This dissertation examines the role of bank structure on the effectiveness of monetary policy. Using time series data for U.S. banks, I examine the varying effect of monetary policy on bank lending for the period 1976-2003. It is found that as the banking industry gets more concentrated (through...

Diffusion modeling of commodity price behavior is important for commodity risk management. This research seeks to improve upon the existing commodity diffusion models by incorporating stochastic volatility and seasonality through the affine diffusion framework. In particular, it evaluates affine...

This study investigates the implications of firm's demand for real balances from the production and monetary economics perspective. Money is a component of production as a factor increasing efficiency in exchange in input markets. Firms may improve efficiency in production by holding real money...

The informal sector is an extensive phenomenon in developing countries. While some of its implications have drawn considerable attention in the literature, one relatively unexplored aspect has to do with the saving patterns of workers and firms and how these might influence aggregate savings and...

After decades using monetary aggregates as the main instrument of monetary policy and having different varieties of crawling peg exchange rate regimes, Colombia adopted a full-fledged inflation-targeting (IT) regime in 1999, with inflation as the nominal anchor, a floating exchange rate, and the...

The informal sector is an extensive phenomenon in developing countries. While some of its implications have drawn considerable attention in the literature, one relatively unexplored aspect has to do with the saving patterns of workers and firms and how these might influence aggregate savings and...