U.S. BUSINESS CYCLE VOLATILITY AND BANKING PRODUCTIVITY

In this paper I address two questions. First, is the fall in the cyclical volatility of U.S. commercial banking productivity a potential candidate to account for the mid-80's fall in U.S. business cycle volatility? Second, does the answer to the previous question change under the presence of financial frictions? The answer to the first question is that the fall in the cyclical volatility of banking productivity contributes significantly only to the volatility fall of the credit cycle. The answer to the second question is that allowing for financial acceleration does not change the results significantly.Cyclical volatility

MILITARY EXPENDITURE AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY:The Colombian Case

We enhance a standard RBC model to account for military expenditure and the costs of an internal conflict or war. The model captures the natural trade-off in military expenditure: crowding out of private consumption and investment but less destruction (and, therefore, higher marginal productivity) of private capital (and labor). Hence, military expenditure below (above) a certain threshold generates a positive (negative) net benefit in terms of output. The model is calibrated to an annual frequency using Colombian data. We find that an increase in military expenditure of 1 % GDP (the current policy of Colombian authorities) increases investment and output above the steady state during several periods, before the shock fades away. Even though consumption falls on impact (to open up space for the additional military expenditure and private investment), it increases above its stationary trend after three periods, remains on positive grounds thereafter, and the cumulated net gain is positive.Real business cycle

FARC TERRORISM IN COLOMBIA A Clustering Analysis

This paper applies clustering analysis to the Colombian armed conflict. Indeed, when applied to a FARC terrorist act database, this statistical procedure finds a natural clustering of the different FARC units according to the different types of terrorist acts they commit and identifies the military hard core of the FARC. The facts revealed in this paper should be useful not only for future military strategies, but also to determine a better priorization and geographical allocation of the scarce military resources.Clustering analysis

Military Expenditure and Economic Activity: The Colombian Case

We enhance a standard RBC model to account for military expenditure and the costs of an internal conflict or war. The model captures the natural trade-off in military expenditure: crowding out of private consumption and investment but less destruction (and, therefore, higher marginal productivity) of private capital (and labor). Hence, military expenditure below (above) a certain threshold generates a positive (negative) net benefit in terms of output. The model is calibrated to an annual frequency using Colombian data. We find that an increase in military expenditure of 1% GDP (the current policy of Colombian authorities) increases investment and output above the steady state during several periods, before the shock fades away. Even though consumption falls on impact (to open up space for the additional military expenditure and private investment), it increases above its stationary trend after three periods, remains on positive grounds thereafter, and the cumulated net gain is positive.Real business cycle, stationary state, military expenditure, crowding-out, productivity shock

Política y vanguardia. La juventud colombiana en las artes plásticas de los años sesenta y setenta

Una mirada a la relación arte-juventud durante los años sesenta y setenta en el ámbito local colombiano pone de presente la dicotomía en la que los artistas jóvenes o emergentes de la época, o se les vio mal o se les adjuntó a lo que podríamos entender como las vanguardias del mercado.Este artículo se ocupa de despejar los interrogantes de si solo existieron durante esos años estas dos opciones: la contestataria y la de apego al mercado, o si hubo otras, y cuáles fueron los motivos —políticos, económicos y globales— que llevaron a que el arte joven colombiano de la época tuviera esa particular disyuntiva

Dos problemas en el uso de corpus diacrónicos del español : perspectiva y comparabilidad

Este trabajo aborda una serie de problemas metodológicos relacionados con la investigación de la variación lingüística a partir de corpus informatizados. A través de una serie de estudios de caso con datos de Biblia Medieval (un corpus paralelo de traducciones de la Biblia en español antiguo) se muestra cómo este tipo de investigación puede beneficiarse del uso de textos paralelos. Para empezar, la metodología de los corpus paralelos ofrece una perspectiva más abierta, ya que es posible analizar todas las formas utilizadas para expresar contenidos del idioma de origen. Del mismo modo, los textos paralelos ofrecen comparabilidad directa de ejemplos concretos a través de diferentes períodos históricos, pues los equivalentes de traducción suelen insertarse en contextos de ocurrencia sintáctica, semántica y pragmática que son idénticos o muy similares. Por último, en un corpus paralelo es posible analizar la variación estilística de forma más controlada examinando cómo el mismo traductor selecciona diferentes opciones lingüísticas en función del género de cada texto.This paper addresses a number of methodological problems related to corpus-based research in language variation. It is shown through a number of case studies using data from Biblia medieval (a parallel corpus of Old Spanish bible translations) how this kind of research can profit from parallel texts. To begin with, the perspective afforded by parallel corpus methodology is more open as it is possible to analyze all the forms used to express contents in the source language. Likewise, parallel texts offer direct comparability of concrete examples across different historical periods, as translation equivalents are likely to be inserted in the same or very similar syntactic, semantic and pragmatic contexts of occurrence. Finally, in a parallel corpus it is possible to analyze stylistic variation in a more controlled manner by examining how the same translator selects different linguistic options depending on the genre of each text

Electric vehicles charging stations planning in transportation networks and their impact on power distribution systems

La introducción de vehículos eléctricos VEs representa una alternativa positiva y proactiva en la electrificación del sector de transporte. Desde el punto de vista de la reducción en la emisión de gases de efecto invernadero y el ruido, son notables los beneficios para el medio ambiente y la población en general. No obstante, la recarga masiva de VEs tendrá un impacto significativo en el sistema de distribución de energía eléctrica, creando inconvenientes en la calidad de la potencia, picos no deseados de demanda, perdidas de potencia en las líneas y problemas de caídas de tensión. Por otro lado, la batería es otro problema que afecta la adopción de VEs, específicamente para las compañías de transporte de mercancía, debido principalmente a la baja autonomía en distancia recorrida comparado con los vehículos de combustión interna

QUANTITATIVE IMPLICATIONS OF THE CREDIT CONSTRAINT IN THE KIYOTAKI-MOORE (1997) SETUP.

The Kiyotaki-Moore (1997) framework is a prominent macro model that features credit constraints as an important factor that propagates and magnifies the effects of shocks. However, the quantitative importance of these constraints in this setup remains an open question. This paper introduces the Kiyotaki-Moore (1997) setup into an otherwise standard dynamic general equilibrium model to explore the quantitative properties of credit constraints. I take a Hansen (1985)- type RBC model and introduce a banking sector that intermediates savings and investment. After calibrating the model to post-1959 U.S. data, I evaluate the propagation and magnification effects of a standard TFP shock to the aggregate economy. I find that the quantitative importance is very small. I then ask if the propagation and magnification effects are stronger if the shock originates in the banking sector. I therefore introduce TFP shocks into financial intermediation. I find that the constraints are also quantitatively unimportant. I conclude that the quantitative significance of the credit constraint in the Kiyotaki-Moore setup is small. The reason underlying this result has to do, theoretically, with asset market dynamics and, empirically, with the low participation of loans in economic activity in the U.S.Credit constraint