China's size, rapid growth, external openness, and trade performance have led to varying perceptions among the countries of Latin America: Is China a potential new market, a potent new competitor, or both? This book assesses the near-term strategic implications of China's economic performance...

This paper explores whether the level of financial integration of banks in a country increases the incidence of systemic banking crises. The paper uses a de facto proxy for financial integration based on network statistics of banks participating in the global market of interbank syndicated...

This study sheds light on how Costa Rica's insertion in global value chains occurs by examining governance patterns, the type of activities involved, and the level of underlying innovation in the selected value chain. The paper describes in detail two case studies of electronic-related companies...

Understanding the drivers of international production fragmentation is an important issue for Latin American and Caribbean countries because participation in global production networks can help mitigate instability due to dependence on natural resources and can provide opportunities for further...

The aim of the paper, based on empirical research in Brazil, is to investigate how supply chains have evolved over time, what factors have driven this evolution and also how a specific set of contractual practices along these chains is linked to access to international markets. The two selected...

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,...