Research

Working papers

• The Unintended Consequences of Place-Based 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, widely adopted to attract investment and stimulate employment in targeted locations. Yet, they target a narrow set of firms, raising questions about how benefits and employment gains are distributed within local labor markets. 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

  Nordic Conference in Development Economics 2026*, European Development Economics Group (EDEG) Conference 2026*, EAYE 2026*, CSAE Oxford 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

• Public Care Provision and Violence within Households: Evidence from Bogotá (with Natalia Labrador)
  Draft available upon request
  Effects of spatially targeted care policy on domestic violence
  Abstract

  Domestic violence remains one of the most prevalent and persistent social problems worldwide, yet the causal role of unpaid care work as a determinant of household violence remains underexplored. We provide novel causal evidence on this question by studying Bogotá's Care Blocks program, a large-scale place-based care infrastructure policy providing integrated care services designed to substitute for unpaid work performed by women caregivers. Using administrative records on domestic violence incidents and exploiting the staggered roll-out of Care Blocks together with variation in household proximity to the centers in a difference-in-differences framework, we show that exposure to these Care Block services significantly reduces domestic violence by 22\%, with the largest effects on intimate partner violence (IPV) and violence against children (VAC). We further show that effects operate through reduced exposure to perpetrators at home, driven by enrollment in Care Blocks activities, namely sports and recreational activities for children and educational activities for women, which restructure daily routines and increase supervision of children. These findings suggest that place-based care infrastructure investments targeting caregiving burdens can serve as an effective and scalable violence-prevention policy, with implications for the design of care systems in developing countries.

  Presentation

  LISER Gender and Economics Workshop*, AMSE DEVPOL informal 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

• SEZs and Domestic Violence: Evidence from Africa
• Place-based cross-subsidies and self-employment (with Ricardo Guzman)