Research

Health 

Do price regulations on birth control pills decrease fertility? (Job Market Paper)

In 2018, the Colombian government intervened in the pharmaceutical market by creating cap prices on high-cost birth control pills. Given the necessity of these drugs, the effects of price reductions are not always clear. Also, there is no evidence of whether the policy effectively increased access to contraception and reduced pregnancy rates. Therefore, this study aims to analyze fertility changes due to price caps on birth control pills. Using administrative claims from an insurer in the contributory regime, I found little evidence that price regulation affected fertility, even for the young ones. The results do not support the efficacy of the policy in achieving its goal.

Mass shootings and their effects on eating behavior 

During the last decade, mass shootings have become the center of attention due to the mental health effects they have on victims. Given the importance of understanding other possible impacts they may have on the population, not only on the direct victims but on those indirectly affected, this paper aims to understand the potential effects of mass shootings on consumer behavior in affected areas by analyzing changes in the purchase of food items such as sugary drinks, caffeine, and processed foods. Additionally, I examine the impact of mass shootings on the purchase of alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, and painkillers. 

Development

Has Colombian legislation affected domestic violence reports and health outcomes?

In Colombia, three out of ten women have been victims of domestic violence at some point in their lifetime. Specific laws have been created in the last 20 years to avoid underreporting of partner crime offenses and decrease domestic violence. This article aims to analyze the effect of the reporter and the femicide law on domestic violence reports. The former allowed any person who witnesses domestic violence to report it to the police, and the latter increased the years of jail for a person who kills a woman for being a woman. As a secondary goal, it studies the impact of the femicide law on self-reported health outcomes. I find evidence that the two laws helped increase reports to the police and had a modest but significant effect on better self-reported health outcomes. 

Changes in Time Allocation due to Unilateral Divorce, Evidence from Mexico (with Alejandro Sierra)

Unilateral divorce could impact how households allocate their time due to changes in bargaining power. This paper uses data from Mexico to analyze the impact of unilateral divorce on married couples. Using the exogenous variation by states in the unilateral divorce implementation, and data from the time allocation survey ENUT and the labor panel ENOE, we find evidence that married women decrease the time dedicated to caring for their kids. This effect is not driven by increasing the demand for domestic labor or having fewer children in the household. We complement the empirical analysis with a theoretical model that, under specific conditions, replicates the observed reduction in women’s caregiving time in response to changes in the divorce regime.

Agriculture/Food prices-related

What do we know about food inflation and its effects in Latin America? (with Metin Çakır and Julian Fernandez ) 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, food prices have been increasing at rates we did not anticipate in developing economies. South America has not been an exception; rather, the region has been among the most severely affected globally, with countries experiencing increases of more than 200%. This study analyzes what has driven food inflation in Latin American countries, particularly understanding which demand and supply factors affected food prices and their components. The paper also examines the heterogeneous response to shocks, such as climate change, oil, and monetary policies, across countries. We utilize food inflation rates by component groups provided by the central banks of Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico. As our main methodology, we employ Lag-Augmented Local Projection (LP), which enables us to obtain impulse response functions with less bias than alternative methods. Our findings vary by country, which suggests that pooling all countries in one analysis obscures the effects—a common approach in macroeconomic analyses.

Concentration in Food Retailing, Prices, and Inflation (with Metin Çakır ; Shawn Arita; Joseph C Cooper; Xiao Dong; and Rebecca Nemec )

This paper examines the extent to which the recent surge in food prices is associated with market concentration in a sample of urban Core-Based Statistical Areas in the United States. Using the National Establishment Time Series dataset, we estimate the effect of market concentration on price levels and changes in price levels, comparing the historical period to 2021, when food prices rose substantially in the wake of the  COVID-19  pandemic.  Our preliminary results show a positive and significant association between market concentration and price levels during the study period. Whereas we do not find any significant association between market concentration and changes in price levels in our sample CBSAs when comparing 2010-2020 to 2021. This study is the first attempt to evaluate the relationship between food retail concentration and price inflation using novel data merging and panel data methods. Additional analyses we intend to carry out will evaluate the price-HHI relationship at alternative, more geographically granular levels of consumer markets. 

Firm size and employment growth in food retailing (with Metin Çakır and Eliana Zeballos)