Bogotá, Colombia

In this paper, we propose a methodology for calculating a leading index of the economic activity based on a modification of Stock and Watson’s (1989, 1991, 1992) approach. We use Kalman filter techniques for estimating the state space representation of the leading index model. The methodology is…

Capital controls and intervention in the foreign exchange market are two controversial policy options that many countries have adopted in the past in order to influence the exchange rate and moderate capital flows. Colombia has a long record in the use of these policies with mixed results and…

This paper quantifies the welfare effects of decentralisation in Colombia, using a multiregional CGE model. We investigate to what extent will the Colombian population be better off when goods such as health and education, are delivered locally as against centrally. A provision scheme based on…

The empirical literature about economic growth has usually ignored spatial interdependence among countries. This paper uses spatial econometrics to estimate a growth model that includes cross-country interdependence, in which a country’s economic growth depends on the growth rate of its…

This paper estimates an asymmetric error correction model to analyse the dynamic behaviour of the Colombian unemployment rate. We find evidence that wages above their long-run equilibrium level do increase unemployment, but wages below this level do not reduce it.

In this paper we check the relationship between the yields of the Colombian bonds traded in the (secondary) internal market and the yields of the sovereign global securities for the sample period 1999-2001. The hypothesis we maintain is that, under the assumption of capital mobility, it should…

This paper studies the performance, in terms of volatility and welfare, of different monetary policy rules in an economy with two market frictions. We consider a financial friction that highlights the credit channel as the monetary transmission mechanism and a labor friction, that considerably…

This paper studies the dynamic response of a few key macroeconomic variables to each one of three exogenous shocks: monetary, government spending and technological shocks. By using a cash in advance model with two market frictions, one in the intermediation of loanable funds, and one in the…

This paper investigates the effect of sovereign risk on the stochastic rational expectations equilibrium of a real business cycle small open economy. The market is imperfect because the sovereign cannot commit to repay its outstanding debt and chooses to default when it is optimal to do so. The…

In this paper I consider the following problem: there is a collection of exogenously given socially feasible sets, and for each one of them, each one of a group of individuals chooses from an individually feasible set. The fact that the product of the individually feasible sets is larger than…

General equilibrium theory was criticized for its apparent irrefutability, as seemingly implied by the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu theorem.  This view was challenged by Brown and Matzkin (1996), who showed the existence of testable restrictions on the equilibrium manifold. Brown and Matzkin…

This paper provides an empirical analysis of Colombian integration with East Asia using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, in which we assess the effects of several trade liberalization scenarios on trade flows and welfare.The results show that there is an important potential for the…

In a small macroeconomic model of the Colombian economy I investigate the problem of selecting a policy rule that is consistent with inflation targeting. I spell out the characteristics of the optimal feedback and output parameters in the rule, as well as for the optimal forecasting horizon for…

In this theoretical report, the identifiability property of a coincident index model is studied.  As a result, characterization of the identifiability conditions solves a model specification problem, which was detected in the design of an earlier index for the Colombian economy.   Key…

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…

This paper tests for purchasing power parity (PPP) between Colombia and its main trading partners using the Johansen framework of multivariate cointegration. The tests shows that PPP does not hold in the strong sense, but a clear purchasing power relationship is, nevertheless, show to exist. The…

This study develops three exchange rate models as well as a simple statistical model defined as a random walk with a variable drift. The exchange rate models all use the purchasing power parity hypothesis to account for the long-term relationships between prices and the exchange rate, together…

This study uses two different econometric frameworks to study exchange rate pass-through to import, producer and consumer prices in Colombia. Both frameworks are based on vector autoregressive (VAR) models, the first using an unrestricted VAR model, and the second using the Johansen framework of…

The effects of capital destruction are endogenized in a neoclassical growth model where the economy can optimally allocate part of its labor force to defend capital from being destroyed. The purpose is to explain the optimal allocation of the labor force between productive and deterrence…

Political economists have traditionally been indifferent to the communicative construction of money and central banking in the public sphere. It does not matter to them whether monetary affairs are rendered as a rational game over the preservation of the value of the currency or, for example, as…