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Media Markets, Special Interests, and Voters Journal of Public Economics, 2014, 109(C): 13-26 | This paper examines the role of mass media in countering special interest group influence. I use the concentration of campaign contributions from Political Action Committees to proxy for special interests' capture of US Senate candidates from 1980 to 2002, and compare the reaction of voters to increases in concentration in two different types of media markets: in-state media markets and out-of-state media markets. Unlike in-state media markets, out-of-state markets focus on neighboring states' politics and elections. Thus, if citizens punish political capture, increases in concentration of special interest contributions to a particular candidate should reduce his vote share in in-state counties relative to the out-of-state counties, where the candidate receives less coverage. I find that a one-standard deviation increase in concentration of special interest contributions to incumbents reduces their vote share by about 0.5 to 1.5percentage points in in-state counties relative to the out-of-state counties. Robustness checks suggest that these results are not driven by omitted Senator characteristics or by differences between in-state and out-of-state counties along dimensions other than the media environment. | No additional resources | No press content | |
The Political Economy of Rural Property Rights and the Persistence of the Dual Economy Journal of Development Economics, 2013, 103 (July): 167-181. | Rural areas often have more than one regime of property rights and production. Large, private-property farms owned by powerful landowners coexist with subsistence peasants who farm small plots with limited property rights. At the same time, there is broad consensus that individual, well-specified and secure property rights over land improve economic outcomes. If property rights in land are so beneficial, why are they not adopted more widely? I put forward a theory according to which politically powerful landowners choose weak property rights to impoverish peasants and force them to work for low wages. Moreover, because weak property rights force peasants to stay in the rural sector protecting their property, the incentives to establish poor property rights are especially salient when peasants can migrate to an alternative sector, such as when urban wages increase with industrialization. | No additional resources | ||
He Who Counts Elects: Economic Elites, Political Elites, and Electoral Fraud with Isaías Chaves and James Robinson, Economics and Politics, 2015, 27(1): 124-159. | What determines the extent of electoral fraud? This paper constructs a model of the tradeoff between fraud and policy concessions (public good provision) which also incorporates the strength of the state. In addition, we parameterize the extent to which economic elites (to whom fraud is costly) and political elites (to whom fraud is advantageous) “overlap.” The model predicts that fraud will be lower and public good provision higher when land inequality is higher, the overlap between elites lower, and the strength of the state higher. We test these predictions using a unique, municipal-level dataset from Colombia's 1922 Presidential elections. We find empirical support for all the predictions of the model. | No additional resources | No press content | |
Consumers as VAT "Evaders": Incidence, Social Bias, and Correlates in Colombia with Carlos A. Molina and Juan F. Riaño, Economia, 2019, 19(2):21-67. | Tax evasion lies at the core of the relationship between citizens and the state: it reflects the level of trust in the state and compliance with society's implicit `social contract'. However, empirically analyzing it is challenging, with few direct and reliable measures. This has hampered the advancement of the theoretical and empirical literature, which is especially underdeveloped in the case of indirect tax evasion. We conduct list experiments on a large sample of households to estimate the incidence of value added tax (VAT) evasion, as well as the extent of social desirability bias in respondent answers. Around 20% of respondents engage in evasion and, surprisingly, they are not ashamed to recognize this openly. Evasion is more prevalent in places with more informality and less physical presence of the state, as well as among poorer, less educated individuals, and those who disregard the rule of law. | No additional resources | No press content | |
I Sell My Vote, and So What? Incidence, Social Bias and Correlates of Clientelism in Colombia with Carlos A. Molina and Juan F. Riaño. Economia, 2018, 19(1): 181-218. | Exchanging one's vote for particularistic benefits - practices usually grouped under `clientelism' - is often thought to weaken programmatic links between citizens and politicians and disincentivize public good provision, as well as undermine voter autonomy and the ideal role of elections. However, empirically analyzing this key phenomenon for the working of democracies entails formidable challenges. We conduct list experiments on a large sample of households to estimate the incidence of clientelistic vote buying, as well as the extent to which respondents refrain from openly recognizing this behavior. Nearly one out of every five respondents engage in clientelism and, surprisingly, they do not feel ashamed to admit it. Using the literature to guide our analysis, we examine the robust correlates of clientelism, finding that vote buying increases with poverty, reciprocity, disregard for the rule of law and, challenging several theories, interest in politics.Keywords: Clientelism, vote buying, social desirability bias, list experiments. | No additional resources | No press content | |
Who Wants Violence? The Political Economy of Conflict and State Building in Colombia Cuadernos de Economía, 30(Spe78):671--700. | Enduring violent conflict is the flip side of the coin of a weak state. In this article, I propose some political economy underpinnings for the persistence of conflict (and the weak state). Focusing on the case of Colombia, I discuss three broad sets of mechanisms that are also relevant elsewhere. First, a public goods trap" implies that a low supply of public goods (including security and order) produces a low demand for public goods, and vice versa. This trap is grounded on, and reproduces, political and economic inequality. Second, conflict and a weak state create economic and political rents, producing vested interests in the status quo. I argue that political rents are a particularly strong obstacle, partly because reformers face a sort of curse of dimensionality: many things have to work well for state capacity and stable peace to consolidate. Politically powerful groups take advantage of any weak spot to defend their rents, producing countervailing negative effects following state building efforts. Finally, the very clientelistic pattern of political exchange in many societies consolidates a weak state, and weak states are fertile ground for clientelism to flourish. This vicious circle of clientelism and state weakness is another reason for persistence. I conclude discussing some lessons for reformers, though the very nature of the argument implies that there are no easy recipes for success. | No additional resources | No press content | |
with Paolo Buonanno and Juan F. Vargas. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2017, 33(4): 753-782 | We document the existence of a Crime Kuznets Curve in US states since the 1970s. As in come level shave risen, crime has followed an inverted U-shaped pattern, first increasing and then dropping. The Crime Kuznets Curve is not explained by income inequality. In fact, we show that during the sample period inequality has risen monotonically with income, ruling out the traditional Kuznets Curve. Our finding is robust to adding a large set of controls that are used in the literature to explain the incidence of crime, as well as to controlling for state and year fixed effects. The Curve is also revealed in nonparametric specifications. The Crime Kuznets Curve exists for property crime and for some categories of violent crime. | No additional resources | No press content | |
Institutions for Financial Development: What are They and Where do They Come From? Journal of Economic Surveys, 2006, 20 (1): 27-70 | Among the fundamental causes of long‐run economic performance, differences in ‘institutions’ have received considerable attention in recent years. At the same time, a large body of theoretical and empirical work shows that financial development can have a big effect on economic performance. This raises the more fundamental question as to why some countries have developed financial markets while others do not. This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical research on this issue and shows that one of the channels whereby better institutions may have an effect on economic development is through the consolidation of larger and better financial markets. An issue that is left aside in this paper relates to what regulations and policies lead to better functioning capital markets. At some level, one can think of regulations and policies as particular types of institutions. Nonetheless, institutional problems are deeper causes leading to poor economic performance; bad policies might simply be part of the channels through which they influence performance. Thus, addressing the question of what determines the emergence of ‘good’ institutions – i.e. institutions that promote financial development – seems particularly important. Recent research providing some answers to this question is also reviewed. | No additional resources | No press content | |
‘Dollar’ Debt in Colombian Firms: Are Sinners Punished During Devaluations? with Juan Carlos Echeverry, Roberto Steiner and Camila Aguilar. Emerging Markets Review, 2003, 4(4): 417-449 | During the 1990s, the performance of several emerging economies was linked to their access to foreign capital. Colombia was no exception, experiencing a boom and bust cycle associated with an initial period of real exchange rate appreciation followed by a sharp depreciation. Although several studies have discussed the recent underperformance of the Colombian economy, few attempts have been made at analyzing firm-level data. We rely on information for a large sample of firms during 1995–2001 and examine the determinants of foreign indebtedness and the effects on firm performance of holding dollar debt amid real depreciations (i.e. the so-called ‘balance sheet effect’). In our data set, matching does seem to take place to the extent that firms in more open sectors and exporting firms have higher shares of dollar debt. Our estimations also reveal a negative balance sheet effect on firms’ profitability, while the effect on investment is generally not significant. | No additional resources | No press content | |
Política y Reconciliación: Una coyuntura crítica para la construcción de Estado con Francisco Eslava y Andrés Moya. Castaño, Lina (comp), Colombia en Movimiento 2010 - 2013 - 2016, Bogotá, Ediciones Uniandes | Describimos algunas características del ambiente político en Colombia, a partir de una base de datos panel única con cerca de 10,000 hogares. Comparando respuestas en 2013 y 2016, documentamos una persistente falta de interés en política y un clientelismo prevaleciente, con vínculos personales dominando a las afinidades partidistas. El involucramiento en la compra clientelista de votos, en cambio, es bastante variable en el tiempo, y los hogares entran y salen de estas relaciones. Contradiciendo las más simples y optimistas teorías de la modernización, no encontramos que incrementos en la riqueza del hogar estén correlacionados con el abandono del clientelismo. En cambio, los cambios en la debilidad del estado (medida con la evasión tributaria) sí se correlacionan fuertemente con cambio en el clientelismo. Fortalecer el estado parece, por lo tanto, una tarea prioritaria. Entendiendo los esfuerzos de construcción de paz como un paso en esta dirección nos conduce a examinar las actitudes hacia el reciente proceso de paz entre el gobierno y las Farc, el grupo guerrillero más grande en Colombia. Con unas preguntas especiales incluidas en el 2016, evaluamos las opiniones de los hogares sobre estos temas. Los datos muestran una curiosa combinación de indiferencia y polarización hacia el proceso de paz. Una porción grande de la población siente que el proceso de paz implica pocos cambios para su vida, y entre aquellos que esperan cambios aproximadamente la mitad tienen expectativas positivas y el restante negativas. Los que viven en áreas con mayor presencia de grupos armados tienden a ser menos indiferentes, pero no son simplemente más pesimistas o más optimistas. La mayoría de los encuestados reportan poca resistencia a tener ex-combatientes como vecinos o empleados, pero rechazan relativamente más la participación política y financiar los beneficios para los rebeldes (dos aspectos cruciales del acuerdo de paz). | No additional resources | No press content | |
Politics and Reconciliation: A Critical Juncture for State Building with Francisco Eslava and Andrés Moya. Castaño, Lina (comp), Colombia en Movimiento 2010 - 2013 - 2016, Bogotá, Ediciones Uniandes | We describe some features of the political environment in Colombia, drawing from a unique panel dataset of about 10,000 households. Contrasting responses in 2013 and 2016, we document a persistent lack of interest in politics and prevailing clientelism, with personalistic links dominating partisan affinity. Engagement in clientelistic vote buying, instead, is quite variable in time, with households getting into and out of these exchanges. Rejecting the simplest and more optimistic theories of modernization, we do not find that increases in household wealth correlate with the abandonment of clientelism. Instead, changes in the weakness of the state (as proxied with tax evasion) correlate strongly with changes in clientelism. Strengthening the state therefore seems a priority. Viewing peace-building efforts as one key step in this direction naturally leads to the examination of the attitudes towards the recent peace process between the government and the Farc, Colombia's largest guerrilla group. With a special set of questions included in 2016, we also study households' perspectives on this topic. The data reveals a rare combination of indifference and polarization towards the peace process. A large share of people feel the peace process implies no substantial changes for their lives, and those that do are approximately equally divided between those expecting positive and negative changes. Those who live in areas in which non-state armed groups were present are relatively less indifferent, yet they are not simply more pessimistic or optimistic. Most respondents report no discomfort with having former rebels as neighbors or employees, but they do reject political participation and financing benefits for rebels (two key aspects of the peace treaty) comparatively more. | No additional resources | No press content | |
La política colombiana a la luz de la Elca: entre el desinterés y el clientelismo con Juan F. Riaño. Cadena, Ximena (comp), Colombia en Movimiento 2010 - 2013, Bogotá, Ediciones Uniandes | Este artículo presenta algunas características de la forma como los colombianos se relacionan con la política, a partir de información recopilada en la ELCA por primera vez en el año 2013. | No additional resources | No press content | |
Impuestos, Crecimiento Económico y Bienestar en Colombia (1970-1999) Desarrollo y Sociedad, 2003, 52: 145-204 | Estudiar los efectos macroeconómicos de los impuestos, en particular en un país con un sistema tributario complejo y frecuentemente reformado como el colombiano, puede resultar en extremo engorroso. No obstante, la importancia del tema no puede menospreciarse: la teoría económica sugiere que los impuestos, al distorsionar la toma de decisiones individuales, pueden reducir el bienestar y el crecimiento económicos. En este trabajo se calculan las tasas efectivas promedio de tributación sobre el consumo y sobre el ingreso de los factores de producción en Colombia, en el período 1970-1999, utilizando la metodología propuesta por Mendoza, Razin y Tesar (1994). Además de constituir una caracterización de la política tributaria en el período, esas tasas se utilizan para cuantificar los costos en bienestar y crecimiento de la tributación con base en un modelo sencillo de equilibrio general dinámico y previsión perfecta. Los resultados indican que desde 1970, y en particular en la segunda mitad de la década del noventa, la política tributaria ha impuesto sobre la economía colombiana costos crecientes de eficiencia. Aunque los resultados también sugieren que se ha sacrificado crecimiento, la magnitud de ese sacrificio es cuantitativamente despreciable en la mayoría de los casos, con la excepción de la segunda mitad de la década del noventa. | No additional resources | No press content | |
Actitudes de exintegrantes de las Farc–EP frente a la reincorporación con A. Arjona, N. Garbiras, J. García, T. Hiller, L. Polo y M. Weintraub. Documento CEDE 2020-24 | En agosto del 2019 se cumplieron dos años de la reincorporación de las Farc-EP. Este proceso es uno de los principales desafíos de la implementación del Acuerdo Final firmado entre el Estado colombiano y la organización guerrillera en noviembre de 2016. Los avances en materia de reincorporación garantizarán su sostenibilidad. En este documento analizamos las actitudes de los exintegrantes frente al proceso en esta primera etapa, tomando los resultados del Registro Nacional de Reincorporación (RNR), realizado entre la Agencia Nacional de Reincorporación (ARN) y el componente Farc del Consejo Nacional de Reincorporación (CNR). Tras mostrar que hay aspectos positivos en las actitudes de las personas en proceso de reincorporación, y algunos que deben mirarse con preocupación, estudiamos qué características de los exintegrantes y su entorno se aso- cian con mejores actitudes y condiciones para la implementación del proceso de reincorporación. Complementamos este análisis contrastando las actitudes de la población en proceso de reincorporación con las de la población civil, haciendo paralelos, en términos de los retos de política pública, para ambos grupos. La evidencia presentada sirve para canalizar esfuerzos en donde más parecen necesitarse. | No additional resources | ||
¿Cómo nos reconciliamos? El papel de la violencia en las actitudes frente a la reconciliación with Tatiana Hiller, Ana María Ibáñez, Andrés Moya. In Botero, Sandra and García-Sánchez, Miguel (eds), Paz y opinión pública en Colombia, Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, pp. 43-71, Also Cede WP No. 2018-53 | La firma del acuerdo de paz colombiano resultó en la desmovilización y reincorporación a la vida civil de más de 12.000 excombatientes de las FARC. El conflicto, que estuvo activo casi 60 anos, causó más de ocho millones de víctimas y una sociedad dividida. No abordar estos legados sociales y psicológicos puede derivar en el resurgimiento de nuevos ciclos de violencia. Entender la disposición de la población civil a compartir la vida cotidiana con los excombatientes y su actitud hacia la reconciliación es crucial para disenar políticas públicas que promuevan un posconflicto sostenible. Este artículo analiza las actitudes de la población colombiana hacia las interacciones cotidianas con los excombatientes de las FARC y sus percepciones sobre la importancia y viabilidad del proceso de reconciliación. Para esto, usamos una encuesta a una muestra de 4.497 hogares, representativa de los municipios más afectados por el conflicto. Nuestro análisis explora cómo estas actitudes y percepciones se relacionan con tres dimensiones: (i) las experiencias de violencia vividas durante el conflicto; (ii) la confianza hacia el sistema judicial, la policía y el ejército; y (iii) las conexiones con redes políticas y comunitarias. Los resultados indican que los legados de violencia están asociados con actitudes pesimistas hacia la reconciliación. Sin embargo, las personas que viven en territorios altamente afectados por la violencia parecen estar dispuestas a compartir las actividades cotidianas con los excombatientes. Mayores niveles de confianza en instituciones como el sistema judicial, la policía y el ejército, así como la participación en organizaciones comunitarias y las conexiones con redes políticas, están correlacionadas con actitudes más favorables hacia la reconciliación. Estos resultados indican que las intervenciones para promover la reconciliación durante el posconflicto deben tener en cuenta la heterogeneidad en las experiencias de violencia, las necesidades y las posiciones políticas en estos municipios. | No additional resources | No press content | |
Colombia: Democratic but Violent? with Juan Fernando Vargas., In Felipe Valencia-Caicedo(ed.) Roots of Underdevelopment: A New Economic and Political History of LatinAmerica and the Caribbean, Springer Link, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 285-316 | Colombia is a Latin American outlier in that it has traditionally been a very violent country, yet at the same time remarkably democratic. This chapter explores Colombia’s puzzle from a political economy perspective, shedding light on the broader relationship between democracy and violence. The chapter studies some of the most important democratization reforms since Colombia’s independence 200 years ago. It argues that the reforms often failed to curb violence and sometimes even actively, though perhaps unintendedly, exacerbated violent political strife. Democratic reforms were unable to set the ground for genuine power-sharing. They were often implemented amidst a weak institutional environment that allowed powerful elites, the reforms’ ex-ante political losers, to capture the State and offset the benefits of the reforms for the broader society. We conclude by highlighting the implications of the argument for other countries facing democratic reforms, as well as for Colombia’s current peace-building efforts. | No additional resources | No press content | |
con N. Garbiras, J. García, y M. Weintraub. Documento CEDE 2022-38 | Este capítulo describe las trayectorias de atención en el proceso de reincorporación de las Farc-EP. Analizamos una base de datos única de la Agencia de Reincorporación y Normalización (ARN) con información mensual de las interacciones y atenciones entre más de 13.000 exintegrantes y los facilitadores de reincorporación (estos últimos encargados de garantizar la atención y el cumplimiento de los beneficios establecidos en el proceso de reincorporación). Caracterizamos, por un lado, las atenciones entregadas por la ARN a la población en reincorporación y, por el otro, las variables asociadas con un contacto más constante sus facilitadores. Este ejercicio nos permite estudiar cuáles son las características y actitudes (medidas en el Registro Nacional de Reincorporación) de las personas más propensas a participar activamente en el proceso. Este capítulo contribuye a entender algunas dinámicas de reincorporación y algunas tendencias alrededor de las atenciones ofrecidas. Así, ayuda a identificar los segmentos poblacionales donde debe focalizarse la atención para fortalecer la implementación del Acuerdo en Colombia | No additional resources | No press content | |
con N. Garbiras, J. García, C. Suescún y M. Weintraub. In Betancur-Restrepo, Laura y Rettberg, Angelika(eds.), Después del acuerdo: Cómo va la paz en Colombia, Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes,pp. 43-71. Documento CEDE 2022-39. | Después de más de seis anos de la firma del Acuerdo Final y más de cinco anos del comienzo de la reincorporación de las Farc-EP, este proceso sigue siendo un reto fundamental para el éxito de la implementación del Acuerdo Final y la consolidación de la paz. En este documento de trabajo, caracterizamos las actitudes y percepciones de la población en reincorporación en varias dimensiones en una etapa avanzada dentro su proceso. Para esto, nos basamos en los resultados de una encuesta telefónica a 4.435 personas en proceso de reincorporación realizada entre diciembre de 2021 y enero de 2022 por el equipo de investigadores en colaboración con la Agencia para la Reincorporación y la Normalización (ARN) y el componente Farc del Consejo Nacional de Reincorporación (CNR). Los resultados de este estudio demuestran que existen aspectos positivos en cuanto a las actitudes de las personas en reincorporación, pero también algunos que deben ser considerados con especial atención y cautela. También analizamos qué características de los exintegrantes y su entorno están asociadas con mejores percepciones en diferentes dimensiones como confianza, seguridad y reconciliación, entre otros. Este análisis fue complementado con información de la población colombiana, información del Registro Nacional de Reincorporación a fecha del 2019 y datos administrativos de la ARN. El objetivo principal de este documento es proponer recomendaciones de política pública para orientar los esfuerzos en las dimensiones y personas que parecen necesitarlos más. | No additional resources | No press content | |
Proponemos reformas de fondo en los impuestos a las empresas, las personas naturales, los verdes y saludables, entre otros. Los cambios propuestos, que tomarían cerca de diez anos en entrar todos en vigor, permitirían un estatuto más progresivo, más eficiente y justo y recaudarían más de 3 % del PIB adicional. | No additional resources | No press content | ||
Sunlight Disinfects? Free Media in Weak Democracies with Juan Fernando Vargas and Mauricio Vela. | Free media may not favor political accountability when other democratic institutions are weak,and may even bring undesirable unintended consequences. We propose a simple model in whichpoliticians running for office may engage in coercion to obtain votes. A media scandal thatexposes these candidates increases their coercion eff ort to o ffset the negative popularity shock.This may result in the tainted politicians actually increasing their vote share. We provideempirical evidence from one recent episode in the political history of Colombia, the `parapolitics' scandal featuring politicians colluding with illegal armed paramilitary groups to obtain votes. We show that colluding candidates not only get more votes than their clean competitors, but also concentrate them in areas where coercion is more likely (namely, areas with more paramilitary presence, less state presence, and more judicial inefficiency). Harder to reconcile with other explanations and as a direct test of the eff ects of media exposure, we compare tainted candidates exposed before elections to those exposed after. We fi nd that those exposed before elections get as many votes as those exposed once elected, but their electoral support is more strongly concentrated in places where coercion is more likely. Our results highlight the complementarity between diff erent dimensions of democratic institutions. | No additional resources |
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