Cien años de regímenes cambiarios en Colombia: 1923-2023

En este artículo se describen y analizan los distintos regímenes cambiarios y las variantes que estuvieron vigentes en Colombia en los últimos cien años. Una conclusión es que la mayoría de las modalidades conocidas para el manejo de la tasa de cambio – si no todas– fueron utilizadas en el país en alguna de las coyunturas de la historia de la economía. Todo inició con el Patrón Oro, que fue abandonado durante la Gran Depresión para dar paso a un régimen controlado. Con posterioridad a la Segunda Guerra Mundial, particularmente en la fase de precios bajos del café después de la bonanza del café de 1954 a 1957, se registró un alto grado de inestabilidad en el manejo cambiario, con una enorme dificultad para estabilizar la economía, por la interacción entre las medidas cambiarias y los ajustes monetarios y fiscales. Cuando se procedió sin acudir a estas políticas complementarias de estabilización no se tuvo éxito e, inevitablemente, en corto tiempo se desembocaba en devaluaciones abruptas del pes

Estimación de la senda óptima de extracción para un recurso natural no renovable: caso de estudio para la actividad carbonífera a cielo abierto en el

la economía de los recursos naturales, permite conocer la forma como se extrae sosteniblemente un recurso natural renovable y no renovable. De esta forma, el presente estudio con información financiera y sobre costos totales de producción (estimados mediante un modelo de datos panel con efectos aleatorios), para siete principales empresas explotadoras de carbón en el centro del departamento del Cesar, contrasta la senda óptima de extracción actual y la sostenible que incluye el valor monetario de las externalidades ambientales y sociales generadas por la actividad minera a cielo abierto. Asimismo, determina la presión impuesta al recurso dado que las firmas no internalizan los costos ambientales en su función de beneficios. Lo anterior, es realizado a partir de modelos de decisión de Markov y técnicas de programación dinámicas propuestas por Bellman (1957). Así, se evidenció que la mejor decisión tomada por parte de las firmas multinacionales, establecidas en la zona, es extraer todas las reservas disponibles del recurso en el menor tiempo posible, antes de culminar la concesión. Como consecuencia, del amplio nivel de reservas, que conlleva a bajos costos de extracción, y gracias a los favorables precios de mercado enfrentados por la industria en su momento.explotación de carbón a cielo abierto, departamento del Cesar-Colombia,economía de los recursos naturales, senda de extracción óptima, recurso natural norenovable, externalidades ambientales y sociales, función de costos de producción, modelosde datos panel, efectos aleatorios, desarrollo sostenible, ecuaciones de Bellman,programación dinámica

BALANCE OF PAYMENTS CRISES UNDER FIXED EXCHANGE RATE IN COLOMBIA: 1938-1967

Between 1938 and 1967, including the Bretton Woods period after 1947, Colombia pegged its currency to the dollar. Although the exchange rate was fixed, the peso was devaluated more than 12% on six occasions. The devaluation episodes were complex, traumatic, highly politicized and had costly macroeconomic effects. The Bretton Woods agreement stated that countries could only devalue their exchange rate in the presence of fundamental imbalances driven, for example, by structural terms of trade deterioration. However, this paper states that in Colombia, the imbalance in the money market was a key factor in explaining the exchange rate crises during the period. The paper is organized as follows: first, a simple theoretical model of a small open economy with imperfect capital mobility is described in order to examine the possible causes of nominal devaluations; second, a narrative approach is used to describe the economic circumstances that surrounded each of the devaluation episodes; finally, a set of econometric tests are used in order to identify the key variables behind the macroeconomic imbalances that preceded each exchange rate crisis. The results show that the external imbalances were mainly associated with the imbalances in the money market. Terms of trade deterioration account for just a small part of current account crisesBretton Woods, Devaluation, Fixed Exchange Rate Regime, Monetary Policy

Competitiveness of Colombian Departments observed from an Economic geography Perspective

SummaryIn this paper, we analyze the regional competitiveness concept and its measurement using the old and New Trade Theory and the New Economic Geography. The analysis shows that the competitiveness has no sense when is applied to the goods market, while has sense (however, not in all situations) when is applied to the productive factors market. Contrary to most approaches and measurements of the competitiveness of Colombian departments, we show that is possible to obtain simple measures which, in addition to being consistent with the conceptual framework of economic geography, are the product of the combination of a small number of variablesRegional competitiveness, New Trade Theory, Economic Geography, Colombian departments, Competitiveness Ranking

Colonial independence and economic backwardness in Latin America.

This paper explores the connections between independence from Spain and Portugal and economic backwardness in Latin America. The release of the fiscal burden was offset by higher costs of self-government, while opening up to the international economy represented a handmaiden of growth. Independence had a very different impact across regions and widened regional disparities. The commitment to the colonial mercantilism conditioned the new republics' performance but, on the whole, GDP per head increased in the half a century after emancipation. It appears that inherited Iberian institutions cannot be blamed for Latin America's poor performance relative to the US, especially if the scope is widened to include the post-independence performance of former European colonies in Africa and Asia. It is suggested that before jumping to the usual negative assessment of nineteenth century Latin America, a comparison of post-independence performance in other world regions will be required

COLONIAL INDEPENDENCE AND ECONOMIC BACKWARDNESS IN LATIN AMERICA

This paper explores the connections between independence from Spain and Portugal and economic backwardness in Latin America. The release of the fiscal burden was offset by higher costs of self-government, while opening up to the international economy represented a handmaiden of growth. Independence had a very different impact across regions and widened regional disparities. The commitment to the colonial mercantilism conditioned the new republics’ performance but, on the whole, GDP per head increased in the half a century after emancipation. It appears that inherited Iberian institutions cannot be blamed for Latin America’s poor performance relative to the US, especially if the scope is widened to include the post-independence performance of former European colonies in Africa and Asia. It is suggested that before jumping to the usual negative assessment of nineteenth century Latin America, a comparison of post-independence performance in other world regions will be required.

Political Competition in Dual Economies: Clientelism in Latin America

Resumen:Este artículo presenta el proyecto de investigación que intenta iluminar los mecanismos que vinculan el clientelismo con la informalidad. En particular la investigación se concentra en las interacciones que tienen lugar durante la competencia electoral e intenta proporcionar un marco analítico para comprender los mecanismos económicos subyacentes en la competencia electoral en América Latina. Esta competencia está caracterizada por asimetrías entre los políticos (credibilidad y habilidad para movilizar votantes) y asimetrías entre los votantes (ingreso y participación en cierto segmento de la economía) ambos inmersos en un ambiente de baja calidad institucional (débil imperio de la ley). El artículo expone la evidencia empírica que motivó la investigación, discute los conceptos y literatura centrales y presenta un ejercicio exploratorio basado en el modelo de votación probabilística como un punto de partida en la formalización del problema. En esta primera aproximación se muestra que el político clientelista en el poder puede proveer más bienes públicos cuando su maquinaria política es suficientemente rentable y la sociedad es altamente inequitativa. En la medida en que el político entrante tiene su nicho en los votantes ricos quienes demandan bajos impuestos, el político clientelista redistribuye más ingreso aunque a costa de una mayor informalidad.maquinaria política, clientelismo, política redistributiva, dualidad, informalidad, modernización económica, América Latina

A Tropical Sucess Story: A Century of Improvements in the Biological Standard of Living, Colombia 1910-2002

Since the late 1970's there has a been a growing interest among economic historians in the study of the behavior of height over time, as an alternative method for measuring the standard of living. Adult height reflects the net nutritional status of a person during the years of physical growth, which is influenced by food intake, health, and work effort. Thus is provides a measure of the biological standard of living, one of the dimensions of the overall standard of living. This paper studies the behavior in the height of Colombian women and men born since 1910 to 1984. For Colombians born in 1984 the adult height was recorded in 2002, when they received their citizenschip card. Thus, the height data discussed in this paper reflect the behavior from 1910 to 2002 of the determinants of height. The information that is used comes from the citizenship card (cédula de ciudadanía). with 8.454.348 observations, this is one of the largest databases, relative to the population of the country, found in the literature of anthropometric history to date. In economic terms Colombia was a success story during the twentieth century. The rate of growt of per capita GDP from 1905 to 2000 was 2.3% one of the highest in Latin America. This economic success was reflected in several dimensions of the standard of living, one of which is the height of its population. Colombian men born in 1984 were 7.9 cm.taller than those born in 1910,while in the case of women the increase was of 8.8 cm.,an enormous improvement in physical well being which was achieved in only three generations. This paper is divided in three main sections. First,the characteristics of the database are discussed. Then the national evolution of height for Colombians born in the period 1910-1984 is presented. Next, the behavior in the average height of the departments, the main sub-national territorial units, is compared and a convergence analysis is performed for the period as a whole. Finally, some conclusions are draw in the last section.

Per Capita GDP Convergence in South America, 1960-2007

Resumen: Este artículo analiza la convergencia de la producción per cápita y los patrones de especialización en Sur América. Este estudio encuentra evidencia a favor de divergencia en la producción, sin embargo, también halla que diferencia en los patrones de especialización y producción no son, necesariamente, la causa. Por último y aunque más investigación es necesaria, este artículo sugiere que la integración regional y la geografía pueden tener un papel fundamental en explicar la convergencia de la producción.Club de convergencia, comercio, convergencia, geografía económica,producción per cápita, Sur América

Real exchange rates in Latin America : what does the 20th century reveal?.

Using a new data set for the whole period 1900-2005, this paper analyses the behaviour of real multilateral exchange rates in the six largest economies of Latin America. The main aims are to identify any trends or shifts in the equilibrium position and to test for mean reversion. The key findings are the following: i) evidence of real depreciation at the end of the period, compared to the starting position; ii) significant differences in real exchange rates derived using symmetric and asymmetric definitions; iii) a moderate level of intracountry synchronicity, though results vary across periods and pairs of countries; iv) not rejection of the unit-root hypothesis for the series in levels; however, v) the series can be made stationary after allowing for trends structural breaks. For the adjusted series, the half-life of the process ranges from 0.8 to 2.5 years.