Working Papers on Economics

SeveralObservers of Latin America have underscored the notion that an emerging "consensus" regarding the role of the State in the economy surfaced during the 1980's (v.g World Bank, 1993; Williamson, 1993). Starting from an emphasis on issues regarding stabilization, there are three main and…

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the links between central bank independence and foreing exchange policies, in the light of the recent experience of the major Latin American countries. To that end, the paper starts with a brief review of the literature on the subject. The second section…

A basic theoretical of a small open economy within the framework of intertemporal maximization is used to analyze the effects of nominal export shocks. The model helps in explaining the close relationship that is found between export shocks and short run fluctuations of domestic savings in the…

Colombian inflationary experience is explained using a theoretical model that stresses two elements: the effect of shocks and the type of policy designed to respond to them. The empirical investigation uses the event-study methodology and finds that the model successfully accounts for the main…

The analysis of the impacts of coffee bonanzas and crisis on the Colombian economy, given its importance, has been one of the favorite topics of research both by Colombian and foreing economists, Cárdenas (1991); Carkovic (1992); Cuddington (1986); Ocampo (1994); Posada (1992); Urrutia and…

Imagine a country whose inflation rate has recently surpassed 300% a year, and during some months even surpassed the 50% level that was estabilished as a benchmark for the definition of Phillip Cagan's classic study on the subject. This rapid inflation led to a devaluation of the local currency…

In this document we use the Expectations Survey conducted monthly by the Central Bank of Colombia during the period of October 2003 – August 2012. We find that exchange rate revaluations were generally followed by expectations of further revaluation in the short run (1 month), but by…

This After 1991 Colombia witnessed a sharp fall in the national savings rate (see figure 1.1), and in particular that of the private sector. Two hypotheses have been advanced for explaining this behavior. The first one stresses consumption smoothing within the Perrnanent Income Hypothesis…

Graph 1 shows a conventional PPP measure of the real exchange rate in Colombia and an index of the relative price of tradable goods in terms of non tradeable. The common conclusion is that, since 1990-92 there has been a medium term process by which the RER has appreciated by as much as 26%. The…

Este documento propone un modelo multisectorial de crecimiento, dinámico y estocástico que integra la literatura de ciclo económico real con la de economías con sectores en bonanza y enfermedad holandesa para analizar fluctuaciones, asignación de recursos y los cambios en precios relativos en…

In this paper we study the structure of the fiscal system of the Viceroyalty of New Granada towards the end of the colonial period. Then we discuss how the tax system inhereted from the Spanish Empire evolved over the period 1821-1850. The conclusion that emerges from the review of the evidence…

Monetary neutrality in the colombian Monetary neutrality in the Colombian real exchange rate

Why justice is unresponsive to crime: Why justice is un responsive to crime: The case of cocine in Colombia

This piece was part of a research on the colombian inflationary experience published as: The Rise and Perpetuation of a Moderate Inflation, Colombia 1970-1991. It collects together the summaries of the response of Colombian policy-makers to the shocks identified in that paper. Since 1963 the…

A price-setting mechanism based on a markup over variable costs is studied for the quite different inflationary experiences of Argentina and Colombia. The paper pursues a twofold strategy: first, it test the null hypothesis of a constant markup against the alternative of a variable one; second,…

The study evaluates the virtues of asymmetric trimmed means as efficient estimators of inflation for Colombia, an economy with high and variable inflation rates. Results suggest that the proposed indicators are more efficient than alternative indexes and are particularly suited for environments…

The paper provides a model of the banking firm in the macroeconomy intended to explain what determines the interest rate spread. A key factor explaining the spread in our model is the resource cost of capital. A statistical result confirms the prediction of the model, that is, the bank's spread…

A maximum likelihood method for estimating the power-law exponent verifies that the positive and negative tails of the Colombian stock market index (IGBC) and the Colombian peso exchange rate (TRM) approximate a scale-free distribution, whereas none of the heavy tails of a local sovereign…

We set a dynamic stochastic model for the interbank daily market for funds in Colombia. The framework features exogenous reserve requirements and requirement period, competitive trading among heterogeneous commercial banks, daily open market operations held by the Central Bank (auctions and…

This paper can be divided into two main parts. The first one, using a simple example by Minford (2004) and Hatcher (2011), gives the reader a basic introduction to understand the comparison between two monetary-policy regimes: Inflation Targeting (IT) and Price-Level Targeting (PLT).