conflicts after Independence.