Juan M. Gallego

Universidad del Rosario | UR · Grupo de Investigación de la Facultad de Economía

The effectiveness of command-and-control policies related to tobacco use has been studied in high-income countries. Still, there is limited evidence of their effects in low and middle-income countries. We explore the case of Colombia, a country that introduced a business-supported smoking ban in bars and restaurants and all public indoor spaces in...

We compare the educational effects of two medical protocols that mitigate long-term consequences of prematurity or low birth weight. The two protocols are Traditional Care (TC), which uses incubators, and Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) which replaces incubators for 24-hour skin-to-skin contact between newborns and caregivers. We concentrate on educatio...

Background Since 1993, Colombia has had a mandatory social health insurance scheme that aims to provide universal health coverage to all citizens. However, some contributory regime participants purchase voluntary private health insurance (VPHI) to access better quality health services (i. e., physicians and hospitals), shorter waiting times, and a...

Exploiting the implementation of a Prepaid Electricity Program in the region of Antioquia (Colombia), we estimate the impact that switching to a prepaid program has on users’ energy consumption behavior. In particular, we focus the analysis on those that are more vulnerable from a socio-economic perspective. The results show that the new metering s...

This paper estimates the short-term impact of a twofold increase of the tobacco excise tax on consumption of illicit cigarette trade in Colombia. Using data collected before and after the tax increase from a novel smoker survey (DEICS-Col), the impact is estimated as the change in the probability that a smoker has illicit cigarettes. The methodolog...

Background Tobacco prevalence in Colombia is small compared with other Latin America despite the nation’s tobacco taxes being among the lowest in the region. However, tobacco taxes have increased several times during the last decade, and large increases in 2010 and 2016 impacted consumer prices. Objective This paper aims to estimate the price smok...

Background Few studies in middle income countries assess the effect of a sharp tax increase on observed consumption of illicit cigarettes. The 2016 tax reform in Colombia resulted in a 100% increase of the excise tariff for 2017. This study evaluates the changes in penetration of smuggled products associated with the tax increase nine months after...

Background and objectives: Kangaroo mother care (KMC) is a multifaceted intervention for preterm and low birth weight infants and their parents. Short- and mid-term benefits of KMC on survival, neurodevelopment, breastfeeding, and the quality of mother-infant bonding were documented in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted in Colombia from...

To meet the challenges of providing affordable public transit service without compromising the financial sustainability of the system, many transit systems are setting fares at cost-recovery levels. However, to offer affordable transport service for the urban poor, cities can provide targeted subsidies. Bogota, Colombia, has implemented a pro-poor...

The knowledge of the innovation-productivity relationship in Latin America, and particularly in the Colombian service sector, is scant. In this study, we explore such relationship comparing the Colombian service industry with manufacturing. Following the Crépon-Duguet-Mairesse empirical approach, the four major findings are as follows: Indeed, Colo...

Impact oriented monitoring (IOM) is a novel methodology for identifying and assessing the impacts of EU-funded research projects in the area of International Public Health. A framework based on the logic and payback categories is used to categorize, into multi-dimensions, the impacts produced by public health research projects. A set of tools, incl...

This study examines information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption among 3759 Colombian manufacturing firms to identify factors that are pertinent to the adoption and usage of ICT at the firm level. This article also attempts to ascertain if the determinants of a firm's ICT adoption vary across the firm size. Our major findings show that...

Esta obra presenta un diagnóstico sobre las deficiencias técnicas del sistema actual de estratificación socioeconómica en la ciudad de Bogotá. Propone como um instrumento más eficiente para la clasificación socioeconómica la utilización de información catastral, em particular aquella relacionada con el avalúo catastral. Presenta una discusión sobre...

Esta obra presenta un diagnóstico sobre las deficiencias técnicas del sistema actual de estratificación socioeconómica en la ciudad de Bogotá. Propone como um instrumento más eficiente para la clasificación socioeconómica la utilización de información catastral, em particular aquella relacionada con el avalúo catastral. Presenta una discusión sobre...

This paper investigates how social networks in poor developing settings are affected by migration. Using a unique household survey from southern Mozambique, we test the role of labour mobility in shaping participation in groups and interhousehold cooperation by migrant‐sending households in village economies at origin. We find that migration cum re...

We investigate how emigration flows from a developing region are affected by xenophobic violence at destination. Our empirical analysis is based on a unique survey among more than 1000 households collected in Mozambique in summe 2008, a few months after a series of xenophobic attacks in South Africa killed dozens and displaced thousands of immigran...

En este artículo se estiman las curvas de Engel para diferentes rubros de gasto en salud. Para tal fin, se emplean modelos semiparamétricos que utilizan la información de la Encuesta de Calidad de Vida de 1997. Adicionalmente, se corrigieron los problemas de endogeneidad detectados usando regresores construidos en dos etapas. Se realizaron contrast...

We investigate the effect of education Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) on teenage pregnancy. Our main concern is with how the size and sign of the effect may depend on the design of the program. Using a simple model we show that an education CCT that conditions renewal on school performance reduces teenage pregnancy; the program can incre...

We investigate the causal impact of two Education Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) programs, Familias en Acción and Subsidio Educativo, on teenage childbearing. Using a new database of schoolgirls in Bogotá (Colombia), we show that, after controlling for other factors, imposing a performance requirement is key for the Subsidio Educativo program to...

This paper studies the e§ect of credit constraints and constraints on transfers between parents and children, on di§erences in labor and schooling across children within the same household, with an application to gender. When families are unconstrained in these respects, di§erences in labor supply or education are driven by di§erences in wages or r...

This paper investigates how social networks in poor developing settings are af- fected if people migrate. By using an unique household survey from two southern regions in Mozambique, we test the role of labor mobility in shaping participation in groups and social networks by migrant sending households in village economies at origin. We find that ho...

This paper analyzes the effect of individual health status on the probability of having health insurance and using health services. From the Colombian Living Standard Survey (1997, 2003), we found that the probability of having health insurance if you are self-employed increases either with the self report of a good health status (cream skimming) o...

Resumen: El artículo analiza los incentivos en aseguramiento y uso de servicios de los trabajadores, dependientes e independientes, cuando dichos agentes son heterogéneos en su estado de salud. Metodológicamente, los agentes eligen de manera secuencial el nivel de aseguramiento y uso de servicios que maximicen su utilidad intertemporal bajo incerti...

This paper investigates the role of works councils in a simple agency framework in which works councils are supposed to monitor manager's information on behalf of the workforce, but they are independent agents who might pursue their private interest. First, we consider that workers can incentivize works councils through contingent monetary payments...

El documento encuentra evidencia empírica sobre los determinantes del estado de salud en Colombia, después de la reforma de 1993. El artículo usa la teoría de Grossman y analiza, además de características individuales y socioeconómicas, variables institucionales del sector. Se usaron dos encuestas para los años 1997 y 2000, las cuales cuentan con u...

We find empirical evidence of the health determinants as a measure of health capital in a developing country after a deep reform of its health-care sector. we use the model of Grossman and take, besides individual and socioeconomic variables, institutional variables. Two surveys from 1997 and 2000, with a subjective (self-report) health status of t...

ABSTRACT This paper tries to find empirical evidence of the health determinants, as a measure of health capital in a developing country after a deep reform of its health-care sector. It follows the Grossman model (1972) and also takes, besides individual and socioeconomic variables, institutional factors of the health sector. Two surveys from 1997...

This paper reviews the literature on optimal income taxation with single and couple households. In the seminal works of Mirrlees and Atkinson and Stiglitz the household is composed by one member. However, I described a model where households can have more than one member. There is an economy which is composed by both one-memberand two member famili...

Economists have shown that investments in science and technology (S&T) have an important impact on country's economic growth and productivity gains. Nowadays there is no doubt of the importance in providing public funding for S&T activities. Public policies have been oriented to provide incentives for private spending in S&T as a mechanism to enhan...

Usando la teoría de la elección podemos establecer cómo ciertas características poblacionales inciden sobre los perfiles de gasto en salud de los hogares colombianos. El enfoque está basado en el trabajo de Deaton de 1980, según el cual el conjunto de elección de los individuos es la intersección del conjunto presupuestal y el conjunto de consumo....

Este trabajo presenta una discusión de los retornos a la inversión en educación y su estimación para el caso colombiano. Se utilizaron dos bases de datos en diferentes periodos del tiempo. La primera es una encuesta realizada para trabajadores bogotanos en 1988 y la segunda, la Encuesta de Calidad de Vida de 1997. De las dos encuestas se encuentra...

I modify the uniform-price auction rules in allowing the seller to ration bidders. This allows me to provide a strategic foundation for underpricing when the seller has an interest in ownership dispersion. Moreover, many of the so-called "collusive-seeming" equilibria disappear.

Las nuevas teorías del crecimiento económico y los desarrollos en la economía de la salud han planteado, de forma paralela, una relación recíproca entre la salud y el crecimiento. Interrogantes como ¿cuáles son los aportes de la salud al crecimiento económico? son recientes en la agenda de investigación. El reto está en unir estos esfuerzos y const...

The new theories of economic growth and developments in health economics have both suggested a reciprocal relationship between health and growth. Questions such as the contribution of health to growth are recent in the research agenda of economists. The challenge lies in uniting these two research efforts and building a theory that includes health...