Cooperation among local governments has been encouraged to enable the aggregation of resources and improved public sector efficiency. However, if cooperation through the joint delivery of local public services is likely to be welfare enhancing for the agglomeration, but will lead to losses for...

This paper analyses the monetary consequences of the Latin-American trade integration process. We consider a sample of five countries –Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay- spanning the period 1991-2007. The main question raised pertains to the feasibility of a monetary union between...

This paper studies to what extent the diversity of exchange rate regimes within Mercosur exerts an influence on the feasibility of a monetary union in this area. A semi-structural VAR model is built for each country, including a set of international and domestic variables. Based on impulse...