en flag
en flag

ACADEMICS

State Efficiency / Government Spending

We may trust that some governments do their best to spend taxpayer money efficiently (lowest cost, highest possible quality with a great outcome), but this is far from reality in many cases. I specialize in Latin America, a region fraught with corruption and inefficiency that imposes heavy suffering on its population given a historical chain of terrible, rent-seeking related decisions. I have tried to study some details of fiscal policy, portraying wasteful spending and suggesting ways to correct it.

Ongoing Projects:

Audit Agencies, Inefficiency and Corruption in Colombia

Following our publication together with Pablo Sanabria and Paul Hasselbrink (see below) about the lack of transparency and the complex multilayered system of politicized audit in Colombia, we have continued our research focusing on the metropolitan region of Medellin. Problems with these agencies involve lack of technical knowledge, politicization, overlaps of responsibility and perverse incentives that foster injustice. 

Government Branding and Wasteful Spending Cultures

Together with my colleague Hasan Koc, expert in digitalization and quantitative methods, we are studying government branding at an international scale after presenting experimental evidence about Colombia. Credibility of any content can be altered if a political logo appears with it, biasing what should be neutral work. See our first publication on this topic below. We are working now at expanding the scope and screening dozens of countries for so-called "government brands", i.e. the short term logos that politicians use instead of making the best use of long term institutional symbols.

Armored Cars and Wasteful Spending Cultures

You have surely seen Presidential motorcades somewhere in the world; some have a Hollywood-like style, with rumbling SUVs, shaded windows and wired up bodyguards ready to jump on anyone who poses a threat. But let us look closer, especially in the countries that do not have the same economic capacity to buy armored cars without a major financial effort, and I do not mean vehicles for the President, Prime Minister, etc, but for a very big group of politicians and bureaucrats. In the developing world, spending has a wasteful dimension when luxury cars are bought instead of equally viable, robust cars that cost much less. I have shown this in several articles, hoping that the unnecessary surcharges faced by the taxpayer can be repurposed for schools, hospitals and infrastructure, not for a better car model that has to be changed every three years. See below or follow this link for a press interview on the matter (video available below).

50 euro on brown wooden table
50 euro on brown wooden table

Publications

Contact


behar@berlin-international.de

Address

Berlin, Bogotá, Monterrey or Madrid