26 hojas : ilustraciones.

10 hojas : ilustraciones, fotografías a color.

13 hojas : ilustraciones, fotografías a color..

27 hojas : ilustraciones, fotografías a color.

23 hojas : ilustraciones, fotografías a color.

15 hojas : ilustraciones, fotografías a color.

30 páginas

Después de mucho debatirse en Colombia la necesidad de realizar un esfuerzo por avanzar en la seguridad jurídica, mejorar la calidad de las normas y simplificar para el ciudadano la consulta de las reglas de comportamiento, al gobierno nacional se le ocurrió comenzar por la unificación de las prescripciones contenidas en los decretos reglamentarios en todos los sectores de interés de la sociedad. En materia ambiental esta codificación quedó incluida en el Decreto 1076 de 2015. Sin embargo, este ensayo devela las dificultades que esta única reglamentación aún debe superar para asegurar el cumplimiento de los objetivos que se trazaron en el Documento Conpes 3816 de 2014, acordado para definir una política pública destinada a mejorar la normativa y cumplir con las recomendaciones de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (ocde); al fin y al cabo lo que se debe lograr es mejorar la administración de la economía, implementar políticas públicas, y corregir y estimular los comportamientos positivos de los miembros de la sociedad.

This paper develops a common agency problem using a two stages menu auction game to show how pressure groups can aid in deciding how much public good should be provided. By sorting people into different pressure groups that represent the individuals’ preferences for the public good, the interaction among the pressure groups is an important element that could improve the provision of public goods. This paper sketches a very simple mechanism to provide a general contribution to finance a public good. In this model, the presence of pressure groups improves the undersupply of public goods typical in voluntary contribution models, while avoiding the distortionary effects of non-lump-sum transfers of the involuntary contributions models.

This dissertation analyzes health human capital issues in developing countries. The first two essays examine the production of human capital at the household level, and the third essay analyzes supply of health care services. The first essay tests for noncooperative behavior using the Mexican Family Life Survey (MXFLS), a nationally representative longitudinal survey of households that identifies and keeps track of local and international migrants. Migration introduces asymmetries of information that might trigger noncooperative behavior of spouses left behind. I use the MXFLS to study noncooperative behavior in Mexican households and the way this behavior and effects children's human capital. I find that migration causes noncooperative behavior in the spouse left behind, namely spouses reduce the time in doing chores and do not change their labor supply. At the same time, boys do more agricultural work and girls have to spend more time in taking care of other members. Migration positively affects school enrollment, but nonlinear e effects suggest younger children are bearing most of the negative effect because, as the literature suggests, lower school enrollment at early ages means lower cognitive achievement later on. In the second essay I analyze production of health in Chinese children. Modernization and subsequent changes in lifestyle have caused a dramatic increase in prevalence of obesity in China. Since obesity is one of the main forces driving noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), increases in prevalence of obesity in children lead to higher incidence of NCDs and reduction in health human capital. Intervention in public policy must be based on an understanding of how health is produced in the household. I use the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) to carry out structural estimation of the health production function for children in China. Results suggest that calorie intake is the most important input in the production of excessive weight with an impact on weight three times larger than sedentary activities and six times larger than physical activities. Calorie intake also has a more than proportional effect on unhealthy extra weight. These results suggest that public health policies must focus on reducing excessive calorie intake. The third essay studies subsidies for public hospitals in Colombia. Health services in Colombia are provided by public and private hospitals that, by law, must compete with one another in a perfectly competitive environment. However, by constitutional mandate, public hospitals must guarantee health care for all - even in municipalities where market conditions cannot sustain a hospital and government subsidization is required. The subsidy should provide the hospital enough solvencies to operate as well as incentives to be efficient. I propose a method to estimate subsidies for public hospitals. The method combines measures of efficiency derived from cost frontiers and production frontiers. Estimations for 2008 suggest an aggregate subsidy of $4869.2 MM Colombian pesos. Also, the proportion of costs that must be subsidized is lower for hospitals that offer more complex health services.