Cuba has moved from a lengthy first stage (1990–2008), in which reforms were considered a necessary but reversible evil, to another in which reforms are seen as necessary and desirable. However, the lack of a comprehensive and timely approach to those processes has severely hampered the outcomes of reforms already underway. The purpose of preserving political control and the inherited institutional framework explains, in turn, why authorities have tried to maintain a logic of rationed economic reforms at the cost of harming their effectiveness.

Durante décadas, la violencia ha afectado el desarrollo económico, político y social de Colombia. En este trabajo evaluamos los efectos de los delitos violentos contra las personas y la propiedad privada sobre el comportamiento de la inversión neta de la industria manufacturera en los departamentos de Colombia durante el periodo 2000-2013. Este trabajo se basa en los modelos propuestos por Acevedo y Mora (2009) y Acevedo y Garcia (2015) y emplea información estadística de la Encuesta Anual de Manufactura y diversas formas de violencia (secuestros, robos y homicidios) obtenidas de la base de datos de la Revista Criminalidad para los 32 departamentos y Bogotá, D. C. Para ello se emplea un modelo de datos panel y se usa la bondad del ajuste como criterio para seleccionar los modelos que mejor se ajustan a los datos. La evidencia empírica muestra que la violencia medida por el número de secuestros, más que los homicidios y robos, es el fenómeno que más ha afectado la inversión en Colombia. Específicamente, un aumento del 1% en el número de secuestros reduce la inversión neta en un 0,04%. Estos resultados mostraron que Bolívar, Caquetá, Cesar, Meta y Tolima fueron los departamentos más afectados por la violencia en Colombia durante el periodo.

Urban growth has impacted natural ecosystems such as wetlands. This situation destabilizes the beneficial contributions of nature, generating a socioeconomic effect. There is a need to quantify the benefits of wetlands in developing countries and urban areas, where the growth of cities is fastest. This is the first valuation study of urban and peri-urban wetlands in Colombia. The methodology includes a benefit transfer (BT) method with a geographical information system (GIS) and an exploratory governance analysis. Because there are few studies on the economic valuation of urban wetlands in Latin America, we present a methodology of interest, which can be easily replicated in other cities of this subcontinent. Based on an economic approach, our results find that 76% of the total value of wetlands is provided by ecosystem services (ES) of existence and legacy value, followed by maintenance of the life cycle of migratory species and water supply. Urban areas are identified where users benefit more than areas where the population exerts greater pressure on wetlands. Weak governance is due to the disarticulation between regulation, land-use planning, and the social-ecological system. This research contributes to urban wetland management policies, as well as to sustainable solutions in cities.

Esta investigación identifica los efectos del fenómeno migratorio venezolano en un grupo clave de indicadores que aproxima diferentes dimensiones económicas y sociales del departamento de Norte de Santander en el periodo 2012-2019, por medio de un análisis descriptivo y la estimación de un modelo de regresión lineal. Se encontró que casi la totalidad de los indicadores de empleo examinados muestran un marcado deterioro en Norte de Santander, en momentos en que crece el flujo migratorio desde Venezuela, y sobresale un incremento en la demanda de servicios públicos. Se estimó un efecto neto negativo estadísticamente significativo de la migración en el crecimiento económico. La estimación del impacto de la crisis económica venezolana, examinado mediante el canal de comercio exterior, no fue concluyente. El departamento logró suavizar los impactos diversificando los socios comerciales y transformando su canasta exportadora.

Peace agreements may inadvertently increase selective violence against civilians when they are incomplete in two key dimensions. First, only a fraction of the existing armed groups participates in the agreement. Second, the legitimate government fails to establish an institutional presence in the areas previously controlled by those who do participate. Under these two conditions, the resulting vacuum of power may attract active armed groups who engage in selective civilian victimization to obtain control. Studying the recent Colombian experience, we find that the permanent ceasefire declared by the FARC insurgency in 2014 led to a surge in the targeting of community leaders in former FARC strongholds, perpetrated by armed groups excluded from the peace process, with the goal of consolidating their dominance in those areas. Critically, selective victimization is attenuated by some dimensions of state capacity and exacerbated in places that are more valuable as proxied by the existence of recent land conflicts.

This study uses the metafrontier Malmquist-Luenberger index to measure changes in the productivity of 4587 schools in the Colombian education system. Public and private schools are differentiated and all the schools participated in the Saber 11 standardized test between 2014 and 2017 in the subjects of mathematics, reading, sciences, social and citizen sciences and English. This methodology is appropriate to measure productivity while using good and bad outputs in the educational context. The general results indicate deterioration in both sectors; this behavior is due to the change in best practices and the change in efficiency. Large gaps are also found between departments.