The Colombian Financial Cycle, 1987-2021: What role for post-crisis regulation? The Colombian Financial Cycle, 1987-2021: What role for post-crisis regulation?

Abstract

The financial cycle consists of the joint evolution of asset prices and credit aggregates. Its regularity has been abundantly studied for panels of countries which regularly include developed countries and sometimes include less developed or developing countries. This paper employs an innovative methodology to analyze the Colombian financial cycle from time series and bivariate perspectives. First, we characterize expansions and contractions in the stock market and the real exchange rate. These are two distinct asset classes that play an essential role as stores of value in middle-income countries. Our analysis is completed by identifying bull and bear phases in the local-currency credit market. We test the hypothesis that the changes in regulation that originated with the end-of-century crisis in the country impacted the evolution of asset prices and credit aggregates. We find that the amplitude and severity of contraction phases decreased post-reforms, which may signal the success of the new regulation. We find no effect on the behaviour of asset prices and argue that this is to be expected since they were not targeted. Finally, we find that the joint movement of stocks and credit peaks during financial crises and troughs during economic expansions, consistent with findings in the international literature.