Research

Working papers

• The Unintended Consequences of Industrial Policies: Evidence from Colombia (JMP)
  Aggregate and individual effects of PBPs on the informal sector
  Abstract

  Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are a cornerstone of place-based industrial policy in developing economies, yet their success depends on how local labor markets adjust to new investment opportunities. Using newly assembled georeferenced data linking municipalities, firms, households, and zones, this paper exploits the staggered rollout of SEZs in Colombia between 2005 and 2018 in a difference-in-differences framework to assess their impact on local labor markets and firm dynamics. I find that, at the municipality level, SEZs increase informality without affecting total employment, indicating that the policy reallocates rather than expands local labor demand. This reallocation arises as high-skill–intensive firms entering SEZs compete for scarce skilled labor: wage pressures intensify, high-skill workers experience wage gains, and small, less-productive formal firms that cannot match rising labor costs exit the market. The resulting shift in labor demand reallocates high-skilled workers toward high-productivity firms, while displaced low-skill workers are absorbed into informal occupations. The findings reveal a distortion inherent to place-based industrial incentives: SEZs concentrate benefits among a narrow “club” of high-productivity firms, reshaping the composition of local economies and highlighting the limits of policies that rely on selective incentives.

  Presentation

  CSAE 2026*, LACEA 2025*, UNUWIDER Seminar, JDD Job Market 2025, Helsinki Economics Group Development Seminar, LSE Workshop of Early Career Women in Economic Geography and Spatial Economics, IFS-UCL-LSE/STICERD Development Seminar, HEC PhD seminar 2025, Junior Workshop ENS de Lyon 2024, LAGV 2024, Konstanz Brown Bag Seminar, Urban Economic Association Summer School 2024, QMUL workshop 2024, AMSE PhD seminar

Work in progress

• Artificial intelligence and trade (with Despoina Balouktsi & Priyam Verma)
  Impact of trade on artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and overall economic growth
  Presentation

  ETSG 2024

• Caring for the unpaid caregivers: Evidence from Bogotá (with Natalia Labrador)
  Effects of spatially targeted care policy on women’s labor market outcomes, unpaid care work, and IPV
  Presentation

  AMSE DEVPOL informal seminar

• Place-based cross-subsidies and self-employment (with Ricardo Guzman)
• Technology adoption and informality: Evidence from Zambia
  Competition effects of technology adoption in the presence of a large informal sector