Working Papers
"Conflict, Social Protection, and Reparations," with Juliana Londoño-Vélez, in preparation for The Handbook on Social Protection, edited by Rema Hanna and Benjamin Olken
"Reparations as Development? Evidence from Victims of the Colombian Armed Conflict," with Juliana Londoño-Vélez and Christian Posso. Revision requested at American Economic Review
Abstract: We estimate the effects of reparations on victims’ well-being across the life cycle. We leverage variation from Colombia’s reparations program for victims of forced displacement, homicide, landmines, and other human rights violations in armed conflict. We focus on financial compensation, which consists of a one-off, lump-sum, non-means-tested, and unconditional payment of up to US$10,000 (PPP US$26,000). The transfer, worth threefold of victims’ annual household income, is highly progressive because most victims are poor. We exploit the staggered rollout of the compensations and their unanticipated receipt using event study approaches to identify causal effects up to four years later. We construct novel and comprehensive administrative panel microdata and estimate effects on work and living standards, health care utilization, and the next generation’s human capital. We find that reparations substantially improve victims’ living conditions, health, and human capital without meaningfully distorting their labor supply. First, reparations induce a slight shift of workers from high-risk and low-paying formal jobs. Some workers spend more time out of formal employment and find higher-paying jobs. Others invest the money in new businesses, making them more sustainable. Second, reparations improve victims’ living conditions, boosting consumption and homeownership. Third, reparations reduce emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and medical procedures, consistent with improved victims’ health. Fourth, victims invest the compensation in their children, raising their standardized test scores and postsecondary attendance. Despite their fiscal cost, reparations are cost-beneficial. We conclude that reparations substantially improve victims’ well-being and have transformative value in addition to their pursuit of transitional justice.
"Luck of the Draw: The Causal Effect of Physicians on Birth Outcomes," with Christian Posso, Estefania Saravia and Jorge Tamayo
Abstract: Identifying the effect of physicians' skills on health outcomes is a challenging task due to nonrandom sorting between physicians and hospitals. We overcome this challenge by exploiting a Colombian government program that randomly assigned 2,126 physicians to 618 small hospitals. We estimate the impact on the 256,806 children whose mothers received care in those hospitals during their pregnancy, using administrative data from the program, vital statistics records, and individual-level records from mandatory medical school exit exams. We find that more-skilled physicians improve birth outcomes: A one standard deviation increase in exams' scores decreases the probability of giving birth to an unhealthy baby by 6.31 percent. We present evidence that one potential underlying mechanism includes improving the targeting of care toward more vulnerable mothers.
Slides: NBER SI 2021 Children
Published and accepted work
Reparations for Victims: Lessons from Colombia with Juliana Londoño-Vélez and Christian Posso. AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023
Vocational Training for Disadvantaged Youth in Colombia: A Long-Term Follow-Up with Orazio Attanasio, Carlos Medina, and Costas Meghir. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Vol. 9, No. 2 (April 2017); Online Appendix
Selected work in progress
“Can Reparations Help Victims Rebuild Their Lives? Evidence from Colombia using Survey Data,” with Juliana Londoño-Vélez
"Measuring the Incidence and Reporting of Violence Against Women in Public Spaces," with Girija Borker, Samuel Likindikoki, and Ester Steven
"Gender Targeting and the Psychosocial and Economic Effects of Livelihood Programs in a Fragile Setting," with Lasse Brune, and Dean Karlan
"Social Protection Effectiveness and Conflict: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Yemen," with Nausheen Khan, Michael Keenan, and Sikandra Kurdi
"Healing the Gender Gap: The Impacts of Randomized first-job on Female physicians," with Christian Posso, Estefania Saravia and Jorge Tamayo