This paper examines the impact of the recent wave of trade liberalization and economic reform on employment. Four alternative measures of openness and four measures of the real exchange rate are used to measure the impact of trade reforms on manufacturing and economy-wide employment. Across a...

This paper shows that bank linkages have a positive effect on international trade. A global banking network (GBN) is constructed at the bank level, using individual syndicated loan data from Loan Analytics for 1990-2007. Network distance between bank pairs is computed and aggregated to country...

Financial stability is an important policy objective, since crises are associated with large economic, social and political costs. This paper contributes to the discussion by providing new theoretical and empirical evidence on the causal connection between lack of exposure to commercial trade...

In this paper we estimate the early effect of the European Monetary Union (EMU) on trade. We use a panel data set that includes the most recent information on bilateral trade for 22 developed countries from 1992 through 2002. During this period 12 European countries formally entered into a...

Baumol (1967) showed that the rate of growth of an economy slows down if a sector has lower productivity than others and the demand between goods is inelastic. This paper points out that trade is equivalent to technological progress in the tradable sector. Therefore an open economy has higher...

This paper presents a model in which trade is motivated both by preference for variety and comparative advantages. This framework is used to analyze the welfare implications of trading blocs among countries with different endowments with and without transportation costs

Banking authorities must resolve or otherwise deal with existing banks that are weak or insolvent without imposing costs on consumers or taxpayers. Two aspects of this concern should be delineated. First, how can banking regulations be structured so that the future exit of weak and insolvent...

This paper investigates how changes in trade linkages between China, Latin America, and the rest of the world have altered the transmission of international business cycles to Latin America. Evidence based on a GVAR model for five large Latin American economies shows that the long-term impact of...

There is widespread concern that recent increases in international food prices may have significant effects on domestic food prices and inflation. This note assesses the impact of the recent food price shock on food, non-food and consumer inflation in the countries of Latin American and the...

This paper reviews evidence on social mobility in Latin America. Several studies have used data sets that collect intergenerational socio economic information. The data, though limited, suggest that social mobility is low in the region, even when compared with low social mobility developed...