Working Papers on Economics

This paper presents a novel monthly dataset of job vacancies in Bogota between 1960 and 2010. The dataset was constructed by counting the number of help-wanted announcements published in the most important newspaper with national circulation—namely, El Tiempo. We describe the methodology used to…

In this paper, we propose an alternative methodology to determine the existence of credit booms, which is a complex and crucial issue for policymakers. In particular, we exploit the Mendoza and Terrones (2008)’s idea that macroeconomic aggregates other than the credit growth rate contain…

A basic theoretical of a small open economy within the framework of intertemporal maximization is used to analyze the effects of nominal export shocks. The model helps in explaining the close relationship that is found between export shocks and short run fluctuations of domestic savings in the…

TAX EXPORTING: AN ANALYSIS USING A MULTIREGIONAL CGE MODEL   Tax Exporting: An Analysis Using a Multiregional CGE Model Ana María Iregui * Estudios Económicos Banco de la República

HOW UNCERTAÍN ARE NAIRU ESTÍMATES ÍN COLOMBÍA? HOW UNCERTAÍN ARE NAIRU ESTÍMATES ÍN COLOMBÍA?

The study of the asymmetric behavior of macroeconomic variables over the business cycles phases has had a long tradition in economics. In this work we find evidence in favor of the hypothesis of having a STAR-type nonlinear asymmetric behavior of the economic activity, over the last two decades…

I build a general equilibrium, financial accelerator model that incorporates an explicit technology for the intermediary sector. A credit multiplier emerges because of a borrowing constraint that is a function of asset prices, internal funds and lending rates. With this financial friction I show…

The construction of coincident indexes for the economic activity of a country is a common practice since the fifties. The methodologies vary from heuristic methods to probabilistic or statistical ones. In this paper, we present a new procedure for estimating a coincident index of the state of…

A Statement of the Colombian Constitutional Court has mandated wage indexation on the basis of past inflation. A simple model with a wage price system, a real block, and an inflation targeting interest rule is calibrated to resemble price setting in the Colombian economy and to analyze the…

There is large body of empirical literature devoted to study the relationship between inflation and long-run growth. Recently, levine and Renelt (1992) encouraged by new developments in growth theory investigated, within a unified framework, the effet of a number of variables on per capita…

SeveralObservers of Latin America have underscored the notion that an emerging "consensus" regarding the role of the State in the economy surfaced during the 1980's (v.g World Bank, 1993; Williamson, 1993). Starting from an emphasis on issues regarding stabilization, there are three main and…

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the links between central bank independence and foreing exchange policies, in the light of the recent experience of the major Latin American countries. To that end, the paper starts with a brief review of the literature on the subject. The second section…

In this paper two new measures of the Colombian output gap and the real neutral interest rate are proposed. Instead of relying only on statistical filters, the proposed measures use semi-structural New-Keynesian models, adapted for a small open economy. The output gap measures presented are in…

Colombian inflationary experience is explained using a theoretical model that stresses two elements: the effect of shocks and the type of policy designed to respond to them. The empirical investigation uses the event-study methodology and finds that the model successfully accounts for the main…

The analysis of the impacts of coffee bonanzas and crisis on the Colombian economy, given its importance, has been one of the favorite topics of research both by Colombian and foreing economists, Cárdenas (1991); Carkovic (1992); Cuddington (1986); Ocampo (1994); Posada (1992); Urrutia and…

Imagine a country whose inflation rate has recently surpassed 300% a year, and during some months even surpassed the 50% level that was estabilished as a benchmark for the definition of Phillip Cagan's classic study on the subject. This rapid inflation led to a devaluation of the local currency…

One of the principal issues of Colombian macroeconomic policy in the 1990s has been the deterioration of private savings (Figure 1). The decline in the private saving rate was usually related to consumers real expenditure, which grew by an average of 3.9% in the period 1991-1993, compared to 1.9…

This After 1991 Colombia witnessed a sharp fall in the national savings rate (see figure 1.1), and in particular that of the private sector. Two hypotheses have been advanced for explaining this behavior. The first one stresses consumption smoothing within the Perrnanent Income Hypothesis…

Graph 1 shows a conventional PPP measure of the real exchange rate in Colombia and an index of the relative price of tradable goods in terms of non tradeable. The common conclusion is that, since 1990-92 there has been a medium term process by which the RER has appreciated by as much as 26%. The…