Ensayos Sobre Politica Economica最新文献

This paper analyzes the convergence of Gross Domestic Product per capita (GDP pc) during the period 1990-2013 in Colombia. Results show a convergence process for the 1999-2006 period and statistical evidence for the existence of spatial error dependence. For these years, random shocks determine the movement of the economies and their interaction are not defined by administrative boundaries. A growth process for the Andean and Caribbean region is observed, contrary to what happens in Orinoquia and Amazon region. That convergence process occurred due to a process of unobservable spatial factors which gave a transition to the growth of the Caribbean and the Andean region. Besides, over time departments with high and low GDP pc remain constant. The main contribution of this work is the analysis on convergence that includes space and time factors simultaneously, as well as validation of the existence of convergence.

The Colombian Tax Reform of 2012 had as main objective to promote labor formalization. This paper seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of this reform with a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model calibrated for Colombia. This model has two productive sectors (formal and informal) and a tax structure that captures the major changes of the reform. The results indicate that the new tax policy had a positive impact in reducing labor informality by 2.3 percentage points. Furthermore, when we account for the natural pre-announcement period of any tax reform, variables such as output, consumption, investment and labor informality have the opposite behavior in the short-term when compared to their long-run dynamics. Thus, we find that once the tax reform is announced, an increase in informal employment is observed although this performance was reversed in the long run. We validate this behavior with the observed Colombian data right after the announcement of the reform. This result reflects the importance of including in the analysis the timing of policy changes to explain the response in macroeconomic variables.

This paper estimates the penalty that occurs in the earnings of parents who had their children at an early age, before 21 years, compared to those who delay parenthood. To correct endogeneity problems matching techniques (propensity score matching) and the Heckman method are used. The results suggest that parents at an early age have a penalty of 11.7% in their income per hour are used. The impacts are greater in magnitude for women (12.7%) than for men (5.3%) and the transmission channels are heterogeneous by sex. Early parenthood comes at a critical time in the life cycle, which increases the probability of interrupting major events in the formation of human capital and produces changes in the way young parents get into the labor market as a result of care and financial support of the child.

This paper estimates the impacts of weather conditions on Colombian food inflation growth. Generalized impulse response functions were used for a smooth transition non-linear model that includes food inflation and the sea surface temperature index (SST v3.4). In this study, data were obtained from the monthly period between June 1995 and May 2015. Results suggest that the weather shocks are transitory and asymmetric. In particular, a strong and positive shock has a significant effect on the food inflation growth and produces a 72,5 and 100 bases points increment four and five months later, respectively.

This article studies regional gaps in education quality at the senior high school level, for the period 2000-2012, in Colombia's municipalities. Municipal education quality is measured using a test called Saber 11, applied to high school students in their last year. With the aforementioned aim in mind, a non-parametric convergence analysis is carried out, in which the geographical element is taken into account as a factor influencing education quality and explaining regional gaps. Results suggest that there is no evidence of convergence and, on the contrary, it is found that municipalities cluster together in space according to their education quality level. Moreover, it is found that neighbourhoods education quality level has a large influence in the likelihood that a municipality has of moving up or down the distribution.

The analysis of productivity performance of the Mexican Northern Border offers an interesting case study for that objective. This is because it combines mobile growth factors due to regional reallocation of economic activity and, on the other hand, the fact that factors that are considered immobile in the literature such as education, infrastructure and specialization were initially localised in Central Mexico. We show that, throughout this period, in the Northern Border the accumulation of immobile factors and the efficiency in its advantage have been determining factors in its economic growth.

The effect of natural resources (NR) on growth has been a topic widely discussed in the economics literature. The evidence shows a predominant negative impact of this, but this can be neutralized if countries adopt a more knowledge-intensive industrial structure. This paper seeks to explore the key factors for growth in natural resource-driven countries under a knowledge economy perspective, providing new evidence that corroborates how a development path based on NR is plausible when some conditions are present. Performing cluster and panel data analyses, our findings reveal the essential role of openness and Foreign direct investment (FDI) to access foreign technologies as key driving factors. Meanwhile, the case of Chile confirms the importance of intangibles for a country's growth, and demonstrates that a weak innovation capability can become a serious blockage for sustained progress despite the successful advance in other dimensions.

Statistical analyses show that, after controlling for the accumulation of productive factors, the joint effect of the diversification of manufacturing inputs and the urban population purchasing power has a positive and significant impact on the Colombian economic growth. Furthermore, there is statistical evidence that shortages or deficiencies of public infrastructure and public services, as well as the violations of property rights diminish economic growth. These results are consistent with the Smithian vision of economic development.