This paper investigates the role of structural reforms - privatization, financial reform and trade liberalization as determinants of FDI inflows based on newly constructed dataset on structural reforms for 19 Latin American and 25 Eastern European countries between 1989 and 2004. Our main...

While barriers to trade in most goods and some services including capital flows have been reduced considerably over the past two decades, many remain. Such policies harm most the economies imposing them, but the worst of the merchandise barriers (in agriculture and textiles) are particularly...

Recent research convincingly shows that crises beget reform. Although the consensus is that economic crises foster macroeconomic stabilization, it is silent on which types of crises cause which types of reform. Is it economic or political crises that are the most important drivers of structural...

We use panel data on Mexican manufacturing plants to study the connection between plants’ responses to changes in the economic environment and their contributions to aggregate productivity growth in the period following the implementation of the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In all...

What are the factors that explain reversals in the implementation of structural reforms? Our main hypothesis is that reversals in different reforms are driven by different factors. This paper uses new reform indicators and presents novel evidence showing that (a) FDI inflows reduce the...

We review the large literature on various economic policies that could help developing economies effectively manage the process of financial globalization. Our central findings indicate that policies promoting financial sector development, institutional quality and trade openness appear to help...

Using the Mexican Household Income and Expenditure Survey (ENIGH) covering 1984-2000 we analyze wages and employment in Mexico after trade liberalization and domestic reforms. We find that wage inequality and returns to post-secondary schooling increased rapidly during 1984-1994 but stabilized...

The authors study how the effect of trade openness on economic growth depends on complementary reforms that help a country take advantage of international competition. This issue is illustrated with a simple Harris-Todaro model where output gains after trade liberalization depend on the degree...

This paper examines the effect of regionalism on unilateral trade liberalization using industry-level data on applied most-favored nation tariffs and bilateral preferences for ten Latin American countries from 1990 to 2001. The findings show that preferential tariff reduction in a given sector...

Before and after its accession to the WTO in 2001, China has undergone a far-reaching investment liberalisation. As part of this, existing restrictions on foreign ownership structure and mandatory export and technology transfer requirements imposed on foreign firms have been lifted in a number...