Oportunidades y retos para Diageo con la firma del TLC Colombia- Unión Europea

Diageo es la multinacional líder en producción y comercialización de bebidas espirituosas Premium y cuenta con presencia en más de 80 países incluyendo Colombia, donde la industria de licores presenta una tendencia creciente consecuente con el crecimiento económico del país. Dentro de este contexto, la categoría de bebidas espirituosas juega el papel principal con productos como ron, whisky y aguardiente, con la mayoría de la participación en el mercado nacional. Sin embargo, existe en esta industria un sistema tributario que se presenta como una barrera para la expansión del mercado que tienen los bienes importados. Bajo este marco, se presenta con gran importancia la firma de un Tratado de Libre Comercio con la Unión Europea, el cual a la fecha se encuentra en una etapa avanzada después de haber sido aprobado por el Congreso en Colombia y por la Unión Europea aunque todavía no ha entrado en vigencia. Este tratado podría beneficiar a las compañías productoras y comercializadoras de bebidas europeas, facilitando su ingreso a los mercados departamentales y logrando con esta negociación un mayor control por parte del gobierno nacional a las prácticas anticompetitivas que se llevan a cabo por parte de algunos departamentos. A lo largo de este trabajo se estudia particularmente a la empresa británica Diageo, teniendo en cuenta que su portafolio mayoritariamente proviene de Europa y que existe una tendencia creciente en el consumo de este tipo de bebidas. Asimismo, se estudiará la situación actual del sector de bebidas alcohólicas en Colombia, con lo cual se conocerá más de cerca la posición estratégica de Diageo dentro de la industria y se verá como es el comportamiento de las empresas que participan en esta para las cuales el Tratado traería consigo oportunidades y retos importantes que deben afrontar y aprovechar.

Alcohol consumption in young college students

Descriptive Cross-sectional study involving 787 students from a private university in Bogota. Its objectives were to determine the alcohol consump- tion prevalence, alcoholism and risk of alcoholism and determine the current pattern of alcohol con- sumption. A survey –which included the CAgE index– was used to collect the data. A prevalence of alcoholism of 23%, and of risk of alcoholism of 15% were found. Results show that alcohol con- sumption in university students begins in high school and it is a problematic conduct that it is worth being enlarged and analyzed in greater detail including other variables and perfecting the diag- nosis of alcoholism and its risk in order to achieve early identification and intervention.

"Tell me who you hang out with": Classroom peer effects on psychoactive substances consumption

I look for classroom peer effects for psychoactive substance consumption among Colombian high school students and attempt to identify channels that rationalize for these effects. To do so, I use data for Colombian schools from 2011. I identify peer effects using household consumption behavior to instrument average classroom consumption. I find that an increase of 10% in the proportion of classroom users of alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine increases the probability of students to use alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine in 3.14%, 4.29%, and 2.38% respectively. I find no significant effect on cigarette smoking for the full sample but after exploring heterogeneous effects I find suggestive evidence that the effect is positive in some grades. I find some evidence that indicate that peer effects on alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine consumption operate through risk perception and easiness of access to psychoactive substances, meaning that the increase of likelihood of consumption could be explained because it is easier to access to drugs for students that interact with consumers or because a decrease in the risk students perceive of consuming these substances. Finally, through the use of a SUR and a 3SLS estimator I find strong correlations between smoking cigarettes and consuming cannabis (55 %), and cocaine (60 %).

A DSGE model with loss aversion in consumption and leisure: an explanation for business cycles asymmetries

In this chapter, an asymmetric DSGE model is built in order to account for asymmetries in business cycles. One of the most important contributions of this work is the construction of a general utility function which nests loss aversion, risk aversion and habits formation by means of a smooth transition function. The main idea behind this asymmetric utility function is that under recession the agents over-smooth consumption and leisure choices in order to prevent a huge deviation of them from the reference level of the utility; while under boom, the agents simply smooth consumption and leisure, but trying to be as far as possible from the reference level of utility. The simulations of this model by means of Perturbations Method show that it is possible to reproduce asymmetrical business cycles where recession (on shock) are stronger than booms and booms are more long-lasting than recession. One additional and unexpected result is a downward stickiness displayed by real wages. As a consequence of this, there is a more persistent fall in employment in recession than in boom. Thus, the model reproduces not only asymmetrical business cycles but also real stickiness and hysteresis.