“La Felicidad incluye a todos”. La construcción de un barrio mezclado en Bogotá.

El trabajo se enmarca en las discusiones relacionadas con segregación espacial, segregación social y construcción de barrios mezclados. Específicamente, selecciona el caso de La Felicidad: ciudad parque en Bogotá como un ejemplo que sirve para analizar las políticas públicas enfocadas en disminuir la segregación residencial en la ciudad a partir de la construcción de un vecindario que está compuesto por vivienda de interés social y vivienda regular. A partir de métodos cuantitativos y cualitativos se analiza cómo esta funcionando esta propuesta urbana.

Human Security in India. A Mixed Bag

With security being viewed as ensuring protection from physical and mental harm, freedom from want and fear, human security has moved to the centre stage of the global development agenda. This paper argues that even with low income, one can achieve higher human development like higher life expectancy, lower fertility and high literacy. Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate of India, has characterised it as “development as freedom”. Lack of substantive freedom is inexorably linked to economic poverty and backwardness. Nearly all States in India have succeeded in reducing poverty, but those States with better human development have fared better. The trickle-down alone will not spread the benefits of reform. Measured State intervention and adequate provision of safety nets for the vulnerable sections of people are needed to make development more sustainable. Democracy and development go hand in hand. The democratic, accountable and transparent governance is the best insurance against poverty and marginalisation. The test of good governance must be premised on how the State and civil society negotiate differences via constitutional guarantees and political institutions. Good governance is the key to equitable growth.-----Con la visión de la seguridad como la garantía de protección contra daños físicos y mentales, de estar liberados de necesidades y temores, la seguridad humana ha pasado a ser la estrella central del programa del desarrollo global. En este trabajo se argumenta que, incluso con ingresos bajos, uno puede lograr un mayor desarrollo humano, como una esperanza de vida más larga, una menor fertilidad y una mejor educación. Amartya Sen, Premio Nobel de India, lo ha caracterizado como “el desarrollo como libertad”. La falta de libertad fundamental está vinculada inexorablemente a la pobreza económica y el retraso. Casi todos los Estados de la India han reducido la pobreza con éxito, pero aquellos que tienen un mejor desarrollo humano han salido mejor. Tan solo esta reducción paulatina no va a difundir los beneficios de la reforma. La intervención medida del Estado y su adecuado suministro de redes de seguridad para los sectores vulnerables de la población son necesarios para hacer más sostenible el desarrollo. La democracia y el desarrollo van de la mano. El gobierno democrático, responsable y transparente es el mejor seguro contra la pobreza y la marginalización. La prueba del buen gobierno debe tener como premisa la forma en que el Estado y la sociedad civil negocien las diferencias a través de garantías constitucionales e instituciones políticas. El buen gobierno es la clave para el crecimiento justo.

Mixed oligopoly in education

This paper studies oligopolistic competition in education markets when schools can be private and public and when the quality of education depends on ìpeer groupî e§ects. In the Örst stage of our game schools set their quality and in the second stage they Öx their tuition fees. We examine how the (subgame perfect Nash) equilibrium allocation (qualities, tuition fees and welfare) is a§ected by the presence of public schools and by their relative position in the quality range. When there are no peer group e§ects, e¢ ciency is achieved when (at least) all but one school are public. In particular in the two school case, the impact of a public school is spectacular as we go from a setting of extreme di§erentiation to an e¢ cient allocation. However, in the three school case, a single public school will lower welfare compared to the private equilibrium. We then introduce a peer group e§ect which, for any given school is determined by its student with the highest ability. These PGE do have a signiÖcant impact on the results. The mixed equilibrium is now never e¢ cient. However, welfare continues to be improved if all but one school are public. Overall, the presence of PGE reduces the e§ectiveness of public schools as regulatory tool in an otherwise private education sector.

Natural resources, redistribution and Human capital formation

How do resource booms affect human capital accumulation? We exploit time and spatial variation generated by the commodity boom across local governments in Peru to measure the effect of natural resources on human capital formation. We explore the effect of both mining production and tax revenues on test scores, finding a substantial and statistically significant effect for the latter. Transfers to local governments from mining tax revenues are linked to an increase in math test scores of around 0.23 standard deviations. We find that the hiring of permanent teachers as well as the increases in parental employment and improvements in health outcomes of adults and children are plausible mechanisms for such large effect on learning. These findings suggest that redistributive policies could facilitate the accumulation of human capital in resource abundant developing countries as a way to avoid the natural resources curse.