K42

Developing countries have a vast informal sector generally associated with low productivity levels. The response of informal employment to tax policies might depend on labor market  rigidities. This paper proposes a theoretical framework consisting of a search and…

One explanation for the increasing number of hectares with coca cultivation is that eradication strategies displace coca crops but fail to completely clear affected areas. In the drug policy literature, that dynamic shifting is commonly known as the balloon effect. This study…

Conditional Cash transfer (CCT) programs have been shown to have positive effects on a variety of outcomes including education, consumption and health visits, amongst others. We estimate the long-run impacts of the urban version of Familias en Acción, the Colombian CCT program on…

The opinions contained in this document are the sole responsibility of the author and do not commit Banco de la República or its Board of Directors. 

The opinions contained in this document are the sole responsibility of the author and do not commit Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.

The opinions contained in this document are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not commit Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.

Based on individual data on the population of those arrested in Medellín, we assess whether the change in punishment at age 18, mandated by law, has a deterrent effect on arrests. No deterrent effect was found on index, violent or property crimes, but a deterrence effect was found on non-index…

We use a unique data set at the individual level to estimate an empirical model explaining the probability of young individuals to become criminals as a function of the presence of adult criminals in their neighborhoods, an a complete set of control variables, including census sector fixed…

Why justice is unresponsive to crime: Why justice is un responsive to crime: The case of cocine in Colombia

The main purpose of this chapter is to summarize the information currently available on cocaine production and trafficking. The chapter starts by describing the available data on cocaine production and trade, the collection methodologies, (if available) used by different sources, the main biases…

We use hedonic price models to estimate the value households are willing to pay to avoid violent crime in the city of Bogotá. We find that households living in the highest socioeconomic level (stratum 6) pay up to 7.2% of their house values in order to prevent average homicide rates from…

We use data of neighborhoods of Bogotá to assess the causal relation between their adolescent fertility and their homicide rates. We find that neighborhoods with high adolescent fertility rates, and that have low secondary enrollment and high crime rates at the moment the children of their teen…

We assess the effect of the homicide rate, individual´s perception of security in their neighborhood of residence, and of the effect of their having been victimized, on life satisfaction. We find a negative effect of the homicide rate on life satisfaction for the subsample of individuals living…