Working Papers on Economics

In this paper we show the importance of subject of degree in explaining the gender wage gap in Colombia. In order to minimize the influence of gender differences in experience, promotions, and job changes on the wage gap, we focus on college graduates who have a formal job and who have been in…

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…

Structural time series models, frequency domain analysis, the HP-filter, and the Blanchard-Quah decomposition, are used to observe, some peculiarities of the business cycle. Such properties are those related to the volatility of the temporary component and the duration of the business cycle…

Exploiting spatial and temporal variations in the number of seizures from criminal organizations, I estimate regional fixed effects models of the increase in the number of properties confiscated on the main crime rates. From 2002 security strategies changed, and as a result,…

In this paper we study the effect of monetary policy shocks on commodity prices. While most of the literature has found that expansionary shocks have a positive effect on aggregate price indices, we study the effect on individual prices of a sample of four commodities. This set of commodity…

This document presents how to estimate and implement a structural VAR-X model under long run and impact identification restrictions. Estimation by bayesian and maximum likelihood methods is presented. Applications of the structural VAR-X for impulse response functions to structural shocks,…

Levels of interest rates below historical norms may have enhanced financial instability in developed and developing economies during the 2000's. The risk taking channel of monetary policy transmission is a recent theory that explains the interaction between risk perceptions of the financial…

In the past decade the Colombian Economic Authorities undertook a series of measures that reduced the structural fiscal deficit, decreased the Government currency mismatch and deepened the local fixed-rate public bond market. This paper presents some evidence suggesting that these improvements…

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

This paper propose indicator variables for the implementation of monetary policy in an inflation targeting regime. Using constant interest rate projections, the notion of a target-compatible interest rate is presented. This variable allows to extract some characteristics that the expected future…

We estimate a non-parametrical Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and find strong evidence rejecting the classical linear CAPM. Furthermore, we find inconsistent linear betas for a series of stocks in the Colombian stock exchange (BVC), supporting the hypothesis of a better and consistent…

Typically, when forecasting inflation rates, there are a variety of individual models and a combination of several of these models. We implement a Bayesian shrinkage combination methodology to include information that is not captured by the individual models using expert forecasts as prior…

This document presents a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with rule of thumb (Non-Ricardian) agents and both nominal price and wage rigidities. The model follows closely that of Galí et al. (2004) and expands it to include a second way form of heterogeneity (besides the Non-Ricardian…

We study the determinants of sovereign default risk in Colombia by focusing on different time spans of risk which are indicated by yield spreads of government bonds with different maturities. Cointegration regressions are performed to analyze whether the drivers of short-run default risk are…

To evaluate whether transparency is beneficial, it is usual to assume that the central bank may choose one of two options, opacity versus truthful communication. However, the monetary policymaker may have incentives to misrepresent private information so as to reduce economic volatility by…

We analyse three models to determine the conditions under which reserve requirements are used as a part of an optimal monetary policy framework in an inflation targeting regime. In all cases the Central Bank (CB) minimizes an objective function that depends on deviations of inflation from its…

This paper measures the impact of strengthening the security policy on the rural labour market in Colombia by exploiting the structural change in the number of rural seizures. The new policy produced dissimilar effects across gender, age-groups, and types of occupation. For adults, especially…