Julián Benavides Franco

This paper studies the impact of weather shocks on the credit risk of bank portfolios in small and rural municipalities in Colombia, which are highly vulnerable to these climate variations. It addresses the relationship between extreme temperature and precipitation events and the increase in the proportion of loans at risk, using data from 2011 to 2023. Extreme climate shocks negatively affect loan portfolio quality in Colombian rural municipalities, especially in microcredits. Credit risk decreases in municipalities with higher per capita incomes. It varies according to the type of loan and the nature of the weather shock. The results show that low temperature shocks increase risk in commercial and consumer loans. In contrast, low-precipitation shocks increase risk in microcredit. The increasing importance of climatic disturbances stresses the need for banks to develop their own models to manage these risks and to deepen analysis that incorporate borrower-specific information and banking policies to protect both financial institutions and borrowers from the impacts of climate change. The integration of sustainable practices and climate education can be key to improving financial resilience in these vulnerable areas.

This research studies whether fluctuations in Brent crude prices propagated to the exchange rate and equity markets of the Pacific Alliance (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru) between 2000-2019. This period includes the formation of the block and excludes the structural change caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Structural var models are employed by country to filter monthly returns, and eight contagion tests are applied: Pearson, Spearman, and Kendall correlations; Forbes-Rigobon adjusted correlation; local Gaussian bootstrap statistics; X² covolatility test; and two third-order co-bias tests. Calm and crisis regimes are identified using the Lunde-Timmermann bull/bear algorithm and the Mohaddes Pesaran realized volatility classifier. The evidence is replicated excluding the 2007-2009 global financial crisis. Results show a marked asymmetry: currency contagion is strong and persistent in Mexico and Chile, moderate in Colombia, and sporadic in Peru. In contrast, stock market contagion is significant only in Colombia and Peru. These findings indicate that homogeneous policy responses within the Alliance may not be effective, and that investors must hedge currency and stock marketrisks in a differentiated manner.

In this paper, we study the relationship between the merit order effect and the ownership structure of renewable resources in electricity markets. We use daily frequency data from the Colombian electricity market in 2012-2019 and designed a strategy to estimate the spot price's dependence on renewable energy. We study how the participation of multi-technology firms in renewable energy alters the spot price. Our main results show a merit order effect for the Colombian electricity market, but this weakens in the presence of greater participation of multi-technology firms in the total availability of renewable energy for the day.

Impact of IFRS on the quality of financial information in the United Kingdom and France: Evidence from a new perspective

Este documento tiene como objetivo la estructuración de un marco de análisis para el estudio de prácticas de gobierno corporativo y su incidencia en los resultados financieros, teniendo en cuenta estudios teóricos y empíricos en países desarrollados y en desarrollo, principalmente latinoamericanos, con énfasis en Colombia. Las prácticas de gobierno corporativo se han convertido en un elemento esencial de los estudios de la teoría de la firma en vista de que proveen a los gestores y propietarios de mecanismos que permiten establecer normas encaminadas a la minimización de conflictos de interés, la consecuente mejora y transparencia en la toma de decisiones y, por ende, elevar los niveles de desempeño financiero. A partir de la metodología de análisis documental propuesta por David Papineau, se encuentran una significativa evolución y convergencia en la normativa internacional y nacional en lo relacionado con prácticas de gobierno corporativo y su relación con el desempeño; resalta el incipiente impacto en Colombia y otros países en desarrollo. Entre los resultados más relevantes están la necesidad de abordar las prácticas de gobierno corporativo y su impacto sobre los retornos financieros de las firmas desde un enfoque multiteórico, al igual que la identificación del problema que para las investigaciones empíricas representa la endogeneidad entre el desempeño financiero y el gobierno corporativo.

Operational Research & Management Science has been defined as the field that provides analytical methodologies to make better decisions. It offers an ample set of tools to facilitate the analysis of complex organisational issues and enlighten decision-making. Nonetheless, it has also been argued that the role it actually plays for corporate strategic decisions is not as key as one would expect it. This article aims at exploring the role that OR/MS plays at the corporate level of a sample of Colombian organisations.To this end, primary information was collected through an online survey that sought to identify the various types of problems they commonly face, the tools mostly employed, and the processes they normally follow. The results suggest limited use of tools at the corporate level of the organisations surveyed. We conclude the paper with some reflections and recommendations for reversing this situation that are worthy of further research.

Since 2007 Colombian listed firms, non-financial and financial, are required to disclose their compliance to a governance country code. The compliance is interpreted as the level of governance and used as independent variable for regressions looking for the determinants of performance and dividends. The results mostly confirm a positive association of governance with performance, and a U-shaped effect of governance on dividend payout. The effect of governance is higher for non-financial firms and for large non-financial firms.