In an economy conducted under an Inflation Targeting regime, the output gap becomes one of the most important variables to guide monetary policy. Defined as the difference between observed and potential or non-inflationary output, the gap is a measure of the state of aggregate demand and,...

The sudden collapse of oil prices poses a challenge to inflation targeting central banks in oil exporting economies. This paper illustrates that challenge and conducts a quantitative assessment of the impact of permanent changes in oil prices in a small and open economy, in which oil represents...

Based on the counting of Help-wanted advertisements in print newspapers, we present national vacancy indexes and vacancy rates for Colombia. These series will allow tackling a myriad of questions related to the functioning of the labor markets in emerging economies, where such datasets were not...

The recent financial crisis has renewed the interest of economists, both at the theoretical and empirical level, in developing a better understanding of credit and its mechanisms. A rapidly growing strand of the literature views banks as facing funding restrictions that condition their borrowing...

This paper studies whether the geographical separation of markets constitutes a factor that helps explain the dynamics of agricultural prices. To do this, we employ a highly disaggregated dataset for Colombia that consists of weekly observations on wholesale prices for 18 agricultural products...

We study the existence of a monetary policy transmission mechanism through banks in Colombia, using monthly banks’ balance sheet data for the period 1996:4 – 2012:12. We obtain results which are consistent with the basic postulates of the bank lending channel (and the risk-taking channel)...

El presente trabajo da cuenta de las principales lecciones que se han recogido en materia de política monetaria y financiera sobre la crisis actual, y traza un paralelo con la crisis colombiana de los noventa (guardadas las proporciones) y con las acciones que de ella se derivaron. Además...

In the context of financial crises influenced by the development and burst of housing price bubbles, the detection of exuberant behaviors in the financial market and the implementation of early warning diagnosis tests are of vital importance. This paper applies the new method developed by...

La participación del estado en la formación para el trabajo (FpT) se justifica por fallas contractuales en el mercado laboral y consideraciones redistributivas. Este ensayo: i) caracteriza la oferta de programas de FpT en Colombia—educación media vocacional, formación profesional técnica...

Este artículo estudia el mecanismo de transmisión de la política monetaria a través de los salarios reales y la oferta de trabajo. El trade-off inflación producto depende de la calificación de los trabajadores y de la elasticidad de la oferta de trabajo al salario real. Se plantea un...