Working Papers on Economics

The most recent episode of market turmoil exposed the limitations resulting from the traditional focus on too-big-to-fail institutions within an increasingly systemic-crisis-prone financial system, and encouraged the appearance of the too-connected-to-fail (TCTF) concept. The TCTF concept…

We explore the performance of a set of early warning indicators for a group of Latin American economies under the endogenous cycle perspective. For this group of countries, the paper confirms the results of work on industrialized countries that a combination of asset prices and credit provides…

This paper analyzes the determinants of interest margins in the Colombian Financial System. Based on the model by Ho and Saunders (1981), interest margins are modelled as a function of the pure spread and bank-specific institutional imperfections using quarterly data for the period 1994:IV-2005:…

This paper contributes an estimation framework to measure both technological and linkage externalities from foreign direct investment (FDI). Empirical research dealt mainly with intra-industry spillovers from FDI with restrictive treatment of inter-industry effects until recently. However, as…

In 1995, when contagion from the tequila crisis was spreading in Latin America, both Chile and Colombia were exempt from contagion and presented high rates of economic growth. Several analysts attribute this positive performance to the fact that both had undertaken prudential measures to avoid…

This paper exploits the long history of the minimum wage in a relatively stable developing economy like Colombia in order to see whether it may alleviate the living conditions of low income families and reduce income inequality. The paper does not only explore how the minimum wage may serve this…

Unemployment rate and the real wage behavior: a neoclassical hint for the Colombian labor market adjustment Unemployment rate and the real wage behavior: a neoclassical hint for Colombian labor market adjustment

In this paper, we build a heterogeneous agents-dynamic general equilibrium model wherein saving constraints interact with credit constraints. Saving constraints in the form of fixed costs to use the financial system lead households to seek informal saving instruments (cash) and result in lower…

We test current account sustainability based on the framework developed by Hakkio and Rush [1991] and Husted [1992] using a two-regime threshold vector error correction model. This methodology allows us to characterize short-run nonlinearities in the current account. We estimate the model for…

Central banks in emerging countries frequently build-up (diminish) reserves while attempting to depreciate (appreciate) their domestic currencies. Even if these interventions are effective, they often entail various costs. Basu (2012), nonetheless, proposes a model in which the sole announcement…

We use hazard models to study the determinants of housing price bubbles’ duration. We answer two related questions: i). Does prolonged domestic monetary policy easing increase the duration of housing price bubbles? And, ii). Does prolonged monetary policy easing in the US influences housing…

Can technological misallocation generate financial frictions? We build a theoretical model with testable implications, in which the misallocation between R&D and production activities generates borrowing constraints. The investor offers the innovator a rent that is contingent to the success…

We study the determinants of sovereign default risk for a group of 23 OECD countries using quarterly data spanning the period between 2000:Q1 and 2016:Q3. Applying the recently developed panel dynamic heterogeneous common correlated effects estimator of Chudik and Pesaran [2015] our study…

We use the recently developed panel rank-cointegration test proposed by Pedroni et al. [2015] to check for the stability conditions of the cross-country money market interest rate bases. Using weekly information on short-term interest rates and spot and forward exchange rates for a set of 20…

This paper examines inflation expectations of the World Economic Survey for ten inflation targeting countries. First, by a Self Organizing Maps methodology, we cluster the trajectory of agents inflation expectations using the beginning of the oil price shock occurred in June of 2014 as a…

This study reports evidence of the existence of house price bubbles in several Canadian provinces around the recent global financial crisis. Using a wealth of monthly data for about a thirty-year period we find evidence supporting the hypothesis that the bubble in Quebec transmitted to four…

In an open-economy model with financial constraint, Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe (2017) propose an expression for a capital control policy. From this expression, they argue that the optimal tax, i.e. the one that solves the overborrowing problem, is indeterminate when crises occur (i.e. when the…

Central banks generally target multiple objectives while having at least the same number of monetary instruments. However, some instruments can be inadvertently collinear, leading to indeterminacy and identification failures. Paradoxically, most empirical studies have shied away from this…