Publications OLD

Developing countries have a vast informal sector generally associated with low productivity levels. The response of informal employment to tax policies might depend on labor market  rigidities. This paper proposes a theoretical framework consisting of a search and…

We show that capital controls (CC), by slowing-down firm debt-growth in the boom, improve firm performance during crises. Exploiting a tax on foreign-currency (FX) debt inflows in  Colombia before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and multiple firm-level and loan-level…

We examine the extent in which the ratios of book-to-market and earnings-to-price predict excess asset returns in an emerging market economy like Colombia. We want to find the magnitude in which these ratios help to forecast excess returns and if there is any evidence …

This paper analyses the behavior of household consumption in Colombia during Covid-19 post pandemic. Initially, it introduces a regional comparison emphasizing in the severity of lockdown and the government fiscal responses. Then, it describes the dynamics of the main consumption…

We use Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks, a deep learning technique, to forecast Colombian headline inflation one year ahead through two approaches. The first one uses only information from the target variable, while the second one incorporates additional information from…

The incomplete pass-through of exchange rates to prices is a well-documented phenomenon. Firms respond optimally to exchange rate shocks by adjusting margins and buying inputs from regions with more advantageous terms of trade. Consumers, in turn, substitute goods that become more…

We bring together the largest meta-analysis ever conducted in the macroeconomic literature to investigate the effects of central bank credibility on monetary policy. With nearly 1,200 surveyed effects, we first confirm that: (i) conventional policy significantly affects inflation and…

Over the past 30 years, monetary and macroprudential policy in Colombia evolved towards the pursuit of a low and credible inflation target and a stable financial system. The protracted inflation that began in the early seventies was defeated at the turn of the century with the help of…

(Bogotá D.C., Cundinamarca)

Education in Colombia and Latin America is characterized by significant gaps in the quality of education as measured by standardized test scores. This  paper assesses the impact of a Colombian program called SaberEs, which strengthens preparation for standardized…

Inequality in access to high-quality education can hinder the ability of education to promote intergenerational mobility. Looking at the case of Colombia, one of the most unequal and least mobile countries in Latin America, we evaluate whether contemporary differences in access to…

Colombia saw a drop in investment as a result of the COVID-19 shock, which resulted in a negative gap in the second quarter of 2020 of -2.8% of the GDP. In the context of the region, Peru was hardest hit, while countries such as Mexico, Chile, and Brazil suffered minor setbacks. The…

The burden of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) is expected to increase due to the aging of the population and risk factors from unhealthy lifestyle habits. This paper aims to analyze how the evolution of NCDs (e.g., Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease, Chronic Respiratory Disease…

This study evaluates the financing mechanisms of the healthcare system, differentiating between resources of fiscal, parafiscal, and other origins used primarily to cover the costs of the contributory and subsidized health regimes. In recent years, the sector has faced financial and…

We provide an overview of the primary structural features of the labor market in Colombia and survey the margins of adjustment of the market during the pandemic. Given the decline of real wages amid the post-pandemic inflationary surge, mainly due to the formal wage rigidity in the…

In this paper, we analyze the tail-dependence structure of credit default swaps (CDS) and the global financial cycle for a group of eleven emerging markets. Using a Copula-CoVaR model, we provide evidence that there is a significant taildependence between variables related with the…

The business cycle is the cycle in the output gap and also in a stationary measure of trend output. Both the output gap and trend output are driven by joint trend-cycle shocks. The model is a univariate trend-cycle decomposition with hysteresis in trend output that enables the…

In this paper we extend the economic model used in Parra et al. (2020) to incorporate two significant groups that were not included in the original analysis: people who are retired with pension equivalent to the minimum wage and those who do not fulfill pension requirements and…