The Effects of Socio-Political Instability on the Colombian Productivity: 1952-2000

This paper analyses that other variables besides the economical ones affect the productivity of factors. The document attempts to determine the incidence of violence and the instability in the Colombian economic growth during the last 50 years. The general statement of work makes reference to the importance of economic policies and the political, social and institutional forces in addition to other socio-political variables of unsteadiness on the determination of the growth path of the country. In order to incorporate these factors we fall back on a determined growth model, additionally to the traditional productive factors, by a component directly associated to productivity. Throughout the estimation of this component for the Colombian case we propose to determine the influence of variables such as the rates of homicides, kidnapping, terrorism, drug smuggling, among others, on the behavior of productivity of factors. The Estimations carried out in this work indicate that this last factor is affected by political forces, institutional agreements and social and economic instability.