Working Papers on Economics

In this paper the evolution in the average height of Colombians from 1910 to 1984 is analyzed. The anthropometric evidence reveals a sustained increase in the standard of biological welfare during this period.  A database with more than 8.000.000 observations from the national citizenship…

In this paper we discuss cost and profit efficiency for a sample of financial institutions on the Colombian financial market in the period 1989-2003, using stochastic frontier efficiency analysis. During the period, the cost efficient frontier deteriorates, but profit efficient frontier is…

This study uses a panel-data framework to identify the determinants of the spread over US Treasuries of emerging market sovereign issues as well as of the creditworthiness of the issuers, where the latter is represented by the Institutional Investor’s creditworthiness index. We use a sample of…

 We use data from Bogotá and Medellín to describe key quality of life indicators of each city and illustrate their spatial segregation at the census sector level and present evidence that the main two Colombian cities are highly spatially segregated according to their education levels and…

An empirical model of the pass-through of international to domestic food inflation is proposed. The inflation rates and exchange rates of China and India are found to be significant in explaining imported food inflation in Colombia, 10,000 miles away. Notwithstanding the recent increase in…

This paper offers some preliminary steps in the marriage of some of the theoretical foundations of the new economic geography with spatial computable general equilibrium models.  Modeling the spatial economy of Colombia using the traditional assumptions of CGE models makes little sense when…

This paper advances on the analysis of the structural interdependence among Colombian departments. The results show that Bogotá has a large influence in the other regional economies through its purchasing power. Additionally, it can be observed a center-periphery pattern in the spatial…

First developed by Markowitz (1952), the mean-variance framework is the most widespread theoretical approximation to the portfolio problem. Nevertheless, successful application in the investment community has been limited. Assumptions such as normality of returns and a static correlation matrix…

A threefold analysis of commodity prices is carried out to observe their long-run behaviour, their short-run properties and the main determinants. According to the evidence, the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis does not seem to be a property of most prices. The cycles of commodity prices are…

 We examine Colombian export transaction data from customs records in several dimensions. We begin with some basic statistics on the number and frequency of export transactions by a firm, overall and across individual markets. We then decompose the variation in overall exports into the…

In financial theory, the optimal allocation of assets and its relationship with profitability has been one of the main concerns; the question has always been if banks should focus or diversify their assets. In our case, we would like to answer this question focusing in diversification of the…

Using Bayesian estimation techniques, we estimate a small open economy DSGE model with credit-market imperfections for the Colombian economy. Using the estimated model we investigate what are the sources of business cycle fluctuations. We show that balance-sheet effects play an important role in…

This paper presents two versions of a spatial competition model for the banking sector. The first version, describes a framework that follows closely Salop´s spatial competition model. This version is modified in the second part by introducing the loan market and default risk probabilities for…

This paper analyses the role of a costly financial system in the transmission of monetary policy. The new-keynesian model for a small open economy is extended with a simple financial system based on Hamann and Oviedo (2006). The presence of the financial intermediation naturally allows the…

We present an investment process that: (i) decomposes securities into risk factors; (ii) allows for the construction of portfolios of assets that would selectively expose the manager to desired risk factors; (iii) perform a risk allocation between these portfolios, allowing for tracking error…

Evidence of the causal long-term relationship between budget deficit, money growth and inflation in Colombia is analyzed in this paper, considering the standard (M1), the narrowest (M0-Base) and the broadest (M3) definitions of money supply. Using a vector error correction (VEC) model with…

The demographic transition from high to low mortality and fertility rates was one of the most important structural changes during the twentieth Century in most Latin American economies. This paper uses a simple economic framework based on Galor and Weil (2000) for understanding the main forces…

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,…

A minimum performance insurance in the Principal-Agent problem is wealth reducing to the principal. This result points to further inefficiencies in mandatory individual Pension Funds' contracts, particularly the one established in the 1993's 100th Law in Colombia.

We use a dynamic factor model proposed by Stock and Watson [1998, 1999, 2002a,b] to forecast Colombian inflation. The model includes 92 monthly series observed over the period 1999:01-2008:06. The results show that for short-run horizons, factor model forecasts significantly outperformed the…