Betancourt-García, Yanneth Rocío

The importance of the banking sector as a key player in interest rate passthrough has been recognized recently in literature concerning monetary policy transmission mechanisms. The interest rate channel, which operates when banks pass on changes in the monetary policy rate to interest rates for…

This edition of the Governor’s Report presents an assessment of the country’s economic situation and its prospects. We argue that the Colombian economy remains stable despite strong international shocks and the recent crises in countries like Argentina and Turkey. However, the country…

Global economy continued to recover in the fourth quarter of 2013, thanks to the added momentum in the developed economies, especially the United States. In the euro area, the economic indicators pointed to low, but positive economic growth. Growth in the major emerging countries of Asia and…

Colombia’s economy expanded by 2.7% in 2018, gaining momentum after a period of deceleration in which the annual growth rate fell from 4.7% in 2014 to 1.4% in 2017. While growth was still below potential (estimated around 3.3%), the uptick in 2018 suggests the groundwork for Colombia’s economic…

Cash is still widely used in Colombia, even among merchants that accept payment cards. Indeed, 60% of these merchants use dissuasive strategies to make their clients pay with cash. This shows that merchant service costs (MSC) for cards are not optimal in the sense of the Tourist Test. We…

To study the recent dynamics of electronic payments in Colombia, Banco de la República carried out in 2020 a survey of the commerce sector on acceptance and usage of different payment instruments. The survey reveals merchants´ high levels of acceptance of electronic…

In this paper, we study the coexistence of cash and electronic payments introducing some distortions in the payments markets to understand the widespread use of cash, specially in emerging countries. Following Lagos and Wright (2005) we model explicitly …