Several types of arguments advocate state involvement in the promotion of culture. Many of them imply some sort of subsidy, usually to non-for-profit firms; none favors taxing cultural events. The tax literature, on the other side, discusses excise taxation on culture only as a way to...

There is abundant empirical evidence showing that asymmetric price adjustments exist in a wide variety of markets. Prices tend to grow faster when costs rise relative to the rate at which prices drop when costs fall. The objective of this paper is to empirically test whether asymmetric price...

En el estudio se identificaron los principales problemas que Colombia afronta para lograr un desarrollo económico consolidado y se sugirieron recomendaciones de política pública de corto, mediano y largo plazo para superarlos. Los cinco elementos en los cuales se basó el análisis fueron:...

This paper provides first order conditions for a very general class of single or multi-unit auctions. Under mild conditions we characterize bidding-behavior and generalize previous standard results in the literature. As an application we obtain sufficient conditions for truth-telling, monotonic...

Bogotá sufrió importantes cambios durante los primeros cincuenta años del siglo XX. La ciudad transformó su economía, su urbanidad y su sociedad y se convirtió en un importante eje de impulso para el desarrollo económico del país. Su población también vivió fuertemente estos cambios,...

This paper examines the relationship between risk, concentration and the exercise of market power by banking institutions. We use monthly balance-sheet and interest rate data for the Colombian banking system from 1997 to 2006. The evidence shows that, in the face of high risk, banks transfer a...

This paper studies whether a government party always prefers to negotiate with another compact party rather than with many different parties in a legislature. We claim that the interaction between ideological polarization and number of parties plays an important role in this decision. We start...

This paper simulates, within a partial equilibrium framework, the scenarios resulting form the implementation of several educational policies. Then, policies are compared according to their hypothetical results in terms of labor earnings inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient. Results...

In this paper, we examine the determinants of mortgage loans interest rates in Colombia during the period January 2002 - June 2006. We find that the main macroeconomic determinant is public debt interest rates. At the micro level, we find that credit risk is the main determinant. We demonstrate...

This research attempts to explain the poor performance of the Colombian economy in the world markets during the late nineteenth century. Based on data on exportable production at the municipal level in 1892, coffee production in 1925 and of public land allocation and land conflicts during the...