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.

Compendio de las condiciones pactadas entre el Gobierno de Brasil y Londres, referentes al crédito externo pedido por el país americano en 1865. A lo largo del documento se describen las condiciones en que se harán los desembolsos monetarios y los fines que tiene el préstamo.

Las crisis climáticas, socioecológicas y sanitarias que el mundo ha presenciado desde hace décadas, están generando efectos de gran escala y transformaciones en las diferentes dimensiones del desarrollo. La ciencia ha venido alertando a los tomadores de decisiones en que, si se continúa con las actuales tendencias de aumento de temperatura, degradación de hábitats y pérdida de biodiversidad, se intensificarán las tensiones sobre los sistemas sociales, económicos, naturales y culturales, y esto causará alteraciones en el entorno y una consecuente pérdida del bienestar humano. Para hacer frente a esto, es preciso abordar los grandes retos de la humanidad a partir del enfoque de la sostenibilidad, entendida como un proceso vivo y emergente, integral y sistémico que busca propiciar acciones con impacto positivo sobre la naturaleza, la sociedad y la economía. De acuerdo con Brigitte Baptiste, rectora de la Universidad Ean en su ensayo Transformar el mundo (2019), “la sostenibilidad se entiende en nuestros días como un ejercicio cuidadoso de construcción creciente de bienestar colectivo, de reconocimiento de la diversidad cultural y de respeto a nuestros descendientes”. Ante este escenario, la transición hacia la sostenibilidad surge como una necesidad urgente de replantear los actuales modelos de desarrollo a expensas de la naturaleza y buscar alternativas que permitan un crecimiento económico viable.

Es conocido por la opinión pública los esfuerzos realizados por La Corporación Autónoma Regional para el Desarrollo Sostenible del Chocó-CODECHOCO, desde la década de los 80s, para orientar el cultivo del borojó lo que ha significado la investigación básica agronómica y de procesos de transformación artesanal y semi artesanal. y de comercialización extra regional, del mismo. Muchos eventos impidieron dar respuesta a todos los interrogantes que implicaba la opción Borojó para el departamento del Chocó y una de tantas fue la terminación del proyecto DIAR (Desarrollo Integral Agrícola Rural). En la actualidad se encuentran miles de hectáreas de Borojó sembradas dispersas en todo el departamento, que como se preveía fijaban al agricultor a su territorio, impedían su migración y aumentaban su capacidad económica local. Ahora el panorama es cada día más preocupante. pues otras zonas del país han sembrado Borojó. caso del Valle del Cauca. El Cauca, Putumayo, Magdalena Medio y la zona limítrofe entre el Chocó y Risaralda. Cada día la comercialización posible del Borojó chocoano será más precaria, pues no se continuó con una política de expansión coherente del mercado y menos de incremento de la franja de los consumidores.

Con el presente Informe sobre el Estado de los Recursos Naturales y del Ambiente 2005-2006, la Contraloría General de la República (CGR) da cumplimiento a la obligación establecida en el artículo 268 de la Constitución Nacional. Aunque se mantiene la estructura de los anteriores, contiene una retrospectiva sobre la política, la gestión y la inversión ambiental del Estado en el cuatrienio y, por supuesto, el análisis del comportamiento de la gestión ambiental en el año 2005,

Gracias al acuerdo suscrito entre el Ministerio del Media Ambiente y Ia Sociedad de Agricultores de Colombia, con el apoyo de FENALCE y CONALGODON, fueron elaboradas las "Gulas de manejo ambiental para el subsectores cerealista y Algodonero del país. Las guías ambientales fueron concebidas como herramientas de trabajo tanto para las autoridades ambientales como para los productores del sector agropecuario. Estas guías buscan mejorar Ia planeación y gestión ambiental de los procesos productivos, así como servir de instrumento de control por parte de las autoridades ambientales.

In view of the surge in short-term private capital flows to Colombia and other emerging markets in recent years, housing-price and stock market bubbles have emerged; therefore, the study of the relative effectiveness of controls on private capital flows is a timely and important topic to undertake. Did the nonremunerated reserve requirement imposed on private capital inflows in Colombia decrease the total stock of flows? Following the empirical work of Cárdenas and Steiner (2000), this study modifies their work by adding a second period of controls for Colombia, as well as undertaking a unit root and vector error cointegration analysis. The study finds that controls were not capable of decreasing the total amount of private capital inflows in the short-run, but they were able to do so in the long run. These findings demonstrate that, in the case of Colombia, the careful and nuanced use of controls can (and should) be used by policymakers as an important instrument to prevent volatility in the real exchange rate in a world of increasing financial integration.

This paper aims at assessing the main contributions of cliometrics toward the global and disciplinary integration of social sciences. Through an analogy of a pseudo-market of knowledge it develops an analysis of pressures and responses that cliometricians have faced insofar as an enterprise whose goal is to provide answers to certain questions that society asks. Based on a general appraisal of cliometric-like products, it is found that this U.S. scientific community revolutionized the practice of economic history and gained terrain before the competing traditional history. Subsequently, cliometricians spread their innovations internationally but got through internal divisions which ultimately have enriched their practices and prompted them to cooperate with other scientific communities.

This study investigates the effect of commodity price volatility on sectoral production for three main metal exporters: Australia, Chile, and South Africa. Using quarterly data of the real value added per industry from 1994 to 2015, I perform a SVAR model to analyse the impulse response functions of each industry to a 1% metal commodity price shock. The results show that each country behaves idiosyncratically with the greatest sectoral responses for the construction sector in South Africa, the trade sector in Chile, and the manufacturing sector in Australia. However, some patterns arise across the sample. First, there is no evidence of de-industrialization in the short run given a commodity boom. Second, services and trade sectors seem to benefit from commodity price shocks. Third, the short run impact of the mining sector reflects production capacity constraints and cost structure in the industry. Finally, the overall assessment of the sectoral impact argues against the resource curse hypothesis in the short run as most industries seem to improve their production given an external shock in commodity prices. The increase in each sector after a price shock could came by three channels: the interdependence of other industries with the mining sector, the increase on internal demand due to the increase in private consumption, and the increase of public spending. The results of this study could potentially inform economic policies that allow developing countries that rely on mining activities to shield themselves from price shocks.