E52

Since 1991, inflation in Colombia was reduced from 25% on average to about 6% more recently. Although this performance is in line with a long run inflation target of 3%, some analysts ask whether the Central Bank should continue disinflating. In this paper we present a dynamic stochastic general…

Colombian monthly data covering the period from 1995:01 to 2002:11 and ECM, fixed and time-varying parameters and Kalman filter techniques are used in this paper to quantify the exchange rate pass-through effects on import prices within a sample of manufactured imports. Also, whether the foreign…

Derivatives are contingent claims that complete financial markets. Their use allow agents and firms to ameliorate the impact over con-sumption, production and investment given a change in relative prices induced by an active monetary policy. In this sense, derivatives generate in some cases a…

The paper develops a New Keynesian Small Open Economy Model characterized by external habit formation and Calvo price setting with dynamic inflation updating. The model is used to analyze the effect of nominal ex-change rate targeting on optimal policy and impulse responses. It is found that…

This paper investigates the possible responses of an inflation-targeting monetary policy in the face of asset price deviations from fundamental values.

 In this paper we find empirical evidence of bank lending channel for Colombia and Argentina. As for Argentina, we do not find evidence that changes in the interbank interest rate affect the growth rate of total loans directly. However, it does indirectly through interactions: the interbank…

During the transition from a moderately high level of inflation to an internationally accepted level, the target, the inflation rate, the nominal interest rate and the nominal equilibrium interest rate may be difference stationary. Policy rules estimation, however, is usually performed under…

Banks and other credit institutions are key players in the transmission of monetary policy, especially in emerging market economies, where the responses of deposit and loan interest rates to shifts in policy rates are among the most important channels. This pass-through depends on the conditions…

In order to asses the credibility of their targets and policies, inflation targeting central banks always keep an eye on market expectations of the future inflation rates and short maturity interest rates. In economies with developed financial markets the prices of financial assets are a prime…

Colombia experienced a deep recession in 1999-2003. Growth slowed by 4.2%, and investment by 34.6%. Was the severity of the recession due to a financial accelerator mechanism á la Bernanke, Gertler, and Gilchrist (1999)? To answer this question, this paper estimates a dynamic stochastic general…

In this paper we explore the price setting behavior of Colombian producers and importers using a unique database containing the monthly price reports underlying the Colombian PPI from Jun-1999 to Oct-2006. We focus on five particular questions: 1. Are prices sticky or flexible? 2. Is a price…

The Colombian economy and financial system have coped reasonably well with the effects of the global financial crisis. Hence, “unconventional” policy measures have not been at the center of the policy decisions and discussions. Nominal short term interest rates have remained the main monetary…

The unfolding of the 2007 world financial and economic crisis has highlighted the vulnerability of real economic activity to strong fluctuations in asset prices. Which is the optimal monetary policy in an economy like the Colombian that is exposed to swings in asset prices? What is the…

The price setting behavior of Colombian retailers of goods and services was studied based on a unique dataset containing 12,052,970 individual price reports covering all items in the Colombian CPI from March 1999 to May 2008. The main results are summarized as follows: 1. Colombian consumer…

The assessment of inflationary pressures in Colombia has faced two important challenges in the present decade. The first one occurred in 2006 and consisted of detecting an overheating economy in the midst of fast growing investment and increasing measured productivity. The second challenge took…

The objective of this paper is to analyze how international cycles affect the real GDP cycle and so monetary policy decisions in Colombia. We estimate that cycles in world GDP, export prices and capital inflows are strongly associated with the Colombian business cycle both on impact and even…

In this paper we find empirical evidence of bank lending channel for Colombia, using a balanced panel data of about four thousand non-financial firms. We find that increases in the interest rate, proxiing for the monetary policy instrument, lead to a reduction in the proportion of bank loans,…