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The pandemic has affected people’s lives and emotions in profound ways, which governments ignore at their peril. Among the often disregarded consequences of the pandemic, especially in developing countries, are its toll on subjective well-being and its implications for health policymaking. This paper uses a battery of surveys with over 1800 observations collected in 2019 and 2020, which inform on many aspects of subjective well-being before and during the pandemic in Cali, Colombia. The results show a dramatic and widespread reduction in life satisfaction in several dimensions of well-being beyond health, and not just among those directly affected by COVID-19. This analysis focuses on differences in well-being by gender and health status, providing information about gender variances and differences in subjective well-being between those who experienced and those who did not experience physical illness (including the COVID-19 infection) during the pandemic. This analysis aims at contributing to the body of research that studies the consequences of the pandemic for life satisfaction and well-being, in the context of a city experiencing profound social unrest during the pandemic.

This study analyzed biogas production from the anaerobic digestion of Coffee Wastewater (CWW), in Brazil. Physicochemical analyzes of CWW were performed before and after biodigestion. Four biodigesters B1, B2, B3, B4 maintained at 37 °C ± 2 °C were connected to a gasometer. 1.35 L of CWW and 0.15 L of inoculum (sludge from an Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket) were fed into biodigesters B3 and B4, resulting in a total substrate level of 1.5 L for each one. Biodigesters B1 and B2 were fed 1.5 L of CWW that was pH adjusted to 6–8 in all four biodigesters at the start of the biodigestion. Theoretical estimations were given for the biomethane potential (BMP) arising from the chemical oxygen demand (COD). Given the BMP values, economic feasibility analysis was performed for a biogas system implemented in a coffee roasting production system under three scenarios: I - BMP for CWW COD without inoculum; II - BMP for CWW COD with inoculum; and III - BMP for the minimum required level of CWW COD needed for the system to be economically viable. The highest methane content observed was 11.4% in B4, which had the highest relative methane production to removed volatile solids (17.31 LkgVS−1rem).

Labour mobility within a large city or metropolitan area is a necessary condition for the optimal exploitation of agglomeration economies. We propose a method to establish which municipalities should be considered part of a metropolitan area based on labour market integration. In order to aggregate geographically proximate urban municipalities, we develop a network-based model that makes industry productivity (manifesting in formal employment creation) dependent on firms’ ability to find, within city limits, the diversity of skills they need to move to new complex industries. In this way, we uncover the natural city scale at which firms optimally exploit the range of skills available to them within a broad catchment area. Considering Colombian cities, we find that commuting times between 45 and 75 min, corresponding to between 43 and 62 distinct cities or integrated labour markets, allow firms to maximise formal employment creation (between 2008 and 2013). This result supports the development of passenger transport limiting commuting times within cities, connecting small- and mid-size cities to nearby large cities, and coordinating transportation investments across traditional administrative boundaries.

People changing residence within their own country is the most common type of migration and is one of the main driving forces of a country's demography. Yet, due to a lack of data and tools, some key characteristics of internal migration such as the propensity to remain in the same city or to return to previous locations are frequently ignored. Here, a network-based model of city-to-city migration is constructed, where the movement of individuals is modelled using the frequency of distinct network motifs. We fit this model to longitudinal data on 3.3 million workers in Colombia, including 1.4 million migrations, and compare the motif frequency based on migration and return rates between men and women, and between distinct age and income groups. Results show that the majority of people do not move in general, but that there is a small group which exhibits frequent migration, particularly the young and male. Nearly three out of four times that a person moves, they are going back to a previous city, although women and mature people are less likely to move and more likely to return if they actually move. At a city level, different onward and return migration patterns are observed, whereby people from small secondary towns are more likely to leave and not return than people from large metropolitan areas like Bogotá or Medellín.

Based on Akerlof and Kranton (2005) In Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(1), 9–32, who argue that group identity and social norms influence individual preferences towards work effort, a model is developed to understand why firms create good job conditions, taking into account the cost of implementing them and their impact on wages and productivity. Then, using individual-level data from the Gallup World Poll for 18 Latin American countries, the main predictions of the model are tested using propensity score matching. We find a positive link between good job conditions and wages when there are several simultaneous signals of a good work environment. We conclude that there is a positive payoff of investing in good job conditions for both workers and firms.

This paper presents a model of electricity generator that integrates a dual fluidized bed gasifier and a 200 kW gas microturbine; the main objective of this research is to analyze the feasibility of using solid biomass as a fuel in the proposed assemblage. At the beginning, the latest advances in dual fluidized bed gasifier are presented, then the prime mover - gas microturbine - is addressed and after, both technologies operate jointly. The methodology implemented throughout this research is described in order to present and validate the model, which delivered an electrical power of 44.85 kW and showed an overall efficiency of 13.42%. A mathematical expression to determine the generated electrical power by system was developed. Finally, the results are discussed from the perspective of feasibility of implementing this technology.

Para llevar a cabo este estudio la Gerencia Tecnica del Banco de la Republica y la Oficina del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo en Bogota promovieron un concurso entre centros de investigacion colombianos e investigadores del Banco de la Republica, sobre “Desempleo estructural femenino y heterogeneidad regional del mercado laboral colombiano”. Las ocho propuestas seleccionadas forman el cuerpo de este libro, aparte del capitulo introductorio elaborado por Eduardo Lora. Los capitulos son: “Diferencias por sexo en los flujos de trabajadores entre estados laborales y el futuro laboral de las colombianas”, por Hugo Lopez Castano y Francisco Lasso Valderrama, del Banco de la Republica; “Diferencias en las tasas de desempleo por genero”, a cargo de Jaime Tenjo Galarza, Oriana Alvarez Vos y Maria Camila Jimenez, de la Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano; “Heterogeneidad regional en las diferencias por genero de las tasas de desempleo”, desarrollado por Juan C. Duque Universidad Eafit), Gustavo Garcia (Universidad de los Andes), Paula Herrera Idarraga (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana) y Enrique Lopez-Bazo (AQR-IREA, Universidad de Barcelona); “Duracion del desempleo en Colombia: genero, intensidad de busqueda y anuncios de vacantes”, por Luis Eduardo Arango del Banco de la Republica y Ana Maria Rios de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, “Calidad de los vecindarios y oferta laboral femenina en un contexto urbano: un caso aplicado a la ciudad de Medellin”, a cargo de Leonardo Fabio Morales y Lina Cardona Sosa, del Banco de la Republica; “Efectos laborales de los servicios de cuidado infantil: evidencia del Programa Buen Comienzo”, por Lina Cardona Sosa y Leonardo Fabio Morales; “Acceso a fuentes de empleo de las mujeres en Bogota”, por Ana Maria Diaz Escobar, de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, y “Maternidad y mercado laboral: el impacto de la legislacion”, por Natalia Ramirez de la Universidad de Los Andes y Ana Maria Tribin y Carmina O. Vargas, del Banco de la Republica. Los capitulos se derivan de los trabajos de investigacion publicados en las series de Documentos de Trabajo del BID y Borradores de Economia del Banco de la Republica. Los procesos de investigacion y edicion del libro, coordinados por Francesca Castellani y Luis Eduardo Arango, contaron con la asesoria de Eduardo Lora. Las investigaciones se beneficiaron de las sugerencias de Jorge Hugo Barrientos, Raquel Bernal, Gustavo Canavire, Wendy Cunningham, Dolores de la Mata, Marcela Eslava, Luz Adriana Florez, Edwin Goni, Carlos Medina, Hugo Nopo, Nataly Obando, Mauricio Ospina, Ximena Pena y Andres Ramirez, asi como de los dictamenes de evaluadores anonimos. Su esfuerzo, colaboracion y aporte es gratamente valorado.

Combined with housing price data, life satisfaction data can be used to assess the implicit value that individuals attach to all types of urban amenities and features, and to compute to what extent those values are reflected in housing market prices. This chapter explains the theoretical underpinnings of the methodology and reviews the results obtained when applying it to a handful of Latin American cities. It also describes how the results can illuminate public investment and finance decisions oriented towards maximizing the life satisfaction or urban dwellers. The methodology proposed can be easily integrated into the urban monitoring systems in place in a growing number of cities.

This chapter provides an overview of the psychological biases behind the striking gaps between perception and reality in four social domains—health, employment, the perception of security, and social ranking. Biases associated with cultural values are very relevant with respect to health and job satisfaction. Affect and availability heuristics are the dominant sources of bias in perceptions of security. The formation of subjective social rankings appears to be less culturally dependent and more dependent on the level of socioeconomic development of each country. Understanding the gaps between objective and subjective indicators may help clarify public debate on social policy.