Journal Articles

Austin, W., Carattini, S., Gomez-Mahecha, J., & Pesko, M. F. (2023). The effects of contemporaneous air pollution on COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 119, 102815, DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2023.102815. 

Maldonado J. H., Gomez-Mahecha J., León-Jurado V., Villa L & Rodríguez D. A. (2022). Implementation of graduation programs for alleviating rural poverty: an impact analysis in Paraguay. Journal of Development Effectiveness, DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2022.2153379. 

Carriazo, F., & Gomez-Mahecha, J. (2018). The Demand for Air Quality: A Case Study in Bogotá, Colombia. Environment and Development Economics, 23 (2), 121-138., DOI: 10.1017/S1355770X18 000050. 

Policy Briefs

Maldonado J. H., Gomez-Mahecha J. & Rosada T. (2015).  Rural development programmes and conditional cash transfers: examining synergistic effects in Latin America. Policy in Focus: Social Protection, Entrepreneurship and Labour Market Activation, 12(2), 30-32. 

Books

Maldonado J. H., Moreno-Sánchez R., Gómez-Mahecha J. & León V. (comp.) (2016). Protección, Producción, Promoción. Explorando sinergias entre protección social y fomento productivo rural en América Latina. Ediciones Uniandes, Bogotá, Colombia. 

Book Chapters

Maldonado J. H., Gómez-Mahecha J. & León V. (2016).  Sinergias entre políticas de protección social y proyectos de desarrollo rural: aproximación desde la literatura existente y la teoría. In Maldonado J. H., Moreno-Sánchez R., Gomez-Mahecha & León V. (comp.) (2016). Protección, Producción, Promoción. Explorando sinergias entre protección social y fomento productivo rural en América Latina. Ediciones Uniandes, Bogotá, Colombia.

Working Papers

Hidden Damages: Facing Heterogeneity in the Effect of Air Pollution on Regional GDP (with Lara Aleluia-Reis and Cristina Cattaneo). [Manuscript]

Standard estimates of the economic costs of air pollution assume (directly or indirectly) that causal effects and instrument strength are homogeneous across regions. We relax this assumption and show that it matters. Using a panel of European NUTS3 regions from 2000 to 2022, we estimate the effect of PM2.5 on regional GDP per capita through a strategy that jointly accounts for heterogeneity in both the instruments' first stage and the causal response. For the average effect, we implement the Flexible IV (FIV) estimator from the Double-Debiased Machine Learning literature, allowing instrument strength to vary across biogeographical regions. Our preferred estimate is a 0.3 percent decline in GDP per capita per microgram per cubic meter increase in annual PM2.5 - approximately one-third of the reported  by conventional two-stage least squares specifications in previous work. Coupling the FIV with an IV Causal Forest yields conditional causal responses that span -1.22 to 0.1 percent, with a long left tail. Statistically significant heterogeneity is driven by regional dependence on agriculture and manufacturing, and by historical exposure to pollution, reflecting the interplay between vulnerability and adaptive capacity. We then allocate the localized damage estimates across income quintiles using microdata from the EU Labor Force Survey and the Survey on Income and Living Conditions. The resulting distributional pattern is non-monotonic: middle-income quintiles bear the largest proportional losses while the top quintile is the least affected.

Colombian Carbon Tax: Evidence of Carbon Pricing in a Developing Context. [Manuscript]

Colombia implemented its carbon tax in 2017, becoming the 3rd country in Latin America and the 23rd in the world to have one. It is an important example of how middle and low-income countries have started implementing this market-based strategy. This paper seeks to understand the effects of the Colombian tax on the emissions of CO2. I use several counterfactual estimators to identify the causal impact of the carbon tax on Colombia's CO2 emissions per capita. I find conflicting evidence. The preferred estimates suggest that the tax has reduced emissions per capita by 6 to 8 percent of the pre-tax emissions. However, the results are not statistically significant. An alternative identification strategy relying on regional exemptions does not find statistically significant effects of the tax rate on the consumption of selected fuels, suggesting that the tax rate might be too low. This paper further discusses tax and quasi-experimental design features that might explain the lack of significant results.

The National Sword Policy and the EU waste market (with Eugenie Joltreau and Luis Sarmiento).

Implemented in 2018, China’s National Sword Policy (NSP) imposed strict restrictions on waste imports, particularly for plastics and paper, creating a large and quasi-exogenous shock to European waste exports. Because EU recycling targets can be met through both domestic recycling and exports for recycling, the policy disrupted an important compliance channel. Using panel data on packaging recycling rates by material and country, we implement a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) strategy that exploits variation in exposure across materials. We find that recycling rates for paper and plastics declined significantly following the ban, indicating that export-based recycling played an important role in supporting European recycling performance prior to the policy change. To assess medium-run adaptation, we also examine technological responses using patent data on recycling-related innovations and a DiD approach using other green technologies as a control group. We find a significant increase in patenting activity related to plastics and packaging recycling in Europe. By analyzing both recycling outcomes and innovation activity, the paper provides evidence on the dependence of European recycling systems on foreign recycling capacity and on their ability to adapt following a major disruption to global waste trade.

The Cost of Excluding Coal from a Carbon Tax: The Colombian Case (with Cindy Azuero-Pedraza).

Colombia was one of the developing countries implementing a carbon tax in the wave of carbon pricing programs in the early and mid-2010s, imposing a tax of US$ 5/tCO2 by 2017. Previous research has explored the consequences of the tax on the country's emissions, finding no statistically significant effects. Among the possible reasons that have been considered, there is an unusual exemption on coal from the tax base. This paper seeks to explore and quantify the effects of this exemption on the Colombian economy and environment, while posing a bigger question: how do we measure the costs of exemptions in a carbon tax? By solving a CGE model that closely follows the Colombian design, we found that the coal exemption is responsible for preventing the reduction of the equivalent of 1,579 thousand metric tons of CO2. The exemption also makes the cost per reduced emissions 38% higher and is equivalent to a subsidy of 0.38% on the price of coal. Furthermore, our sensitivity tests on key exogenous parameters suggest our estimates are conservative.

Work in Progress 

The “too near” effect of Urban greenway trails: The Case of Atlanta’s BeltLine (With Spencer Banzhaf and Allyson Emblom-Hooe)

Past experience

Spring 2026

Global Environmental Challenges (graduate) – Guest lecture in Econometrics for Climate Change

Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy. 1st session | 2nd session | 3rd session | 4th session

Spring 2022

Principles of macroeconomics (undergraduate) – Instructor

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY, Atlanta, U.S.A. Syllabus | Teaching evaluations

Summer 2020

Introduction to econometrics (undergraduate) – Instructor (online)

UNIVERSIDAD DE LOS ANDES, Bogota, Colombia. Syllabus | Teaching evaluations

2014 - 2018

Introduction to econometrics (undergraduate) – Teaching Assistant

UNIVERSIDAD DE LOS ANDES, Bogota, Colombia. 

2016

Consumer and Firm Theory (undergraduate) – Teaching Assistant

UNIVERSIDAD DE LOS ANDES, Bogota, Colombia. 

Other designed courses

Herramientas de Análisis de Política Ambiental (Analytical Tools for Environmental Policy) Syllabus

Courses

Recent Application of AI in Environmental and Resource Economics. EAERE Summer School 2026. Santiago di Compostela, Spain. June 2026. (with scholarship)

Awards and Honors

The E.D. (Jack) Dunn Fellowship, awarded annually to a deserving graduate student in the AYS school with academic and research interests in public finance, financial regulatory policy impact on national, region and local economics, or public management. April 2023.

The Jack Blicksilver Scholarship, awarded annually to a student who excels in economics. Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Economics Department. April 2022.

Fulbright - ICETEX scholarship Pasaporte a la Ciencia. Sponsored by the United States Department of State and Colombian government. September 2017. 

Scholarship for the course VIII Environmental and Resource Economics Training Course - Valuation and Household Surveys. LACEEP program hosted by CATIE. Held in Turrialba, Costa Rica, for three weeks during 2014 summer. 

Media

Current Air Pollution Tied to More Severe COVID-19 Outcomes, Study Finds. Georgia State News Hub. USA

Aire limpio, un factor que influye en el precio de la vivienda. El Espectador. Colombia