This paper is concerned with interest rate setting by commercial banks and how the transmission of monetary policy is re°ected in these rates. For this purpose we study the case of the Colombian banking industry for the period 1996-2004. Using microdata, the Certi¯cate of Deposit(CD) market...

In this paper we study the effect of monetary policy shocks on commodity prices. While most of the literature has found that expansionary shocks have a positive effect on aggregate price indices, we study the effect on individual prices of a sample of four commodities. This set of commodity...

The assessment of inflationary pressures in Colombia has faced two important challenges in the present decade. The first one occurred in 2006 and consisted of detecting an overheating economy in the midst of fast growing investment and increasing measured productivity. The second challenge took...

This work analyzes the relationship between real interest rates and commodity prices. According to Frankel’s hypothesis (1986-2006): "low real interest rates lead to high real commodity prices". However, some empirical evidence suggests that commodity prices can predict monetary policy. In...

To evaluate whether transparency is beneficial, it is usual to assume that the central bank may choose one of two options, opacity versus truthful communication. However, the monetary policymaker may have incentives to misrepresent private information so as to reduce economic volatility by...

We analyse three models to determine the conditions under which reserve requirements are used as a part of an optimal monetary policy framework in an inflation targeting regime. In all cases the Central Bank (CB) minimizes an objective function that depends on deviations of inflation from its...

Recientemente se han escuchado voces que se pronuncian en uno y otro sentido en relación con las acciones que debería adoptar la autoridad monetaria de Colombia en esta coyuntura, dados los eventos ocurridos. Este documento tiene como propósito interpretar algunos hechos y concluir que, en...

In the past decade the Colombian Economic Authorities undertook a series of measures that reduced the structural fiscal deficit, decreased the Government currency mismatch and deepened the local fixed-rate public bond market. This paper presents some evidence suggesting that these improvements...

El documento tiene como objetivo describir algunos de los elementos fundamentales del mercado interbancario colombiano y del manejo de liquidez por parte del Banco de la República (BR). El documento explica las diferencias entre las principales operaciones en este mercado y describe los...

The price setting behavior of Colombian retailers of goods and services was studied based on a unique dataset containing 12,052,970 individual price reports covering all items in the Colombian CPI from March 1999 to May 2008. The main results are summarized as follows: 1. Colombian consumer...