Drinking more coffee was bad (for developing countries’ industrialization)

Mateo Uribe-Castro is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. This blog post takes “Dependency theory” seriously. The global trade patterns that appeared around 1900 allowed developing countries to export primary goods to the developed world. Did they leverage that push and increased manufacturing and services? Or did they specialize …

Why Colombians still live in Colombia

  While reading Hirschman's essay "Exit, Voice, and the State", I came accross this anecdote about how Colombians reacted every time some situation was puzzling for him. It cannot be more accurate. Since I started grad school, I've been trying to get rid of the reflex of assuming I understand what is going on in Colombia, when in …

Reality demands: What I remember and what I should never forget from Operación Orión

Comuna 13 in 2015 I remember watching it in the news and reading about it in the papers when I was 10.  Tanks and helicopters surveilling the streets of my city. A four day war that began on October 16th, 2002. It is one thing seeing a tank parked by the road with a couple …