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...

Typically, central banks use a variety of individual models (or a combination of models) when forecasting inflation rates. Most of these require excessive amounts of data, time, and computational power; all of which are scarce when monetary authorities meet to decide over policy interventions....

We propose to assess the performance of k forecast procedures by exploring the distributions of forecast errors and error losses. We argue that non systematic forecast errors minimize when their distributions are symmetric and unimodal, and that forecast accuracy should be assessed through...

Este trabajo evalúa si las transformaciones de potencia (Box-Cox y en particular logarítmica) de series de tiempo mejoran la precisión de los pronósticos de modelos ARIMA ajustados a variables económicas de Colombia en dos periodos diferentes: 1980-1995 y 2002-2012. Se compara la habilidad...

Este documento combina estimaciones de ocho metodologías de la brecha del producto colombiano para el período comprendido entre el primer trimestre de 1994 y el tercer trimestre de 2012. A partir de modelos VAR que incluyen las diferentes brechas y la inflación se construyen las densidades...

In this paper, we propose an alternative methodology to determine the existence of credit booms, which is a complex and crucial issue for policymakers. In particular, we exploit the Mendoza and Terrones (2008)´s idea that macroeconomic aggregates other than the credit growth rate contain...

In this document we use the Expectations Survey conducted monthly by the Central Bank of Colombia during the period of October 2003 - August 2012. We find that exchange rate revaluations were generally followed by expectations of further revaluation in the short run (1 month), but by...

La toma de decisiones de política económica requiere estimaciones del comportamiento de la actividad económica en tiempo real. Sin embargo, la información utilizada solo está disponible a nivel de indicadores de actividad y de encuestas de opinión, los cuales suelen tener distintas...

Typically, when forecasting inflation rates, there are a variety of individual models and a combination of several of these models. We implement a Bayesian shrinkage combination methodology to include information that is not captured by the individual models using expert forecasts as prior...

In this paper, we study the empirical relationship between credit funding sources and the financial vulnerability of the Colombian banking system. We propose a statistical model to measure and predict banking-fragility episodes associated with credit funding sources classified into retail...