Research
Publications - Working Papers - Work in Progress
Publications
Published in World Development, 2020
Coverage: HKUST-IEMS , La Silla Vacia
I estimate the effect of the minimum wage on formal and informal wages and employment in Colombia. I exploit an unexpected increase in the real minimum wage during the 1999 Colombian economic crisis to estimate short-term effects of the minimum wage along the wage distribution in both sectors. I find evidence of wage responses, with a stronger incidence in the formal sector.
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Published in IDB Policy Briefs, 2014
Fiscal policy in Latin America has been historically imprudent and continues to be viewed with skepticism. At the same time, most countries have remained out of trouble for several years and were able to successfully conduct proactive countercyclical fiscal policy to fight the Great Recession, a historical first. This paper examines the last decade to assess progress, highlight weaknesses, and chart the way forward.
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Published in Desarrollo y Sociedad, 2010
Using household data from the 2006-2007 Households Income and Expenditure survey, we estimate four different specifications of demand systems for Colombia. We also calculate expenditure, income and price elasticities for different groups of goods.
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Working Papers
2020
Coverage: Banxico , El CEO , 24 Horas , El Financiero
In January 2019, the minimum wage in the Mexican border with the United States increased by 100 percent. At the same time, the value-added tax (VAT) rate decreased by half. We estimate the effects of the minimum wage and VAT changes on prices. We find that the increase in the minimum wage is associated with economically and statistically significant increases in the prices of VAT goods, and with smaller, imprecisely estimated increases for Non-VAT goods.
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Listed in SocArXiv
We analyze the effect of adverse health shocks on different expenditure shares. We find that households engage in substitution between health expenditures and food expenditures. We also find important heterogeneity in this trade-off between present health and future health mediated by access to social protection, job contract type, and location (urban-rural).
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2020
We analyze accessibility to jobs through different transportation modes and the extent of job spatial mismatch at the intra-urban level in a developing country city. We use data from Medellín, Colombia, from 2012 to 2017, to measure accessibility using employment weighted by travel times. We find that despite the continuous investment in public transportation and transport infrastructure, spatial mismatch in Medellín has increased.
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Listed in Banco de Mexico working papers
We analyze the efficacy of hiring tax credits, particularly in distressed labor markets. Our estimates show positive effects on employment and sizable reductions on the unemployment rate.
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Listed in World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series
Coverage: Vox Lacea
Blog post
Multidimensional measures of poverty have become standard as complementary indicators of poverty in many countries. This paper proposes an application of existing methodologies that decompose welfare aggregates -based on counterfactual simulations- to break up the changes of the multidimensional poverty headcount into the variation attributed to each of its dimensions.
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Work in Progress
