This book analyzes the political economy of exchange rate policy in Latin America. It brings together the work of economists and political scientists interested in the interaction of economic and political factors in the development of exchange rate policy.

This paper examines the decentralization process in Colombia, particularly as it relates to reforms embodied in the 1991 Constitution, and the bailouts of territorial entities that have occurred in subsequent years as a result of perverse incentive structures. The paper provides a summary of the...

Using the 2003 and 2008 Quality of Life Surveys (QLS) conducted by the National Department of Statistics (DANE), this paper identifies the factors that affect housing tenure decisions in Colombia. Households with higher incomes are more likely to purchase than to rent, and the choice of formal...

This Working Paper assesses the impact on investment of a reduction in corporate taxes and the impact on employment, labor formality, and growth of a reduction in non-wage labor costs in Colombia. First, and following Hall and Jorgensen (1967), we estimate an investment function, which depends...

Como parte de un ambicioso programa de reformas iniciado con la reducción unilateral de aranceles en 1989, durante lo corrido de los noventa en Colombia se adoptaron medidas tendientes a redefinir la estructura y funcionamiento del sistema financiero. Así, se facilitó la entrada de nuevos...

We examine how monetary policy has been conducted in four early adopters of Inflation Targeting: Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru. First, a Markov-Switching approach shows that while all countries exhibit considerable stability in their responses to the inflation and output gaps, most have...

This paper examines the determinants of the high intermediation spread observed in the Colombian banking sector for over two decades. A reduced-form equation is estimated on the basis of a bank profit maximization model that permits a decomposition into operational costs, financial taxation,...

During the nineties the performance of many emerging economies was linked to their access to foreign capital and its impact on the real exchange rate. Colombia was not an exception, as it experienced a sharp boom and bust cycle during the period. Although a number of studies have attempted to...