Documentos CEDE

We examine the relationship between inequality and state capacity, measured with tax collection. Contrary to traditional models that emphasize the redistributive role of taxation, we focus on its role in providing public goods that help develop markets, increasing productivity (e.g. enforcement of property rights, coordination, roads, electricity). We build a simple model of public good provision where landowners decide whether or not to comply with property taxes taking into account: 1) that government expenditure increases property values, and 2) their expectation of the punishment when evading taxes. We validate the model empirically, using data from Colombian municipalities between 1923 and 1960, in two ways. First, we use detailed land values’ data from cadastres available for a subsample of municipalities and the model’s structure to predict tax revenues and compare them with actual revenues. Second, we provide empirical evidence supporting the model’s main prediction: land concentration is positively correlated with tax revenues per capita, a relationship that is robust to controlling for potential sources of omitted variable bias. Two additional empirical findings further support the mechanisms underlying the model: the positive relationship is stronger in places with greater potential gains from market development, and land concentration reduces the average fiscal cost of collecting one peso of revenue.

This paper estimates the causal effect of pretrial detention on subsequent criminal behavior using linked police and judicial administrative records from Bogotá, Colombia, for the period 2008–2018. To address selection into pretrial detention, we exploit the quasi-random assignment of cases to judges who differ in their propensity to detain individuals pretrial. Pretrial detention reduces the probability of rearrest by 9 percentage points and the probability of new charges by 5.4 percentage points, corresponding to reductions of approximately 32 percent and 35 percent relative to the respective baseline means. The estimated reductions in recidivism are concentrated among property crime defendants and repeat offenders. The estimated effects are also larger among defendants with longer detention spells, suggesting that pretrial detention may increase the salience of punishment or disrupt criminal routines and networks. These findings contrast with much of the existing U.S. evidence, which typically finds no net effect on crime.

Este artículo presenta un proceso de investigación orientado a la co-construcción de una estrategia pedagógica para el fortalecimiento cultural con jóvenes indígenas del pueblo Inga en la Institución Etnoeducativa Bilingüe Rural Atún Ñambí de Villagarzón, Putumayo. El estudio se desarrolló mediante un enfoque de Investigación Acción Participativa (IAP) articulado con métodos basados en las artes. Durante este proceso, se diseñó de manera colaborativa una estrategia pedagógica materializada en el juego de mesa “Samai, el juego del espíritu Inga”, inspirado en la simbología Inga como un dispositivo para promover el reconocimiento de la identidad cultural de los y las jóvenes. Se evidenció que los procesos de identificación cultural están estrechamente vinculados con las condiciones materiales y sociales que configuran la vida en los territorios marcadas por profundas desigualdades estructurales, así como por dinámicas educativas para la transmisión de saberes. En consecuencia, para hablar del fortalecimiento de la cultura indígena en contextos educativos es indispensable cuestionar las desigualdades estructurales que enfrentan los pueblos. Se concluye que el fortalecimiento cultural requiere de transformaciones en las prácticas educativas y en los métodos pedagógicos para este fortalecimiento. También abordar ampliamente las condiciones estructurales que inciden en las trayectorias de vida de las juventudes indígenas.

Colombia faces a substantial housing deficit and unequal access to basic public services, both in quantity and quality. In 2021, 31% of households were experiencing housing deficits, a condition that disproportionately affects vulnerable households and women. Mi Casa Ya (MCY) is Colombia’s flagship demand-side housing subsidy program, designed to reduce housing deficits by facilitating access to urban social housing for low-income households. This study presents a causal evaluation of the impact of MCY on household welfare, including housing conditions, access to public services, residential safety, labor market outcomes, income, poverty, and vulnerability. Using administrative records and household survey data for applicants, beneficiaries, and non-beneficiaries, the results show that MCY reduces barriers to homeownership and contributes to significant reductions in both quantitative and qualitative housing deficits. Beneficiaries also gain access to more formal housing conditions, improved public services, and safer residential environments. The program improves labor market outcomes, including employment, earnings, and formality, with particularly strong benefits for women. In addition, MCY reduces dependence on other government assistance programs, increases household expenditure, improves access to durable goods and financial products, and lowers the likelihood of poverty and vulnerability. A cost-benefit analysis confirms that the program generates substantial positive private and social returns.

I decompose the canonical Difference-in-differences (DiD) estimator in presence of spillovers into a weighted average of 2×2 estimators that compare treated and untreated units across different levels of exposure to treatment. Identifying the ATT requires strong homogeneity conditions: that spillover magnitudes and exposure probabilities are both identical across treatment status, conditions unlikely to hold in observational studies. While a common response is to control for researcher-proposed interference structures, such estimators induce a selection bias if misspecified, a serious concern given the complex and unknown nature of interference. I propose instead spill-imputation, which identifies individual treatment and spillover effects under a unit-level parallel trends assumption —weaker than correct specification of the interference structure— and recovers spillover heterogeneity ex-post, in a data-driven way. Monte Carlo simulations show deviations of up to 31.2% for the parametric DiD against at most 0.25% for spill-imputation, with standard errors 42% smaller, reflecting greater estimation efficiency. An application to road paving in Mexico finds positive spillover effects of 19.5% on nearby unpaved plots’ property values, and no heterogeneous effects along the distance to the paved street.

Before 1983, Colombia maintained a system of multiple minimum wages that varied by municipality. In 1984, this system was replaced by a single nationwide minimum wage of US$3.68 per day. This paper exploits the unexpected 5.71 percentage point increase in the real minimum wage for low-wage municipalities and the differential exposure of blue-collar versus white-collar workers to understand the effect of the unification on formal employment. Using repeated annual cross-sectional data from 1974 to 1991 in the manufacturing sector and a difference-in-differences approach, I find that the minimum wage unification led to a 10% decrease in the blue-collar/whitecollar employment ratio in the second year, rising to 13.8% five years after the reform. I also find that plants in low-wage municipalities, where the real wage increase was larger, suffered an 11.3% decrease in total employment. Together, these results suggest that the increase in the minimum wage caused by the unification negatively affected the level of formal employment in the manufacturing sector in Colombia, especially in municipalities where the adjustment was higher. Finally, I present an oligopolistic partial equilibrium model that supports these findings, highlighting that employment effects in the formal sector may be larger than in the overall economy due to the absorbing role of the informal sector.