According to the economic theory and recent empirical evidence, improved market access through trade arrangements is likely to favor export diversification. In this paper, we assess whether this has been the case of Colombian exports to the United States and whether an FTA with the United States...

This presentation argues that trade policy in the region has been too focused on removing tariffs, to the detriment of trade facilitation, particularly in transportation. It explores the impact of transport costs on trade in Latin America and the Caribbean, and argues that transport costs have...

This presentation, from the RBD's Workshop on Methodologies for Regional Projects and Programs, summarizes the current context of regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean. It includes the new drivers for integration and global and regional integration gaps which the region must...

Virtually all Latin American and Caribbean countries have established specialized organizations to promote their exports. Existing analyses of these organizations are at best partial and fragmentary. This paper aims at overcoming these limitations of the literature by presenting a consistent,...

China's size, rapid growth, external openness, and trade performance have led to varying perceptions among the countries of Latin America: Is China a potential new market, a potent new competitor, or both? This book assesses the near-term strategic implications of China's economic performance...

This book assesses the impact and design of optimal strategies to implement existing agreements. It deals with issues such as removing the remaining barriers to trade, improving the institutional, regional, and global trade architecture, and promoting convergence and accumulation among the...

This paper maps out Rules of Origin (RoO) in regional trade agreements (RTAs) around the world, and observes that the restrictiveness and complexity of RoO are driven by factors specific to each RTA, including economy size and level of development.

This document summarizes the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) experience as one of the main sources of multilateral development financing in Latin America and the Caribbean. From 2000 to 2005, total financing for economic, social and institutional development projects amounted to US$38.7...

This paper examines the impact of trade policy on production specialization patterns in ten Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela) over the period 1990-2001, and explicitly assesses the potential implications of a...

Recent studies have shown that developing countries might have significantly better export performance if they were able to increase the duration of their trade relationships. Evidence on duration of these relationships at the firm level is virtually absent. In this paper, we aim at filling this...