Journal Articles
“Ideology and Riffles: On the agrarian origins of civil conflict in Colombia”, World Development, Vol. 173, 2024 (with Fabio Sanchez).
"Population displacement and Urban Conflict: Global Evidence from more than 3300 flood events", Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 168, 2022 (with David Castells-Quintana and Thomas McDermott).
"Adaptation to climate change: A review through a development economic lens", World Development, Vol. 104, 2018 (with David Castells-Quintana and Thomas McDermott).
"Geography, Institutions and Development: A Review of the long-run impacts of climate change", Climate and Development, Issue 5, Vol. 8, 2016 (with David Castells-Quintana and Thomas McDermott).
"La caja de ahorros: An approximation to the savings patterns in Bogotá, 1848-1864" Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la República, N° 67, 2012.
"Land Conflicts, Property Rights and the Rise of the Export Economy in Colombia, 1850–1925" with Fabio Sánchez and Antonella Fazio, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 70, N° 2, June, 2010.
Books
Wages, Public Policy and Living Standards in Bogotá 1900-1950, (Salarios, Vida Cotidiana y Condiciones de Vida en Bogotá 1900-1950) Uniandes Publisher, 2011.
Chapters in Books
"Participación política de las mujeres en el posconflicto" with Silvia Delgado (U.Rosario), Ángela Fonseca (U. Javeriana) y Paola Silva (MALD Fletcher School, Tufts University) in Después de acuerdo, ¿Cómo va la paz en Colombia?, Uniandes, 2023.
"The Politics of the Global Gender Agenda: A Pathway to empowerment" in Handbook of the Politics of International Development, edit. Melissa Deciancio, Diana Tusie, Pablo Demiña, E-Elgar Editors, 2022.
“Democratization and Development” in Poverty and Development: Into the 21st century, with David Potter and Alan Thomas, edit. Tim Allen and Alan Thomas, Oxford University Press, 2021.
"The role of Climate in development", The Economics of Climate-Resilient Development with David Castells and Thomas McDermott, edit. Sam Famkhauser and Thomas McDermott, Elgar Editors, 2016, pp.15-32.
"Coping with climate risk: the options", The Economics of Climate-Resilient Development with David Castells and Thomas McDermott, edit. Sam Famkhauser and Thomas McDermott, Elgar Editors, 2016, pp.53-76.
"Women Rising: Dynamics of the Education System and the Labour Market in Colombia, 1900-2000" with Diana Quintero, Gender inequalities and development in Latin America during the twentieth century, edit. Maria Camou, Rosemary Thorp and Silvana Maubrigades, Ashgate publisher, 2016, pp. 161-190.
"Tierra y Mujer: elementos para la construcción de una paz estable y duradera" with Margarita Varón, Juan Carlos Muñoz (EAFIT) y Angela Penagos (Uniandes), in A los 5 años del acuerdo, ¿Cómo va la paz en Colombia?, Uniandes, Forthcoming.
"Conflictos de tierras, Derechos de Propiedad y el surgimiento de la economía exportadora en el siglo XIX en Colombia", with Fabio Sánchez and Antonella Fazio, La Economía Colombiana en el siglo XIX, Fondo de Cultura Económica y Banco de la República, 2010.
Working Papers
“Buying off the Revolution: Evidence from the Colombian National Peasant Movement, 1957-1985”
(Awarded Best Paper on Development Economics, 9th Bolivian Conference on Development Economics).
This paper studies the relationship between democratic reforms and redistribution during periods of revolutionary threat. Far from causing an increase in broad redistribution (e.g. social spending), I show that the state organization of a social movement that extends the political rights of the threatening group can be used to identify rebel leaders and provide private goods to them, in return for preventing social unrest and demobilizing their supporters. I study the context of the organization by the state of the most important social movement in Colombian history -the National Peasant Movement (ANUC)- over a period of almost three decades (1957-1985), in which the threat of a Communist Revolution was perennial and throughout which the government gave ANUC direct political participation at the local level in the executive branch and economic support. Using three newly digitized data sets of Colombian municipalities, I find that rather than leading to broad redistribution to the benefit of the peasantry, the reform instead led to an increase in targeted redistribution in terms of public jobs and lands. In particular, by matching the names of the peasant leaders to the beneficiaries of the land reform, evidence suggests that peasant leaders disproportionately benefited from land reform, especially in municipalities where the communist threat was higher. Finally, I find suggestive evidence that buying off the rebel leaders was an effective counter-revolutionary strategy as it led to fewer revolutionary activities after the support of ANUC was terminated (1972-1985).
This paper estimates the effect of land property rights on illicit crop cultivation under weak institutions. We study Formalizar para Sustituir (FxS), a Colombian program that allocated land titles to farmers in coca-producing areas as part of the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC. Matching administrative titling records to annual high-resolution satellite imagery of coca fields at the 1 km × 1 km grid level, we compare titled grids to neighboring non-titled grids over 2011–2021 using a difference-in-differences design. Land titling reduces coca cultivation by 42–64% immediately, but the effect fades within two years. In the short term, titled households increase credit demand and investment in productive activities, and report incomes above what coca farming generates. These changes are consistent with property rights operating through the channels theory predicts, yet they are insufficient to sustain substitution on their own. The FxS×Placa-Huella interaction coefficient ( ˆ ψ) implies an additional sustained reduction of 33–38% relative to the pre-treatment coca mean in grids that combine land titling with tertiary road construction, suggesting that connectivity to local markets is the binding constraint for long-run transition away from illicit crops. Roads alone, by contrast, are associated with more coca — a result consistent with prior evidence that infrastructure without institutional preconditions benefits illegal as much as legal activity.
"Demand-Driven Housing Subsidies, Household Welfare and Labor Markets: Causal Evidence from Colombia’s Mi Casa Ya," with Fabio Sanchez and Jorge Caputo., Documento CEDE, 2026-27.
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.
“Roads or Schools? Political Budget Cycles with different types of voters”, MPRA Paper, #50529, 2013.
Using a new Colombian data set (1830-2000), I analyse how changes in the electoral legislation about the characteristics of voters (in terms of education and income levels) have affected fiscal policy in election years. In line with economic theory, I show that after the male universal suffrage law was reformed in 1936 the composition of the expenditure shifted towards social spending (like education, health, and welfare benefits) but there was a decrease in spending on infrastructure and investment projects (like roads). Consistent with the literature, I also find: 1. The timing and the size of the political budget cycles changed after 1936 and 2. After 1936 there was a shift in the funding mechanisms from indirect tax revenues to more debt.
"Financiación no Bancaria y Casas de Agroinsumos en Colombia," Documento CEDE 56, 2021 (Nicolás de Roux, Natalia Moreno, Tomás Rodriguez).
Agro-input dealers are an important actor in the agricultural value chain of Colombia but there are few studies about them. This paper aims to fill this gap and emphasises the sales with multiple payment instalments, an important source of non-financial financing these dealers provide. The analysis is based on information from surveys to agro-input dealers and to small agricultural producers. It also uses administrative and receipt data from five dealers. These are the main findings of the study: 1) sales of agro-inputs with multiple payment instalments are frequent. 2) Payments are frequently late, which implies a high financial cost. 3) The main determinant of the timing of the payments is the duration of the commercial relationship between the agro-input dealer and the client. 4) The five agro-input dealers analyzed in detail do not charge different prices depending on the timing of the payments. In other words, there is no evidence that the agro-input dealers charge higher prices when they sell with multiple payment instalments. 5) The calibration of an economic model allows for estimating the prices of the agro-inputs that the dealers would charge if they did not have to assume the cost of the late payments. Without this cost, the model implies a price reduction of between 1 % and 2 %. These results suggest that the high prices of agro-inputs are in part due to the risk that the agro-input dealers assume when they sell with multiple payment instalments.
"With a little help from my friends: Debt Renegotiation and Climate Change", Documento CEDE 54, 2021 (Juan Camilo Cárdenas, Fernando Jaramillo, Diana León, Mauricio Rodriguez y Hernando Zuleta) Media: Foco Económico
The economic crisis from the Covid-19 pandemic has generated a fall in tax revenues and an increase in the need for public spending in most economies worldwide. This situation has led to a substantial increase in sovereign debt levels and has dramatically reduced the fiscal space of governments. For upper- middle-income countries (UMICs), current access to financing is limited, and this can potentially limit the space for climate action in the short and medium run. However, delaying climate action can generate a negative signal on fiscal sustainability due to the physical and transition risks of climate change. Unsustainable production practices will result in a deterioration of the productive capacity of natural assets reducing potential tax income. Simultaneously there will be a stronger need for public spending to face the future damages associated with greenhouse gases emissions. Therefore, to address the current crisis, we need an integrated approach that considers the climate crisis a challenge with a high degree of urgency. For this approach to be feasible, sufficient international climate finance needs to be available, and it should help to steer relief and recovery efforts in a direction in which these are also compatible with climate targets. In this document, we propose a sovereign debt negotiation scheme in which the conditions of the debt depending on the climate policies undertaken by the debtor countries. Likewise, we point out that the feasibility of beneficial agreements for debtors and the implementation of good climate policies depend positively on the size of the debt and each country's potential to affect the current trend of climate change. For these reasons, the formation of coalitions of debtor countries can be a key factor for debt relief and the implementation of climate policies.
Work in Progress
"Cash Transfers and Violence against Women in Quarantine: Evidence from Bogota, Colombia".
"An Impact Evaluation of a Housing Program with a Gender Perspective" with Fabio Sanchez.
"Poverty Traps and Housing: Evidence from Colombia" with Fabio Sanchez.
“Sharing the gains from trade: Land Allocations after a large Trade Shock, The Case of the Panama Canal” with Felipe Carozzi.
"The Dark Net and the Market of Cocaine" with Stephen Machin and Carlos Ramirez.
"On the origins of Inequality in Colombia".
"Women Economic Empowerment and Political Representation in Colombia".
“Free Slaves and Social Mobility in the Long Run: Evidence from Sierra Leone” with Leonard Wantchenkon.
"The Repeated History: Economic and Political Cycles in Colombia during the 19th century" with Juan Carlos Echeverry.