Maria Alejandra Vélez

María Alejandra Vélez is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Economics, Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and the Director of its Center for Studies on Security and Drugs (CESED). She holds a Ph.D. in Economics of Natural Resources from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is an economist from Universidad de los Andes. She was a postdoctoral Research Scientist (2006-2008) at the Center for Research on Environmental Decision at Columbia University and the Mellon Visiting Professor in 2013 at Duke University's Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies.

Her research focuses on governance and institutional design for natural resource management in rural communities of the global south and on the interaction between drug and environmental policy. Currently, she is studying the effect of payment for environmental services on conservation outcomes; the impacts of collective property right regimes on institutional changes, landscape, and the welfare of Afro-Colombian communities on the Pacific Coast; and strategies for formalizing gold mining. Recently, she has focused on the effects of illicit economies and drug policies on natural resources, the models for cannabis regulation in Colombia, and the impact of drug policies on communities’ well-being and security outcomes.