The value of world exports of commercial services rose by 11% in 2011 to $4,170 billion, exceeding pre-crisis levels of $3,850 billion in 2008. Half of world exports of commercial services in 2011 consisted of travel receipts and other business services. Asia-Pacific as a region increased its...

Regional trade agreements are more likely to produce negative effects on nonmembers the larger and the more protected they are. Because MERCOSUR countries are efficient producers of the most protected products in the world –agricultural and agro-industrial products-, these countries suffer...

Can Africa's current state of under-development be partially attributed to the large trade in slaves that occurred during the Atlantic, Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean slave trades? To answer this question, I combine shipping data with historical records that report slave ethnicities and...

Unfulfilled expectations about economic growth in Brazil has led many observers to question the ability of the new, open trade regime to put the economy back on an path of sustainable growth. Whereas the country’s growth record has been really poor, the evidence suggests that the underlying...

This paper presents the correlation between the annual fluctuations of the terms of trade of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. The period under analysis is 1980-2001 and the main findings are that the four countries have a high to moderate synchronization of their export prices, a...