Working Papers on Economics

Scale-free (inhomogeneous) connective structures with modular (highly clustered) hierarchies are ubiquitous in real–world networks. Evidence from the main Colombian payment and settlement systems verifies that local financial networks have self-organized into a modular scale-free architecture…

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

In this document we estimate credit and GDP cycles for three Latin-American economies and study their relation in the time and frequency domains. Cycles are estimated in order to analyze their medium and short-term frequencies. We find that short-term cycles are usually more volatile than medium…

Network analysis has been applied to identify systemically important financial institutions after the 2008 financial crisis. Such applications have stressed the importance of centrality within the too-connected-to-fail concept. 

This paper studies whether the geographical separation of markets constitutes a factor that helps explain the dynamics of agricultural prices. To do this, we employ a highly disaggregated dataset for Colombia that consists of weekly observations on wholesale prices for 18 agricultural products…

The most recent financial crisis unveiled that liquidity risk is far more important and intricate than regulation have conceived. The shift from bank-based to market-based financial systems and from Deferred Net Systems to liquidity-demanding Real-Time Gross Settlement of payments explains some…

This study provides new evidence on the relationship between abnormal loan growth and banks’ risk taking behavior, using data from a rich panel of Colombian financial institutions. We show that abnormal credit growth during a prolonged period of time leads to an increase in banks’ riskiness,…

Defining whether a financial institution is systemically important (or not) is challenging due to (i) the inevitability of combining complex importance criteria such as institutions’ size, connectedness and substitutability; (ii) the ambiguity of what an appropriate threshold for those criteria…

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 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…

The paper assesses the role of taxes on investment in Colombian firms. The analysis is carried out at the firm level for the period 2003-2014. During this period, the national government set five different tax reforms, including changes in the statutory tax rates, tax credits and incentives for…