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This paper describes some indicators of the Colombian educational system considering the effect of the pandemic and assesses the causal effect of an alternation plan between face-to-face and remote education, conducted in 2020, on the results of an achievement test. Indicators reveal that the pandemic caused a greater demand for education services in public schools, increased dropout, and repetition rates, and widened the gaps in academic performance. The causal empirical exercise indicates that the students who participated in the experiment obtained, on average, better results in the achievement test compared to students who remained in the non-face-to-face scheme.

• One of the most important achievements for Colombian women in the 20th century was the significant increase in their labor force participation. • The demographic transition had a significant impact on female labor participation until the mid-1980s. • Married women played a crucial role in boosting female labor force participation, thanks to legislative and social changes enabling them. • The study analyzes factors influencing women's employment opportunities over time and highlights the importance of the historical context. • Educational advances, economic growth, demographic transition, and changes in social norms have all contributed to women's labor dynamics. This paper examines the evolution of women's participation in the labor market from 1960 to 2018, shedding light on the complex factors that influence their labor opportunities. The study emphasizes the significance of the historical context in understanding these factors. This research uncovers nuanced insights using a two-step methodology involving principal component analysis and Time-Varying Effect Modeling (TVEM). The results indicate that the transition from high to low fertility rates significantly influenced female labor participation until the mid-1980s. Educational advancements, economic growth, and changing marital dynamics also played a role in shaping evolving patterns. From 1980 to 1995, factors such as diminishing fertility, declining infant mortality, and varying economic conditions influenced women's labor involvement. From 1995 to 2010, higher education emerged as a key driver, accompanied by shifting societal norms, and from 2010 to 2018, there were positive contributions from fertility rates, minimum wage, and male labor participation. This study underscores the intricate relationship between education, demographics, social norms, and economics in shaping women's labor force participation, providing valuable insights for gender-inclusive policies and promoting women's economic empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores in detail the transfer and investment components of the General Budget of the Nation, whose composition is complex to evaluate due to the nature and variety of its items. For the study of these items, the literature on the political economy of the budget and the budget process in Colombia is considered. The transfer and investment items represent about 60 % of the General Budget and have great inflexibility of public spending, due to the diversity of appropriations with legal backing, especially in the transfer's item. The investment is made up of a wide range of social programs, subsidies, and infrastructure projects, which in some cases correspond to commitments acquired in previous terms, through the so-called future terms. The rigidity of the budget deepens with the frequent approval of laws that generate additional spending on a temporary or permanent basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to estimate the impact of price and oil production shocks on macroeconomic variables such as public debt, real exchange rate, and Colombian economic activity. This country depends to a large extent on oil exports, which could lead to different obstacles in macroeconomic management when prices and oil production record fluctuations. The paper first describes the importance of oil in Colombia, which went from being a completely-importing country in 1976 to an oil-exporting economy in 1986. The empirical analysis uses a time-varying vector autoregressive methodology, which assumes that the relation between prices and oil production with macroeconomic variables changes dynamically. The results confirm that there are different stochastic volatility patterns of the variables included in the model. According to the impulse response functions, positive oil price shocks did not cause significant effects on the real exchange rate or on government debt. However, the negative price shock in 2015 led to a real depreciation and an increase in public debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the size of the State in an international context and analyzes the behavior of public spending in Colombia during the last two decades. It takes a theoretical and empirical review of optimal public spending, and presents international comparisons of the size of the State which support the Wagner Law: the size of the State grows at the same rate or at a higher rate than income. It also describes the evolution of central national government spending based on the traditional economic classification, and reviews the evolution of government spending according to purpose, emphasizing social spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between individual health status and labor force participation using the first wave of the Colombian Longitudinal Survey. The empirical modeling strategy accounts for the presence of potential endogeneity between these two variables. The results show that there is a positive relationship between health and labor force participation in both directions, indicating that better health is likely to lead to a higher probability of participation in the labor market, but also that individuals who participate in the labor market are more likely to report better health. Interesting differences are uncovered when comparing the results by gender and/or age groups. For instance, for younger females, health status and higher education positively affect the probability of labor participation, whereas having children under the age of 5 and being married reduce their probability of participation. Our findings also highlight the importance of public policy to guarantee good health conditions of the population which could also have a positive impact on labor productivity and consequently on long-run economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of the results in the provision of public education under different institutional contexts is carried out for Colombia where, during the decentralization process, different degrees of autonomy to manage education public expenditures have coexisted. The analysis is undertaken by using frontier analysis techniques, which allow us to estimate cost and production functions, in order to determine differences in costs and technical efficiency in the provision of education across regions. The results show that the strength of decentralization had a more positive impact on increasing enrollment than on the improvement of the quality of education. It was also found, that high levels of cost and production inefficiency are present in different regions of the country, implying that savings in public expenditure and better educational results could be achieved if all local authorities could operate at the most efficient level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]