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Bustos, Sebastian

One of the consequences of COVID-19 is the recognition that many tasks can be done from home. But anything that can done remotely, can be done from abroad.

Given large salary differences between white collar workers across countries, it would make sense for value chains to try to exploit them. This opens an opportunity for Colombia to further promote its integration into the world global value chains and access new markets. This paper explores the possibility of exporting teleworkable services from Colombia. The goal is to provide useful information to guide strategic interventions to speed-up the development of such service industries in Colombia.

We first introduce a definition of teleworkable jobs and describe its occupations and industries along different dimensions. We show that there are many teleworkable jobs in the US, representing a significant share of industry costs. Then, we show that many industries intensive in teleworkable jobs are currently traded across borders. To quantify Colombia’s advantage providing teleworkable services, we study the cost structure of industries and quantify the potential savings in overall costs if the tasks were performed by Colombians. Given Colombia’s current presence and the density around teleworkable industries we can calculate a proxy of the latent advantage in teleworkable services. We propose an index that summarize these dimensions and rank the potential gains from including telework from Colombia in an industry. We end with a set of policy recommendations to move this agenda forward.

Alarming rates of forest loss in the Colombian Amazon have created a perceived trade-off that the only means of achieving economic prosperity is by sacrificing the forest. This study finds little evidence of this trade-off; rather, we find that economic development and forest protection are not an either-or choice. Forest clearing is driven by extensive cattle-ranching as a means to secure land titles. In essence, the loss of some of the world’s richest biodiversity is the result of some of the least economically complex activities that fail to achieve economic prosperity in the region. If anything, the acceleration in deforestation has accompanied a period of economic stagnation.

The existing economic model in the Amazon – centered on agrarian colonization and mineral extraction – has not generated prosperity for the people, all while failing the forest. The exceptional diversity of the Amazon’s biome is not reflected in the region’s economy. The Amazonian economy is best characterized by its low diversity and low complexity. A significant proportion of employment is linked to public administration – more than in other departments of the country. Very little of the production in the departments is destined to be consumed outside the departments ("exported").

This study seeks to define an alternative economic model for the Colombian Amazon from the perspective of economic complexity with environmental sustainability. Economic complexity research finds that the productive potential of places depends not only on the soil or natural resources, but on the productive capabilities—or knowhow—held by its people. This research finds that the Colombian Amazon will not become rich by adding value to its raw materials or by specializing in one economic activity. Rather, economic development is best described as a process of expanding the set of capabilities present to be able to produce a more diverse set of goods, of increasingly greater complexity. This model starts from the base of understanding the existing productive capabilities in Caquetá, Guaviare, and Putumayo, to identify high-potential economic sectors that build off those capabilities to achieve new, sustainable pathways to shared prosperity.

Achieving shared prosperity in the Amazon depends on the connectivity and opportunity in its urban areas. The primary drivers of greater economic complexity – and prosperity – are the cities in the Amazon. Even in the remote areas of the Amazon, the majority of people in Caquetá, Guaviare, and Putumayo live in urban areas. The low prosperity in the Colombian Amazon is driven by the lack of prosperous cities. The report finds that Amazonian cities are affected by the lack of connectivity to major Colombian cities that limit their ability to ‘export’ things outside the department to then expand the capacity to ‘import’ the things that are not produced locally as a means to improve well-being.

In this report, we study Hermosillo’s economic performance and assess critical issues affecting the city’s ability to achieve stronger economic growth. Although Hermosillo is far from experiencing economic stagnation, it fell behind other cities that managed to become successful economic hubs between 2010 and 2020. The main reason behind this trailing growth is Hermosillo’s relatively low diversification and investment dynamics, especially in the manufacturing sector. We apply growth diagnostic testing on various potential constraints to economic growth: logistics, electricity, water, human capital, housing, and transportation. Although none of them have directly constrained economic growth in the past, some are explicit threats to increasing growth in the future, thus catching up with high-performing peers. Electricity, human capital, and logistics are comparative advantages, while water, housing, and transportation are threats.

In 2025, Mexico is expected to start a new period in its economic history marked by the promise of nearshoring and a new presidential administration. In the past, Mexico has gone through milestones that heavily impacted its economic development path, like the establishment of NAFTA and the China Shock (Hanson, 2010). The rise of Northern Mexico and other regions like El Bajío as global manufacturing hubs has resulted from greater integration with the North American market. This has brought foreign direct investments (FDI) targeted at establishing manufacturing sites primarily to cater to US demand and exports to the rest of the world. Mexico holds high expectations that nearshoring will bring opportunities of the same or greater magnitude. In that context, Hermosillo stands out as a city with the potential to exploit those opportunities and enhance its economic transformation. It is crucial to analyze its binding constraints for economic growth, comparative advantages, and potential concerns to understand how well-positioned Hermosillo is to take advantage of this momentum.

Following the introduction and a methodological overview, the report is divided into four main sections. Section 3 provides a growth perspective on Hermosillo; Section 4 presents an analysis of growth constraints; Section 5 explains the local diversification challenge in detail; and Section 6 describes strategic policy areas to accelerate growth that result from this growth diagnostic analysis.