This paper analyzes the effect of institutional characteristics that have been contributed to
increase labor informality in the 13 biggest cities and metropolitan areas in Colombia,
covering the period 2008 - 2014. Based on the informality approach of institutional and
structural theories, and using information from Colombian household surveys, and other
sources of secondary statistics, a data panel model is developed and a lineal estimation
thought least squares estimation and a data panel model with fix effects. The estimates
allows to see the effect of observable variables that contribute to informality, and show that
there are variables that cannot be observable for every city but that can have significant
effects on informality.