The research component of TREES funds projects exploring labor market policies, social norms, environmental justice, and political segregation from various perspectives and methodologies.
From which school did you graduate? Recognition and discrimination towards alumni of public schools.
This research represents the project's second phase, delving into the impact of attending a public school when entering the job market. Led by Juan Camilo Cárdenas, Leopoldo Fergusson, and Andrés Barinas—professors at the Universidad de los Andes' Faculty of Economics—and Paula Remicio, a student in the university's Master's in Economics PEG program, who serves as a research assistant. This phase specifically aims to understand the determinants of success in the initial job search for students pursuing internships, with a focus on the influence of having attended either a public or private school.
The initial phase of the research, led by Cárdenas and Fergusson, is centered around the following question: Does graduating from a public school affect one's chances of entering the job market? In the Colombian context, public education can carry negative connotations when considering a candidate for a job position. The first factor is the perception that public education is of lower quality compared to private education. The second factor is related to what researchers call"Intangible Social Assets" (ISA). This refers to the idea that attending school in an upper-class context brings social, cultural, and symbolic capital that favors graduates of private schools when applying for certain jobs.
To assess this question, Cárdenas and Fergusson conducted a social experiment in which volunteer students ranked a series of job candidates based on favorability for two job profiles. The candidates' resumes were crafted to compare factors such as university GPA, performance in the Saber Pro test, the field of study, and the type of school from which the candidate graduated, among others.
The experiment yielded two significant findings. Firstly, the factor of public vs. private education does indeed have a negative effect when evaluating candidates, even when academic performance information is positive. Secondly, volunteers positively valued the merit of candidates from public schools with good academic performance. However, this positive effect was not stronger than the bias related to Intangible Social Assets (ISA). The conclusion drawn from these results is that the weight of social capital is so substantial that merely enhancing public education is insufficient to eliminate inequality in the job market entry for students from public schools.
Building on these results, in the second part of the study, Cárdenas, Fergusson, Barina, and Remicio are working to understand the factors that contribute to the success of the transition from university to the job market, considering the impact of the type of school.
Environmental justice
Professors Sandra Aguilar and Juan Camilo Cárdenas, from the Faculty of Economics at the University of the Andes, direct their research towards environmental justice. They delve into the repercussions of environmental degradation on impoverished populations in Latin American and Caribbean countries. The disparities in geographical conditions, the exploitation of natural resources by transnational corporations, and the historical and cultural context lead to a unique impact on the health of these communities. Furthermore, the inequalities in health and human capital pose obstacles to sustainable development.
Based on this context, researchers are tasked with quantifying these inequalities. They emphasize the need to establish estimates of the magnitude and evolution of air pollution exposure among ethnic and rural groups, compared to the central urban population. To achieve this, they will utilize satellite data measuring pollution and other forms of environmental degradation, as well as the Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR), to compare data over time and across countries.
With this data, researchers aim to address the following questions:
- Is the poorer population being segregated into uninhabitable spaces?
- Are poverty traps being created by environmental factors?
Additionally, they hope to contribute to the discussion on the role of public policies in creating inequalities among social groups through the way they promote land regulation or urbanization, among other factors.
Street Violence and Segregation on Twitter during the National Strike in Colombia, April-July 2021.
Professor Tomás Rodriguez, from the Faculty of Economics at Universidad de los Andes, directs his research towards understanding the segregation that occurred during the National Strike of 2021 in Colombia through Twitter. According to Rodriguez, the investigation aims to comprehend the obstacles stemming from the profound inequalities in Latin America. The goal of this research is to enhance the understanding of the political segregation among the most active participants in the Twitter community in Colombia.
Hasta el momento, el proyecto ha implementado tres pasos. Primero, la construcción de una base de datos que incluye información de las cuentas más activas entre abril y junio del 2021, cuando sucedió el Paro Nacional. Segundo, el uso de una base de datos más amplia para la clasificación de las cuentas en diferentes ideologías. Tercero, la escritura de los algoritmos necesarios para generar índices de segregación individual y agregada.
Rodriguez's purpose is to continue the research by applying the algorithms to the entire database and draw conclusions related to three main objectives: the Social Separation Index (SSI) and external events, the virality of posts within the individual's group versus outside the group, and the bridges formed across gaps in the digital network.
Antisocial norms and prosperity
Professor José Guerra, from the Faculty of Economics at Universidad de los Andes, focuses this research on understanding how "antisocial norms" can hinder positive social transformation and the generation of prosperity and well-being. Guerra defines antisocial norms as collective behavior followed by a significant portion of the population, even if they do not promote economic efficiency or prosocial conduct. Studying these norms is relevant because they are part of the informal rules governing human interactions, and they alter the way people respond to "formal" or institutional rules. Moreover, it's crucial to understand that these norms can change.
Guerra's research has three objectives:
- Determine the set of social norms that hinder socially desirable outcomes.
- Understand how these social norms operate.
- Design interventions to combat them.
The research methodology involves identifying a broad set of harmful social norms in Colombia and other Latin American countries. It includes designing laboratory experiments to study the level of individuals' exposure to these antisocial norms. The next step is to investigate whether socially desirable outcomes, such as honesty and justice, occur when these antisocial norms are present. Finally, the project involves comparing the behaviors of different countries with their levels of development. The results of this research will be used to influence policies that counteract the effect of antisocial norms, promoting the development of greater well-being and prosperity in the global South.
Labor market policies in a context of informality.
Andrés Álvarez, Manuel Fernández y Óscar Becerra, profesores de la Facultad de Economía de la Universidad de los Andes, centran su investigación en los contextos de trabajo informal del sur global. Señalan que los mecanismos que tiene el Estado para regular políticas laborales y proteger trabajadores, en especial en momentos de crisis económicas, se limitan a ambientes en los cuales las relaciones laborales son formales. Ante esta situación, el trabajo informal es vulnerable a mayor deterioro económico, destrucción de trabajos y pérdidas de ingresos, lo cual resulta en mayor inequidad.
Este escenario los lleva a plantearse dos preguntas clave que dirigen la investigación:
- ¿Cómo pueden los gobiernos expandir sus herramientas para mejorar la intervención en el sector informal y proteger a los trabajadores en momentos complicados?
- ¿Las herramientas usadas están creando efectos adversos no intencionales en trabajadores informales, segregándolos más e incrementando inequidades?
Su objetivo es producir resultados que, a partir de una diversidad de perspectivas y experiencias, abran la discusión sobre mejores formas en las cuales los gobiernos pueden interactuar con el sector informal y proteger a sus trabajadores.
The interplay between citizen and government corruption: Cheating, self-serving reasoning, and attitudes towards the public sphere
Leopoldo Fergusson
Critical to the functionality of any capable state is a positive state-citizen relationship, as underscored by various state theories. This relationship, integral for effective accountability and state legitimacy, can, however, be undermined by individual actions and beliefs, fostering a self-reinforcing cycle of private cheating and public corruption. Our project delves into the intriguing prospect that private dishonest behavior engenders motivated reasoning regarding the prevalence of corruption in society. Specifically, individuals who engage in dishonest acts are motivated to perceive others, including politicians and state functionaries, as similarly dishonest. This motivated reasoning, in turn, gives rise to corrosive perspectives on the state, ranging from disengagement to rationalizing others’ corrupt behavior and exaggerating the actual extent of public corruption. In essence, private dishonesty fuels self-serving reasoning, contributing to the erosion of the common good.
Housing markets and socioeconomic discrimination
Leopoldo Fergusson & Ignacio Sarmiento
Housing discrimination can steer groups toward disadvantaged neighborhoods and can have a negative effect on their welfare (Christensen and Timmins, 2022). To understand the impact of discriminatory behavior on economic outcomes, it’s important to separate it from other factors, such as income disparities or housing preferences. However, most research on discrimination has focused on gender, ethnic, and racial minorities in developed countries, in the first interaction between renters and landlords, on blatant forms of discrimination, and its overall effect without considering more subtle barriers imposed in the housing search process in developing and unequal nations. This project aims to address this problem by examining the impact of discrimination on the rental housing market of Bogota, Colombia, where renting is common (Vargas et al., 2017), and integrating experiments into a welfare-theoretic framework of housing search. By expanding beyond the first interaction with landlords, we hope to understand if certain forms of interaction can attenuate discrimination. By doing so, we hope to understand the effects of discrimination on welfare better and inform effective policy measures to combat it.
The impact of group sizes on learning and adjustment
Paula Jaramillo
The course “Pensando Problemas” has two main objectives related to this project: (1) To help students transition from high school mathematics to university level mathematics. Specifically, it aims to teach them to read and write definitions and proofs. (2) To allow students to form relationships with other students in their cohort. Depending on the size of the first-year cohort, each semester there would be 4-6 different sections. All sections of the course involved the same activities, lectures, and tasks in every session, and there were weekly coordination meetings among the instructors, teaching assistants and student monitors in order to foster session to session coordination. Students from all sections were evaluated using identical assessments. The course included a large amount of group work, in groups of different sizes and varying composition throughout the semester. Given the objectives of the class and the fact that most of the students are in first semester, the design favored a personalized teaching experience through small size courses. Therefore, before transitioning to big size classes we want to evaluate the impact on different groups of students that are particularly vulnerable in terms of their confidence to address math problems and lack initial networks in the university.
Impact of “Pensando Problemas” on relative performace in math courses
Paula Jaramillo
The course “Pensando Problemas” has two features that make it unusual. First, the course stresses the importance of using math as a language in which ideas can be expressed very precisely. For this, students translate definitions and ideas from math to Spanish and the other way around. Second, the course uses a flipped classroom methodology. Before each session, students must read 3-7 pages focused on definitions and complete some exercises developed to exploit the subtleties of the definitions and challenge their understanding. The course only uses basic mathematical concepts (sets, functions, and algorithms) to intro- duce students to the math language and symbols in order to read and express ideas. Students and teachers in math classes have anecdotally reported that students who took Pensando Problemas have a better approach to the mathematical concepts and definitions. However, there are several confounding factors that we would like to address. We want to separate the fact that this course is compulsory only for economists. Moreover, taking this class gives a student one more course in math and we might be comparing him with another that just took less math.
A platform for adaptive learning of the syntax and semantics of first order logic, as taught in `Pensando Problemas
Paula Jaramillo
In the foreseeable future, courses like ‘Pensando Problemas’ are likely to integrate computerized learning enhancements leveraging specialized Large Language Models. These models will be capable of guiding individual students through the process of acquiring formal languages, such as first-order logic, at their own pace. With this anticipated transition in mind, our project’s objective is to develop an adaptive learning platform for teaching the syntax and semantics of first-order logic as presented in ‘Pensando Problemas.’ We aim to assess the platform’s effectiveness compared to the traditional, non-adaptive method of delivering practice exercises, which has been employed in the course until now.
