We analyze the way in which Latin American countries have adjusted to commodity terms of trade (CTOT) shocks in the 1970-2007 period. Specifically, we investigate the degree to which the active management of international reserves and exchange rates impacted the transmission of international...

We work with a panel of bilateral trade flows from 1988 to 2002, exploring the influence of infrastructure, institutional quality, colonial and geographic context, and trade preferences on the pattern of bilateral trade. We are interested in threshold effects, and so emphasize those cases where...

Since the mid-1980s a substantial body of research has taken shape on trade in services. Much of this is inspired by the WTO or regional trade agreements, especially the EU. However, an increasing number of papers focus on the impacts of unilateral services sector liberalization. The literature...

This paper evaluates the impact of international reserves, terms of trade shocks and capital flows on the real exchange rate (REER). We observe that international reserves cushions the impact of TOT shocks on the REER, and that this effect is important for developing but not for industrial...

This paper studies the impact of global factors on patterns of basic research across countries and time. We rely on the records of major scientific awards, and on data dealing with global economic and historical trends. Specifically, we investigate the degree to which scale or threshold effects...

This paper evaluates the political economy and structural factors explaining the collection efficiency of the Value Added Tax [VAT]. We consider the case where the collection efficiency is determined by the probability of audit and by the penalty on underpaying. Implementation lags imply that...

This paper investigates the factors explaining exchange market pressures (EMP) and the hoarding and use of international reserves (IR) by emerging markets during the 2000s, as the Great Moderation turned to the 2008-9 global crisis and great recession. According to our results, both financial...