research

We study whether two large-scale educational investments act as complements in the production of human capital. We combine the staggered expansion of public preschools in Colombia with the subsequent decentralized roll-out of the national school feeding program. Using nearly two decades of administrative records on educational trajectories, we find that these investments are complementary for academic progression: students exposed to preschool are more likely to complete grades 9 and 11, less likely to drop out, and more likely to enroll in higher education when also exposed to school feeding. These complementarities are larger when school feeding is introduced shortly after preschool and fade when introduced in secondary school. Complementarities in academic performance on the high school exit exam are absent on average but also emerge if school feeding is introduced by the end of primary school. While preschool alone has limited effects, school feeding alone yields sizable medium- and long-term gains, suggesting that later investments can partially remediate the absence of early ones.

I study treatment effects under multiple options that lack a clear ranking. When the identifying variation stems from multiple instruments, agents can switch into different options and from many initial states. I discuss how to define and employ conditional response types (combinations of potential choices given by one instrument that depend on the variation of other instruments) to identify the shares of agents switching at well-defined margins of choice and their treatment effects. I present an empirical strategy consistent with this framework and apply it to: subsidies for malaria treatment in Kenya, childcare choice and children’s development in Colombia, and merit- and need-based scholarships for higher education in Colombia. While standard methods identify the local average treatment effect of one option versus the next-best (a combination of fallback alternatives), I show how combining multiple sources of variation and defining conditional response types identifies effects of pairwise combinations of available options.

This paper explores the heterogeneous effects of changing weather patterns and access to natural resources from forestry on the prevalence of different types of conflict within African countries. Specifically, we focus on two types of conflict, which we define as conflicts of survival (i.e., pastoralist conflict) and conflicts of power (i.e., rebel conflict). First, we discuss theoretical implications of changes in the environment on conflict events via the Hawk-Dove framework. Empirically, we find that conflicts of survival are more sensitive to drier rainfall periods during the agricultural growing season, are more spontaneous, and that the mechanism explaining their occurrence is economic, through an agricultural channel. Conflicts of power, on the other hand, are affected by weather patterns in both agricultural and non-agricultural areas, are less spontaneous, and are more affected by access to natural resources (i.e., rental capture) compared to conflicts of survival. Mitigation strategies, such as irrigation, have divergent impacts: they lessen the impact of drier periods on conflicts of survival but exacerbate conflicts of power. These results suggests that a one-size fits-all conflict mitigation measure through climate adaptation may be unsuccessful for different types of conflict.

This paper estimates the labor market effects of short-cycle higher education programs in Colombia. Using a potential outcomes framework with partial monotonicity and multiple instruments, we exploit local variation in the availability of institutions specializing in short-cycle programs for identification. Access to these institutions significantly increases enrollment in short-cycle programs, primarily attracting students from the diversion margin, that is, those who would otherwise have enrolled in a bachelor’s program, rather than from the expansion margin, comprising students who would not have pursued higher education otherwise. Enrollment in short-cycle programs increases formal employment among male compliers relative to their next-best alternative, while effects on wages are not statistically significant.

Environmental degradation is a major public policy challenge, with the Global South being particularly vulnerable to its effects. In developing countries, women and girls often bear a greater burden of climate change and air pollution than men and boys do. While international research suggests that women tend to be more concerned about environmental issues and to adopt more sustainable practices, studies on this topic in the Global South remain scarce. This study examines gender differences in environmental knowledge, attitudes, and practices among secondary school students in Colombia. Our results confirm gender differences in the attitudes dimension, with few statistically significant differences in the other two components. Overall, concern about environmental degradation is high, with half of the respondents ranking it as the most severe issue in their communities and globally. However, girls express greater concern for the environment and feel more responsible for climate change (8–10 percentage points more than boys). We also provide new insights into girls’ greater awareness and familiarity with indoor air pollution (IAP) (a difference of 8.5–9 percentage points), consistently with previous findings documenting a gender gap in exposure to IAP. Our findings can help design and develop inclusive education policies for climate adaptation and mitigation, particularly in Global South countries, in order to empower students in the face of climate change.