Sandra Rozo

University of Southern California | USC · Department of Finance & Business Economics

This paper studies the effects of enforcement on illegal behavior in the context of a large aerial spraying program designed to curb coca cultivation in Colombia. In 2006, the Colombian government pledged not to spray a 10 km band around the frontier with Ecuador due to diplomatic frictions arising from the possibly negative collateral effects of t...

This paper presents the impact evaluation of a pilot program that treated 57 small organizations of agricultural producers with high risk of getting involved in illegal drug production in Colombia. The program supported producers mainly by facilitating the commercialization of their new licit alternative sources of income. We combine propensity sco...

This paper estimates the impact of the conditional cash transfer program, Red de Oportunidades, on human capital outcomes in areas with different incidences of poverty: indigenous and rural non-indigenous areas of Panama. The analysis relies on data from the Living Standards Measurement Survey of 2008. It uses a propensity score matching technique...

This paper evaluates the impact of agricultural extension services in the Dominican Republic. In particular, we analyze the direct impact of the Program for Technological Support in the Agricultural Sector (PATCA). The analysis relies on a unique dataset gathered by PATCA’s executing unit in 2008. The survey included 1,572 farmers operating in crop...

This document deepens the study of the determinants of firm informality in Colombia using both a quantitative and a qualitative approach. The former is carried out using the Cali and Yumbo Enterprise Census for the year 2005, which allowed, for the frst time, to analyze informality across firms of any size and avoid problems related to sampling. Es...

This document shows that informal firms in Colombia face on average lower access to credit and training programs, higher technological problems and lower profits per worker than formal firms with similar characteristics. In addition, analyzes the impact of the new program for firms' registration -CAEs- created recently in the six principal cities o...

Este documento muestra que las empresas informales en Colombia tienen en promedio menor acceso al crédito y a programas de capacitación, mayores problemas tecnológicos y menores utilidades por trabajador que las empresas formales con características similares. Además, analiza el impacto de la creación de los centros de atención empresarial (CAE) co...

Este documento profundiza el estudio de los determinantes de la informalidad empresarial en Colombia y aporta nueva evidencia al respecto. El análisis se realiza tanto cuantitativa como cualitativamente. El primero se desarrolla con el Censo Empresarial de Cali y Yumbo de 2005, el cual permite estudiar, por primera vez, la incidencia y los determin...

Este documento estudia teóricamente cuál sería el efecto de reducir los costos laborales no salariales sobre la producción y el mercado laboral formal e informal en Colombia. Específicamente se anali-zan dos escenarios: uno en el cual se reducen estos impuestos manteniendo todas las demás variables constantes, y otro, en el que su caída es compensa...

This paper presents two versions of a spatial competition model for the banking sector. The first version, describes a framework that fol- lows closely Salop’s spatial competition model. This version is modi- fied in the second part by introducing the loan market and default risk probabilities for credit. Both theoretical approaches are analyzed em...

Asset prices have recently become a common topic in economic debate. Nevertheless, much time has been spent in determining if they effectively exhibit a bubble component, and not in examining whether asset prices contain relevant information concerning future market developments. This paper is an effort in this direction, aimed towards the construc...

Este documento estudia los determinantes de la informalidad empresarial en Colombia. El análisis se realiza tanto cuantitativa, como cualitativamente. El primero se desarrolla con base en el Censo Empresarial de Cali y Yumbo - 2005, el cual permite estudiar por primera vez la incidencia y los determinantes de la informalidad en empresas de cualquie...

Many analysts consider that lack of security is a major obstacle to growth in Colombia. This paper identifies a structural downturn in economic growth—of nearly two percentage points per year—as a result of the increase in illicit crops and crime rates after 1980. A decline in total factor productivity has been the key channel linking crime and eco...

Este documento estudia las consecuencias de la informalidad tanto sobre las empresas informales como sobre las formales y analiza el impacto de los Centros de Atención Empresarial (CAE) sobre la creación de empresas en las seis ciudades principales de Colombia. El análisis se desarrolla con base en datos de la Encuesta 123 realizada en el año 2001,...

This paper presents a multimarket spatial competition oligopoly model for the Colombian deposit market, in line with the New Em- pirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) approach. In this framework, banks use price and non-price strategies to compete in the market, which allows us to analyze the country and the regional competitive- ness level. The t...