Financial Inefficiency and Real Business Cycle in Colombia
The series Working Papers on Economics is published by the Office for Economic Studies at the Banco de la República (Central Bank of Colombia). The works published are provisional, and their authors are fully responsible for the opinions expressed in them, as well as for possible mistakes. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.
In a dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium model, we explore the optimal response of the inhabitants of a closed economy to an inefficient ad hoc financial system that in its intermediation duty looses a fraction of agrégate savings which otherwise would become agrégate investment. The incidente over the cycle of shocks to average financial inefficiency and technology is analyzed, as well as the steady state welfare gain of a reduction in average financial inefficiency. The descriptive power of the model is assessed with Colombian data between 1970 and 1992. The results in the paper suggest that the model!s predictions are largely consistent with aggregate behaviour of the Colombian economy, making it possible to explore several issues of financial liberalization and deepening.
