It has been widely recognized that both country-specific and global factors matter in explaining capital flows. The author presents an empirical framework that disentangles the relative weight of country-specific and global factors in determining capital flows. In essence, his approach first...

The authors provide an overview of minimum wage levels in Latin America and their true impact on the distribution of wages, using both numerical measures and kernal density plots for eight countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, and Uruguay). They especially try...

The authors apply regime-switching methods to a monetarist model of exchange rates and identify well-defined intervention policy cycles. The policy response indices include a standard exchange market pressure-based index and a model-based volatility ratio that is endogenized relative to Japan,...

In early January 2003, the United States and Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua launched official negotiations for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a treaty that would expand NAFTA-style trade barrier reductions to Central America. With deeper trade...

The behavior of commodities is critical for developing and developed countries alike. This paper contributes to the empirical evidence on the co-movement and determinants of commodity prices. Using nonstationary panel methods, the authors document a statistically significant degree of...

To many, reducing water losses is seen as key to more sustainable water management. The arguments to reduce water losses are compelling, but reducing water losses has turned out to be challenging. This paper applies a panel data analysis with fixed effects to determine the major drivers of...

Aid is good for the poor. This paper uses detailed aid data spanning 60 developing countries over the past two decades to show that social aid significantly and directly benefits the poorest in society, while economic aid increases the income of the poor through growth. This new and unequivocal...

This paper uses the gravity model to analyze whether the varying export performance of Croatian counties can be explained by their proximity to border gates, ports, and other county-specific characteristics. The analysis finds that longer distances to border gates increase trade frictions...

Extension services are a keystone of information diffusion in agriculture. This paper exploits a large randomized controlled trial to track diffusion of a new technique in the classic Training and Visit (T&V) extension model, relative to a more direct training model. In both control and...

Market integration is key to ensuring sufficient and stable food supplies. This paper assesses the impediments to market integration in Central and Eastern Africa for three food staples: maize, rice, and sorghum. The paper uses a large database on monthly consumer prices for 150 towns in 13...