Working Papers on Economics

In this paper we study the structural determinants of differentials in unemployment rates and labour markets’ performance for colombian cities.

This paper addresses the estimation of peer group effects on a fertility decision. The peer group is composed of neighbors with similar socio-demographic characteristics. In order to deal with the endogeneity problem associated to the estimation of neighborhood effects, an instrumental variables…

Using a three-equation New Keynesian model we find that incorporating an escape clause (EC) into Forward Guidance (FG) is welfare improving as it allows the monetary authority to avoid cases in which the cost of reduced flexibility is too high. The EC provides the central bank with another…

A maximum likelihood method for estimating the power-law exponent verifies that the positive and negative tails of the Colombian stock market index (IGBC) and the Colombian peso exchange rate (TRM) approximate a scale-free distribution, whereas none of the heavy tails of a local sovereign…

Using a stylized model in which output is measured with error, we derive the optimal policy response to the demand shock signal and to changes in the measurement error volatility from two different perspectives: the minimization of the expected loss (from which we derive the ‘standard’ policy)…

After decades using monetary aggregates as the main instrument of monetary policy and having different varieties of crawling peg exchange rate regimes, Colombia adopted a full-fledged inflation-targeting (IT) regime in 1999, with inflation as the nominal anchor, a floating exchange rate, and the…

When managing international reserves, central banks generally face the problem of determining what their optimum or adequate level is.  A critical review of some methodologies for calculating the optimum amount of reserves is presented in this document.

We study the relationship between US and Colombian sovereign debt interest rates. We also evaluate the response of the Colombian long-term bond yield and other asset prices to shocks to the US long-term Treasury rate. Two empirical exercises are performed. First, we use a moving window linear…

In this paper, we study the empirical relationship between credit funding sources and the financial vulnerability of the Colombian banking system. We propose a statistical model to measure and predict banking-fragility episodes associated with credit funding sources classified into retail…

We propose to assess the performance of k forecast procedures by exploring the distributions of forecast errors and error losses. We argue that non systematic forecast errors minimize when their distributions are symmetric and unimodal, and that forecast accuracy should be assessed through…

The most recent global financial crisis (2008-2009) highlighted the importance of systemic risk and promoted academic interest to develop a wide set of warning indicators, which are mechanisms to identify systemically important institutions and global systemic risk indexes. Using the methodology…

This paper presents evidence of the effect of the recent phases of the business cycle in Spain and United States, proxied by their respective unemployment rates, on the labor market of Colombian cities with high migration tradition. These countries are the main destination for labor Colombian…

This paper investigates whether transforming the Consumer Price Index with a class of power transformations lead to an improvement of inflation forecasting accuracy. We use one of the prototypical models to forecast short run inflation which is known as the univariate time series ARIMA . This…

We apply a pair-wise approach to test the law of one price for deposit (lending) rates in Colombia. We find that when banks are of different size deposit rates adjust quickly, suggesting a competitive environment. By contrast, lending rates adjust rapidly when banks are of similar size,…

In this document we use the Expectations Survey conducted monthly by the Central Bank of Colombia during the period of October 2003 – August 2012. We find that exchange rate revaluations were generally followed by expectations of further revaluation in the short run (1 month), but by…

As a result of the most recent global financial crisis literature has embraced size, connectedness and substitutability as key indicators for financial institutions’ systemic importance. Despite the intuitiveness of these concepts, identifying systemic important institutions remain a non-trivial…

Informational constraints may turn the Merton Model for corporate credit risk impractical. Applying this framework to the Colombian financial sector is limited to four stock-market-listed firms; more than a hundred banking and non-banking firms are not listed. 

This paper investigates the impact of sovereign risk on the stochastic rational expectations equilibrium of a pure exchange small open economy. International borrowing and lending arise from the interaction between a risk averse sovereign representative agent in a small open economy trying to…

In this paper I explore the potential link between Plan Colombia and violence with a new perspective. I focus the analysis only on the first three running years of the program (2000-2002) in order to avoid the overlapping effect with a security policy started in 2002/2003. This paper exploits…

This paper provides empirical evidence of the impact of fiscal decentralization on Colombia's public basic education. Based on the social and economic data available for 1,003 municipalities and 13,670 public schools, for the last decade, we confirmed that decentralization has had a positive and…