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The tension between public space protection and the right to work entitled to the peddlers and itinerant vendors have been solved in Colombia with the application of the legitimate expectations principle. The present paper describes and analyzes the case of peddlers who work on the Plaza España in Bogotá. The case is shown as an example of solidarity between civil society and the state. The level of trust generated between the parts involved (the peddlers and the district administration) was due to legal tools given by the Colombian social rule of law. This paper is the result of a research based on documents, laws and jurisprudence in addition to a field work (ethnographic observation and interviews, besides historical sources), which started on 2007 with the thesis of Laura Llinás to obtain her undergraduate degree in law in the Law Department at the Universidad de los Andes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper attempts to measure empirically the externalities generated by the street vendors in four zones of the city. Given the lack of information censuses and surveys were carried out during December of 2004 and January 2005. The descriptive statistics show that the established commerce is less formal than expected; whereas the street vendors are mostly stationary, exhibit reduced scale and low space rivalry. The econometric estimations show that the congestion of the public space generated by street vendors has a negative impact on both sales and employment of established retail commerce. The simulations of a reduction of street vendors pinpoint that although street sales account for just 2% of total sales in the four areas under study, they reduce 14% and 16% sales and employment of formal retail commerce respectively. Finally, some limitations of the methodological strategy are raised and some public policy proposals to face the phenomenon are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]