Research

Working Papers



This paper analyzes the relationship between temperature,  mortality,  and adaptation opportunities in a tropical country. Such countries host almost 40% of the world's population and face inherently different environmental, demographic, and socioeconomic conditions than their counterparts in temperate areas. Using detailed data from all Colombian municipalities, I show that anomalously hot or cold days increase mortality even at narrow temperature ranges, which are characteristic of the tropics. An additional day with a mean temperature above 27C (80.6F) increases mortality rates by approximately 0.24 deaths per 100,000, equivalent to 0.7% of monthly death rates. Unlike temperate locations, I find that deaths attributed to infectious diseases and respiratory illnesses drive this relationship in the hot part of the distribution, mainly affecting children aged 0-9. These findings uncover new factors and populations at risk and imply that the average person who dies after a hot temperature shock loses approximately 30 years of life. I also provide evidence that access to health care and quality of services could mediate between temperature and mortality.

The figure on the left compares Colombian estimates to those in Barreca. et. al (2016) and Cohen and Dechezleprêtre (2017).


This paper studies the relationship between temperature and health services usage. Using detailed information on four morbidity outcomes for over 1000 Colombian municipalities, I find that hospitalization rates monotonically increase with temperature. Exchanging a day in the reference bin 23-25C for a single day above 27C increases hospitalization cases by 29.6 per 100,000, equivalent to 0.86% of the average annual hospitalization rate, whereas an additional day below 17C leads to a decrease of 21.7 hospitalizations per 100,000 (0.63%). Infectious diseases and pregnancy-related and maternal care mainly explain these results. Using observational data on how Colombia's temperature distribution has changed over time, I link estimates from variations in weather to the potential costs of climate change. Assuming temperatures will continue to rise in upcoming years as has been recently observed, and that no further adaptation measures are undertaken, I estimate that the shift in the temperature distribution results in 1,161.3 additional hospitalizations per 100,000 inhabitants per year (33.6% of the average annual rate of 3458.87). These results suggest an important increase in demand for health services as temperatures continue to rise, but they also shed light on the importance on access to mitigate the adverse effects.

This paper analyzes the environmental effects of an adaptation policy intended to protect farmers from extreme weather events. We use the case of the Colombian coffee sector, which was severely affected by ENSO-La Niña extreme rainfall events and subsequent pest-proliferation during 2010 - 2011. In response, the National Federation of Coffee Growers (NFCG) changed its policy to protect farmers from future weather shocks by conditioning renewal credits to the use of pest-resistant seeds. We exploit the timing of the policy, and a novel dataset that includes the census of coffee plots, their characteristics, production systems, seed variety, among others, from 2006-2014, matched with satellite tree cover data to analyze its environmental effect. We find that conditioning renewal credits on a change in seeds diminishes tree cover on treated coffee growers by 370 squared metes, equivalent to 2% of the average farm size in our sample. Tree cover is not only important to protect crops from rising temperatures, but also to maintain soil fertility, and control erosion. We calculate that this average loss in tree coverage on treated farms translates to a release of 2,000 tons of carbon.   

Income generating programs have been developed by public and private organizations to aid displaced populations in mitigating the negative effects of forced migration. This paper evaluates the earnings impact of these programs through the estimation of a structural choice model, with a 2004 representative sample of displaced households in Colombia. I find that people who participate perceive higher wages at the receiving municipality. However, this benefit is not high enough to equate conditions at the place of origin. Counterfactual policy experiments show that financial resources should be channeled to programs focused on training, rather than directly increasing cash transfers.

Research in Progress

In this paper we study whether variations in temperature differentially affect children’s health by gender. We assemble a rich dataset of individual health records from the Demographic and Health surveys (DHS) and pair these with high-resolution weather outcomes at the subnational level for 21 sub-Saharan African countries. Exploiting temperature variation within administrative units in each country, we find that hot temperature shocks decrease both weight-for-height and weight-for-age for children under five. Having established that children’s biophysical measures react to temperature, we further ask if these shocks impact males and females differently for reasons that go beyond different biophysical responses to warmer temperatures. These reasons include, for instance, parental preferences that lead scarce resources to be differentially directed toward boys or girls. When households face income shocks, the reallocation of resources may not be symmetric. In particular, if boys are favored (based either on pure preferences or expected returns on investment), then girls may bear a disproportionate share of the costs of weather shocks. Allowing for differentiated impacts by gender and analyzing both biophysical outcomes and proxies for household investments by child, such as vaccination records, we will test if this is the case.

How do households respond to extreme weather events, such as unusually high amounts of rainfall or droughts? Mechanisms through which households can respond to weather shocks, which can negatively affect income or consumption, include using formal credit to rebuild assets, adjusting labor supply or occupational choice, land sale and migration, and restructuring agricultural portfolios from longer to shorter-term crops or livestock to reduce risk of future shocks. To shed light on these potential mechanisms I exploit an anomalous rainy season followed by a significant period of drought consequence of the weather cycles El Niño and its counterpart La Niña, along with three waves of the Colombian Longitudinal Survey by Universidad de los Andes (ELCA). ELCA is a multi-topic living standards panel survey that collects detailed information within households on income, asset holdings, land tenure, debts, labor outcomes, time- use, and migration decisions, among others. Preliminary analysis suggests that households in rural areas adjusted their labor supply as a response to weather shocks. Household heads increase their off-farm labor in non-agricultural activities, while spouses increase own-farm work, and off-farm labor in non-agricultural activities. Both household head and spouse reduce the time devoted to household chores and childcare.