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This paper analyses how the institutional processes, the school management as well as the contexts in which the school and the students are circumscribed, could impact the performance in the high-school graduation-year test (ICFES). A survey was applied with the purpose of know the actions and interactions among educative process actors. Factor Analysis and Hierarchical econometric models were used with the purpose of construct indexes and measure the impact of the considered variables. We found that school level variables, including management, explain a high percentage of the performance variability, while those constructed variables associated to student's characteristics have a low impact. And parent human capital and the initial student conditions are much more important than the teacher human capital. Contrary to the expected, it's not clear what kind of use and if to increase infrastructure resources favors the achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how forms of governance are selected for the Colombian fuel distribution chain and it formulates some proposals aimed at improving efficiency. The conceptual context is based on contract and transaction cost theory. The hypotheses made are demonstrated in two manners: empirically and using a formal model. The empirical work is based on the study of contracts signed between wholesalers and retailers, as well as on a survey given to wholesale company managers. The information obtained was processed using econometric models. The authors found that the more wholesalers design more complete contracts, the less they are interested in vertical integration. That strategy has limitations because more complete contracts increase tracking costs. Vertical integration once again becomes interesting when the wholesaler seeks to differentiate its products. The authors' proposal is for retailers to encourage reliability strengthening measures and more complete contract designing, to limit such opportunism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]