This study addresses the measurement of two composite Lisbon strategy indices that quantifies the level and patterns of development for ranking countries. The first index is nonparametric labelled as Lisbon strategy index (LSI). It is composed of six components: general economics, employment,...

Despite increasing average real family incomes in Costa Rica in the late 1990s and early 2000s, poverty rates did not fall. In this paper, we argue that during this period economic growth in Costa Rica did not translate into reduced poverty because of changes in family structure and in the labor...

We document changes in income and earnings inequality in the five Central American countries from the early 1990s to 2009. In the 1990s Costa Rica had the most equal distribution of income in Central America, and one of the most equal distributions of income in Latin America. At the other...

Taking advantage of a complex minimum wage structure in Honduras, this paper examines how changes in minimum wages over the 1990-2004 period affect unemployment as well as the employment and average wages of workers in different sectors of the economy: medium and large-scale firms v. small firms...

In this paper I use a unique data set from Nicaragua to asses the behavior of persons who send money back home. I estimate a heteroskedastic Tobit with a known form of variance to estimate the correlation of the remitting decisions of migrants. Working, residing in a developed country and...

In the last two decades remittances have gained interest due to their large size. For several developing countries remittances constitute a large portion of their GDP and sometimes exceed FDI. While FDIs are usually profit driven, it is not clear what the driving force behind remittances is....

To be competitive in the global economy, some argue that Latin American countries need to reduce or eliminate labor market regulations such as minimum wage legislation because they constrain job creation and hence increase poverty. On the other hand, minimum wage increases can have a direct...

We introduce a simple oligopolistic trade model with international transportation costs, and analyze the profitability and the social desirability of national vs. international mergers in relation to three different issues, (i) the level of trade freeness, (ii) the possibility of rent...

The process of globalization is an international economic order which has led to the progressive integration of the world economy through the pulling the barrier of trade and greater mobility of factors of production. In addition the technological innovation also provides impetus to the...

The flight and expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe during and after World War II constitutes one of the largest forced population movements in history. We analyze the economic integration of these forced migrants and their offspring in West Germany. The empirical results suggest that even a...