Using data from Mexican surveys of Microenterprises conducted between 1992 and 1998, we examine the association between migration to the US and investment in microenterprises, the use of paid and unpaid labor, and the earnings of micro entrepreneurs. We find that investments in microenterprises...

Worldwide, the Mercosur countries are probably the ones that face the most hostile trading system. Their strong comparative advantage in temperate agricultural and agro-industrial products make them particularly vulnerable to the irrationally high and variable agricultural protectionism cum...

This report seeks to analyze the efforts among financial institutions to leverage the relationship between financial intermediation and remittance transfers. The impact of family remittances has been highlighted in the literature as an important one for development. A development impact is one...

Después de más de seis años de gestiones diplomáticas y complejas negociaciones, el primero de julio de 2000 entraron en vigor las disposiciones para liberalizar los flujos de comercio de bienes entre México y la Unión Europea (UE). Estas disposiciones son parte del Tratado de Libre...

This paper discusses the impacts of integration on productivity, specifically within regional agreements. The paper focuses on the economies of Brazil and Mexico and on their performance in the manufacturing sector. The authors estimate firm-level productivity and test its casual links with...

Rules of origin (RoO) are a central topic both in the Inter-Regional Association Agreement negotiations between the European Union (EU) and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), and in the 34-country negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The purpose of this paper is to...

This paper uses a randomized controlled experiment in Costa Rica to determine whether IB use by Banco Nacional de Desarrollo's micro and small enterprise (MSE) clients has an impact on their performance, measured in terms of productivity, increase in sales, and cost reduction. Results from the...

The paper uses microeconomic data to characterize entrepreneurs by income group and selected household, individual and business characteristics, finding that entrepreneurship is rare but more frequent in the upper class than the middle or lower classes. Middle-class entrepreneurs are, on...

The decade of the 1990s has witnessed a wave of regional integration initiatives in Latin America: more than 14 agreements -free trade areas or customs unions- since 1990 with a handful more in varying degrees of negotiation (see Table 1). However, this was not just a Latin American phenomenon,...

Este documento tiene como objetivos: identificar trabas no arancelarias al comercio bilateral agroalimentario entre Venezuela y Colombia, tomando en cuenta la opinión de actores claves del proceso; y discutir sobre las posibles soluciones e intervenciones públicas y privadas, tomando en...