Mining and Energy Boom, Dutch Disease and Informality in Colombia: a DSGE Approach

The paper develops a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model, which assesses the macroeconomic and labor market effects derived from simulating a positive shock to the stochastic component of the mining-energy sector productivity. Calibrating the model for the Colombian economy, this shock generates a whole increase in formal wages and a raise in tax revenues, expanding total consumption of the household members. These facts increase non-tradable goods prices relative to tradable goods prices, then real exchange rate decreases (appreciation) and occurs a displacement of productive resources from the tradable (manufacturing) sector to the non-tradable sector, followed by an increase in formal GDP and formal job gains. This situation makes the formal sector to absorb workers from the informal sector through the non-tradable formal subsector, which causes informal GDP to go down. As a consequence, in the net consumption falls for informal workers, which leads some members of the household not to offer their labor force in the informal sector but instead they prefer to keep unemployed. Therefore, the final result on the labor market is a decrease in the number of informal workers, of which a part are in the formal sector and the rest are unemployed.