Working Papers on Economics

Although Colombia was not directly involved, the economic consequences of World War II had a clear influence on the macroeconomic policies applied in the country during the international conflict, and in the first few years that followed. This essay attempts to explore the role of internal…

 In this essay, the Colombian experience with internal and external debt since the end of the war up to 1970, is discussed. Following a common thread of previous essays, that experience is commented in the international context. The document highlights important similarities and contrasts…

We develop a small open economy model with sectorial balance sheets that are exchange rate exposed and with sectorial stock and flow consistency. The model is perturbed by a shock to investor sentiment and a sudden stop to capital inflow. It is used to evaluate the claims that usually back the…

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…

 At a request from the Ministry of Finance, Banco de la República last year carried out an investigation into the feasibility to use parts of the foreign reserves to buy back some of Colombia’s outstanding sovereign U.S.-dollar debt.  This project resulted in two thorough technical…

This paper provides an empirical analysis of Colombian integration with East Asia using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, in which we assess the effects of several trade liberalization scenarios on trade flows and welfare.The results show that there is an important potential for the…

In this paper, we modeled the Colombian long run economic growth (1925-2003) using a two- regime first order Markov switching model. We found evidence of non-linearity in the annual rate of economic growth. The results show that changes between regimes are sudden and sporadic. The Colombian…

No previous work has focused on the analysis of the regional and interregional structure and structural changes in Colombia. An initial exploration using a parsimonious approach to the measurement of interregional interaction suggested a country with limited spatial interdependency. These…

 The hypothesis that the internal public debt has played the role of shock absorber in Colombia since 1923 is modelled. 1923 was an important landmark in the history of Fiscal and monetary reforms in Colombia during the twentieth century. The econometric results offer a strong support for…

This paper develops a political economy model that provides an explanation as for why ruling Elites in oligarquic societies may rely on income redistribution to the poor (the masses) in order to prevent them from attempting a revolution. We refer to this kind of redistribution as populist…

A pseudo-panel was built to estimate the determinants of the labor participation decision of married women between 1984 and 2000. Past participation decisions, education level, labor income taxes, children between 1 and 2 years of age, and the presence of other people unemployed at home are the…

This paper evaluates the effects of capital account controls adopted in the past years by the FLAR’s member countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Perú and Venezuela) on the efficiency of the banking sector, the economic growth and the volatility of output, consumption, and…

THE COLOMBIAN BANKING CRISIS: THE COLOMBIAN BANKING CRISIS: Macroeconomic Consequences and What to Expect Andres F. Arias  */

Output Gap Estimation, Estimation Uncertainty and its Effect on Policy Rules Output Gap Estimation, Estimation Uncertainty and its Effect on Policy Rules

Financial Inefficiency and Real Business Cycle in Colombia Financial Inefficiency and Real Business Cycle in Colombia      Camilo Zea*