"Existe cierta percepción en el país de que el peso colombiano es excesivamente volátil y de que ello en parte es consecuencia de la activa participación de los Fondos de Pensiones Obligatorias (FPOs) en el mercado cambiario. En este documento realizamos dos ejercicios. En primer lugar, estimamos diferentes medidas que nos permiten comparar, a diversas frecuencias, la volatilidad del peso con la de otras monedas y con ...

"This document is organized around "political" and "economic" institutions. We begin with the former, with a discussion of the role of the judicial system and of the separation of power followed by the electoral law and structure of parliament, and a discussion of crime prevention and criminal justice system. We then move to economic institutions, we focus on those that have to do with the bureaucracy and provision of ...

"In the last decade the issue of the optimal degree of central bank independence has been at the center of attention of academics and policymakers in many countries. The direction of institutional reform has almost universally been toward making central banks more independent from political pressure. The motivation of this move is linked to an increased emphasis on price stability as the main or only goal of monetary ...

"Since the 1960s Colombia has exhibited notorius economic stability and institutional continuity. Until rencently, the political system was based on an entreched bipartisan coalition, with little ideological confrontation. Power sharing, which was mandatory during the National Front (NF, 1954-74), lasted until 1991. Coffee, the main export, is a labor-intensive activity, taking place in thousands of family-owned small ...

"Why has Colombia been a case of low outputvariability and moderate-to-high inflation? This paper argues that regardless of the institutional arrangement, monetary authorities have stabilized the business cycle, and inflation control has not been the only objective of monetary policy, The goverment-controlled Junta Monetaria (1963-1991) often ignored the advice of the Asesores, an anti-inflation group of technocrats ...