Is Colombia’s Minimum Wage Commission Useful? (In Spanish)

With Juan Carlos Angulo

This paper analyzes the role of the Permanent Commission for the Concertation of Wage and Labor Policies in setting Colombia’s minimum wage. Using data from DANE, the Ministry of Labor, and the Penn World Tables for the period 1990–2026, we estimate regression models to examine the relationship between minimum wage increases and their legal determinants—inflation, productivity, GDP growth, and the possibility of a tripartite agreement. The results indicate that past inflation is the main determinant of the increase, that productivity plays a secondary role, and that commission consensus is not associated with larger or better increases. On this basis, the paper discusses the advantages and costs of replacing the concertation process with an automatic minimum-wage-setting rule.