After 25 years, the Colombian authorities decided to abandon the crawling peg exchange rate policy and implement a regime of nominal exchange rate bands. Initial conditions in Colombia contrast sharply with those of other cases in which bands were part of an ongoing effort to reduce high...

The allocation of responsibilities between central and local governments and their fiscal relationship is one of the most important and complex issues of public finance. The general tendency around the world in the last decade has been toward more decentralization, that is delegation of more...

Un país con política cambiaria que no sea de flotación pura, demanda reservas internacionales con múltiples propósitos, el principal siendo garantizar el flujo de pagos y evitar un derrumbe del sistema cambiario vigente(1). Por ejemplo, si la tasa de cambio es fija, las reservas sirven para...

The allocation of responsibilities between central and local governments and their fiscal relationship is one of the most important and complex issues of public finance. The general tendency around the world in the last decade has been toward more decentralization, that is delegation of more...

Several Observers of Latin America have underscored the notion that an emerging "consensus" regarding the role of the State in the economy surfaced during the 1980's (v.g World Bank, 1993; Williamson, 1993). Starting from an emphasis on issues regarding stabilization, there are three main and...

Desde enero de 1994 la política cambiaria colombiana se basa en un sistema formal de bandas para la tasa de cambio, mediante el cual el Banco Central se compromete a intervenir en el mercado cuando la tasa de cambio llega a unos determinados niveles mínimo y máximo, definidos anteriormente y...

In the 1990’s descentralization in Colombia, a process which had begun a decade earlier, was sharply accelerated. The percentage of current Central Government revenues that are automatically transferred to the regional governments quickly jumped from about 20% to over 40%. Many analysts...

In the last decade the issue of the optimal degree of central bank independence has been at the center of attention of academics and policymakers in many countries. The direction of institutional reform has almost universally been toward making central banks more independent from political...