Ensayos Sobre Politica Economica最新文献

This paper examines the structure and dynamics of institutionalised flows of credit between economic sectors – with a distinct emphasis on industry – during the era of import-substitution industrialisation. Using the debate between “balanced vs. unbalanced growth” theories as prompting guide, the paper challenges conventional wisdom sustaining that the state supported industrialisation by providing ample/subsidised credit to industrialists. The argument in this article is that the relative share of institutionalised credit flowing to manufacturing was significantly lower than hitherto assumed, when the sectoral allocation considers the financial system as a whole. In fact, it is argued that industrialists were the losers in a financial system in which key players – the Central Bank (CB) – represented competing interests. This proposition is substantiated with a combination of newly constructed datasets integrating credit series for public and private banks, as well as data discriminating the sectoral allocation of resources originating in the CB.

To design economic policy, it is very important to know in depth the interdependence of the economic structure. This work uses the input-output (I/O) model for economic analysis. Two approaches, not traditionally used, are applied to analyse the Colombian economy: spectrum of different I/O coefficient matrices (Dietzenbacher, 1992) and clustering techniques (Garbellini y Wirkierman, 2014). As a result, indicators of linkages are obtained without bias of overestimation or underestimation. Additionally, clusters are identified endogenously. Furthermore, embodied labour flows that spread through the network-production are calculated. Each of these flows is broken down into indicators that characterise the clusters according to their proximity to final demand, to their degree of cohesion to the network, and to their importance for the rest of the system.

This article shows that estimates of the elasticity of pass-through from exchange rate to prices reported in some of the recent literature are derived from erroneous calculations. The Board of Bank of México has been using these estimates for several years to make decisions on monetary policy.

This article provides empirical evidence about the relationship between capital flows, natural resource exploitation, and de-industrialisation in the case of Colombia. To this end, we analyze if the massive increase in capital inflows during the latest commodity boom led to an additional appreciation of Colombia's real effective exchange rate, thereby aggravating Dutch disease symptoms. Our results show that capital inflows, above all flows of foreign direct investment into the mining and energy sector, indeed contributed to the appreciation of Colombia's real effective exchange rate, which, in turn, negatively affected the trading sector in general, and the manufacturing sector in particular. This finding demonstrates that not only the exploitation of natural resources as such, but also the way in which this exploitation is financed influences the economies of developing countries.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) potentially hoard high capacities to reduce gender differences in the labour market. So, studying specific labour traits of employment using ICT is an interesting strategy to look into the nature of gender labour differences. Thus, the aim of the article is to determine to what extent the use of ICT removes the economic foundations of gender inequality and improves the labour position of women. Focusing on the gender pay gap (GPG) in Spain, it is firstly measured within ICT employment. The wage gap by gender in Spain for ICT employment and the rest of the employment is compared, checking whether ICT employment brings noticeable differences. The results show that woman get higher wages in ICT occupations. However, the gender gap persists, with a significant component still unexplained. The glass ceiling persists as a negative situation that women must face up to.

This paper analyses the effectiveness of official interventions of the Colombian Central Bank in the foreign exchange market over the period of June 2008–December 2013. The estimation procedure suggested by Hansen (2000) is used to estimate a threshold model for the spot exchange rate that splits the data sample into two different regimes that depend on the extent of the misalignment of the exchange rate from a fundamental value. The estimation results provide empirical evidence of the existence of a coordination channel of intervention proposed by Sarno and Taylor (2001). According to the theory of the coordination channel, interventions by central banks work as signals that solve a coordination failure in the foreign exchange market when speculation moves the exchange rate from its fundamental value. The results suggest that foreign exchange interventions had a considerable and statistically significant effect in depreciating the domestic currency when the spot exchange rate was sufficiently below from its fundamental value.

The history of economic recessions has shown that every deep downturn has been accompanied by disruptions in the financial sector. Paradoxically, up until the financial world crisis of 2007–2009, little attention was given to macroeconomic and financial interdependence. In this paper, a study is conducted on the relationship between financial and real business cycles for a sample of thirty-three countries in the frequency domain. Specifically, the features of the interdependence of credit and output cycles are analysed and Granger-type causality tests are carried out in the frequency domain. The main findings of the study indicate that the likelihood of cycle interdependence is highest when considering medium and long-term frequencies, and that Granger causality runs in both directions.

Quality of employment has traditionally been analyzed using synthetic indicators. However, this analysis does not incorporate a theoretical framework that supports weighting variables within such indicators. This study seeks to fill the existing gap by using the Consumer Theory and equivalence scales, in an attempt to measure quality of employment. According to the Quality of Life Survey (2010), 62.4% of Colombian occupations are considered to be good. It further shows that the best jobs fall within the middle section of the age distribution, with the occupations of juvenile and older adults being the worst ones, which points to the existence of a new labor life cycle. The survey also reveals the importance of consumer economies of scale, depending on household size, which plays a key role in maintaining or improving well-being.

This paper analyzes the relationship between monetary policy decisions and financial stability conditions, considering the asset prices as the key variable. The econometric estimates show that the Banco de la Republica has not had any response between 1996 and 2012 to the variables associated with financial stability, such as the gap in asset prices and credit. In this sense, we adapt and calibrate a theoretical model that shows that when the central bank responds to the gap in asset prices there is greater financial stability. Therefore one can see that the gaps in share prices and housing prices respond positively to a monetary expansion, defining with it the existence of a mechanism by which the Central Bank of Colombia will affect the financial stability.