This paper uncovers a fact that has not been well appreciated: tariffs in Latin America were far higher than anywhere else in the century before the Great Depression. This is a surprising fact given that this region has been said to have exploited globalization forces better than most during the...

Latin American countries are the only Western countries that are poor and that aren't gaining ground on the United States. This paper evaluates why Latin America has not replicated Western economic success. We find that this failure is primarily due to TFP differences. Latin America's TFP gap is...

Most populist regimes in Latin American countries used trade policy to redistribute income, despite being less efficient than other redistribution schemes such as transfers financed with an income tax. Often, this outcome is attributed to the lack of fiscal capacity in Latin American countries....

Regional trade in South America since independence has long been much smaller than would be expected if geography were the only constraint on trade. Several potential explanations exist: low technological and demand complementarities; low productivity; high natural and policy barriers to trade....

Over the past decades, the steel industry has been protected by a wide variety of trade policies, both tariff- and quota-based. We exploit this extensive heterogeneity in trade protection to examine the well-established theoretical literature predicting nonequivalent effects of tariffs and...

How large are optimal tariffs? What tariffs would prevail in a worldwide trade war? How costly would be a breakdown of international trade policy cooperation? And what is the scope for future multilateral trade negotiations? I address these and other questions using a unified framework which...

In this paper it is argued that there is an important protectionist bias inherent in free trade agreements which is not present in custom unions. In any customs union or free trade agreement, one of the critical issues concerns "rules of origin." In a free trade agreement rules of origin have an...