Despite progress in communication technologies, lack of information still severely handicaps companies seeking to operate in international markets. Furthermore, the investments that these companies must make to gather the information required to trade with foreign markets may yield reduced...

The subject of labor unions in Latin America provokes a variety of diverse and strongly held views. While some see unions as a way to protect workers' rights and ensure an equitable distribution of income, others see unions as a drain of productivity or an intrusion of politics into the...

El objetivo de "Pequeñas economías, grandes desafíos" es profundizar la comprensión de los desafíos y opciones de política económica que enfrentan los países de Centroamérica y República Dominicana en su cambiante proceso de desarrollo económico y social. En consecuencia, su enfoque...

Esta obra es una publicación elaborada por el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo para el diálogo de políticas con las autoridades de la República Dominicana. El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en contribuir a la profundización del análisis de algunos de los temas que integran la agenda...

In this paper we estimate the early effect of the European Monetary Union (EMU) on trade. We use a panel data set that includes the most recent information on bilateral trade for 22 developed countries from 1992 through 2002. During this period 12 European countries formally entered into a...

Countries that are classified as having floating exchange rate systems (or very wide bands) show strikingly different patterns of behavior. They hold very different levels of international reserves and allow very different volatilities in the movements of the exchange rate relative to the...

Veto player theory argues that a higher number of veto players lowers the likelihood of change; in turn, policies that do not change help to sustain commitments but may prevent adaptation to changing circumstances. This paper challenges that claim of veto player theory by arguing that policy...

The understanding of the economic effect of formal institutional rules has progressed substantially in recent decades. These formal analyses have tended to take for granted that institutional arenas such as Congress are the places where decision-making takes place. That is a good approximation...

Desde mediados de los ochenta, cuando la economía se encontraba sumida en la crisis de la deuda, el ahorro y la inversión en Chile aumentaron dramáticamente. El ahorro lo ha hecho aún más que la inversión, revirtiendo el fuerte uso de recursos externos para financiar los niveles...

This paper develops a framework for analyzing different policymaking styles, their causes and their consequences in Latin America, finding that lower institutionalization and greater use of alternative political technologies (APTs) are more likely the lower the cost of using these technologies,...