This study quantifies the impact of traditional and new age' provisions of preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) on merchandise trade and investment. It does so by estimating gravity models of bilateral trade and investment. It finds that recent and some past PTAs are not as benign as some...

Since 1950, the economies of East Asia grew rapidly but received little inter-national capital, while Latin America received considerable international capitaleven as their economies stagnated. The literature typically explains the failureof capital to flow to high growth regions as resulting...

One of the nest serious consequences of the debt crisis of 1982 has been the reduction in the accessibility to the world capital market for most developing countries. This situation has proved to be particularly serious for Latin American nations. At this juncture, a key question is how to...

Latin America began the twentieth century as a relatively poor region on the periphery of the world economy. One cause of a low level of income per person was capital scarcity. Long run growth via capital deepening requires either the mobilization of domestic capital through savings, or large...

This paper examines the history of foreign investment in Latin America in the two centuries since independence. Investment flows to the region were sometimes large and always volatile. Symptoms of overborrowing, sudden stops, debt, default and crises have been evident from the beginning. In...

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has been growing rapidly, at a pace far exceeding the growth in international trade. Thus, a full understanding of the relationship between trade in goods and FDI is important for obtaining a complete picture of the extent and sources of international linkages. We...

This paper analyzes the evolution of the U.S. trade relations with Latin America, investigating the possible path that these relations will take in the future. The data analyzed show that during the last 15 years or so there has been no significant loss in the U.S. aggregate competitive position...

We analyze whether preferential trade agreements (PTAs) affect the incidence and pattern of antidumping (AD) filings. We estimate AD provisions in PTAs have decreased the incidence of intra-PTA AD cases by 33-55% and have increased the number of AD actions against non-PTA members by 10-30%. The...

This paper explores whether one of the most important U.S. policies towards Africa of the past few decades achieved its desired result. In 2000, the United States dropped trade restrictions on a broad list of products through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Since the Act was...

The WTO has delivered policy outcomes that are very different from those likely to emerge out of the recent wave of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Should economists see this as an efficient institutional hand-off, where the WTO has carried trade liberalization as far as it can manage, and...