A note on the economics of the duty free zone

This note extends some of the results of Hamada (1974) on the economic effects of a duty free zone. It is shown that, in the presence of factor mobility between the duty free zone and the rest of the economy, the final equilibrium will yield the same trade pattern which would have prevailed under free trade; moreover, all of the trade will be done by the duty free zone.     

Colombia’s macroeconomic challenges at the end of the supercycle of commodity prices

The end of the commodity boom presents major challenges for the Colombian economy. The major ones relate to the need to reduce the current account deficit and find new growth engines. A competitive real exchange rate is essential for objectives and requires stronger interventions in the foreign exchange market; these interventions also help to smooth out the trajectory of the inflation rate. Finally, although fiscal adjustment has been adequate, there are fiscal needs associated with the additional public sector spending demanded by the peace agreement and the need to correct the major structural tax imbalances generated by previous tax reforms.     

Privatization of state holding corporations

Many countries have privatized part of their state holding corporations in recent years. However, the literature on this issue has analyzed mainly the privatization of uniproduct public firms. We consider a state holding corporation with two plants that may produce complement or substitute goods. Assuming that private firms are more efficient than the state holding corporation we find the following: If the marginal cost of the state corporation is low, it is not privatized either if goods are substitutes or if they are complements. However, if the marginal cost of the state corporation is high the two plants of the state holding corporation are sold to a single private investor if goods are complements, and to different investors if goods are substitutes. If goods are close substitutes and the marginal cost of the state corporation takes an intermediate value only one plant is privatized. We extend the model to consider that firms are equally efficient, that they face quadratic cost functions and that there are n uniplant private firms producing each good. We find two differences with the previous result: The government never privatizes just one plant of the state corporation, and when goods are complements the two plants of the state corporation are sold to different investors if n is high.     

Social Responsibility and Social Security: The Foundation of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Caja de Pensiones para la Vejez y de Ahorros</Emphasis>

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not new. Many entrepreneurs created and developed companies along the time, with a strong sense of ethical and social responsibility. This article presents an example of how CSR was conceived and put into practice when Caja de Pensiones para la Vejez y de Ahorros was created in Barcelona in 1905, following the life and ideas of its founder, Francesc Moragas, a lawyer with a deep commitment for social action and a successful conception of the technical and economic dimensions of a financial and social institution.     

The loan structure and housing tenure decisions in an equilibrium model of mortgage choice

The objective of this paper is to understand how loan structure affects (i) the borrower's selection of a mortgage contract and (ii) the aggregate economy. We develop a quantitative equilibrium theory of mortgage choice where households can choose from a menu of long-term (nominal) mortgage loans. The model accounts for observed patterns in housing consumption, ownership, and portfolio allocations. We find that the loan structure is a quantitatively significant factor in a household's housing finance decision. The model suggests that the mortgage structure preferred by a household is dependent on age and income and that loan products with low initial payments offer an alternative to mortgages with no downpayment. These effects are more important when inflation is low. The presence of inflation reduces the real value of the mortgage payment and the outstanding loan over time reducing mobility. Changes in the structure of mortgages have implications for risk sharing.     

AN EQUILIBRIUM SEARCH MODEL WHEN FIRMS OBSERVE WORKERS' EMPLOYMENT STATUS*

This article considers an equilibrium search model, where firms post wages using information on workers' employment status. Earnings differentials between workers of different employment statuses are driven by firms' ability to discriminate workers' reservation wages. I study how these wage policies depend on firms' and workers' characteristics, and how these policies affect the wage distribution. The model delivers new predictions for the amount of wage dispersion that can be generated with search models and provides a better representation of the left tail of the wage distribution in the presence of a legal minimum wage than standard equilibrium search models.     

From scratch to efficiency gains after a financial crisis? A tale of a restructured banking system

We study the efficiency of the Argentine banking system after the 2001–2002 crisis. The financial system had to be restructured from scratch and recovered jointly with the economy, but its productivity and average cost levels have been stagnant since 2007. The analysis includes efficiency frontier estimations for retail banks and a comparison of subsamples for different categories of banks for the period 2005–15. We try to determine whether public banks are more efficient than private ones, whether privatized are more efficient than always private, as well as national versus foreign entities. Our findings show a modest average efficiency of the system and quite similar efficiency rankings for the different groups of banks. On average, public tend to be slightly more cost efficient than private, and national are slightly more efficient than foreign.     

Cities export specialization

We analyse whether more populated cities have an export specialization different from the one of less populated cities. Using very detailed product-level export data for Brazilian urban areas over the period 2000–2013, we show that more populated cities export proportionately more skill-intensive and complex goods than less populated cities. This result is consistent with the larger diversity of skills and the higher share of skilled workers in more populated cities.