Featuring
Adriana Camacho
Visiting Fellow, Center for Global Development
Associate Professor, Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia)
Discussant
Norman Loayza
Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank
What are the unintended health consequences of the drug war? Adriana Camacho will present a recent paper exploiting the variation in aerial spraying on illicit crops across time and space in Colombia. The paper employs a panel of individual health records in order to study the causal effects of aerial spraying of herbicides (Glyphosate) on health-related outcomes.
Camacho and coauthor Daniel Mejia Londono find that an increase in the amount of aerial spraying in a municipality increases the number of medical consultations related to the exposure of Glyphosate for the municipality’s inhabitants. Moreover, while there is no evidence of effects on respiratory diseases, the paper finds strong negative effects on dermatological problems and miscarriages.
Following the move to our new home, CGD has renamed the Massachusetts Avenue Development Seminar series the CGD Invited Research Forum. Now in its thirteenth year, the series brings some of the world's leading development scholars to discuss their new research and ideas. The presentations meet an academic standard of quality and are at times technical, but retain a focus on a mixed audience of researchers and policymakers. For more on the history of the series, check out this blog by Michael Clemens.
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