The main objective of this paper is to provide an ex-ante assessment of the poverty and income distribution impacts of the Central American Free Trade Area agreement on Nicaragua. The authors use a general equilibrium macro model to simulate trade reform scenarios and estimate their price...

The Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States aims to create a free trade zone for economic development. The Agreement is expected to intensify commerce and investment among the participating countries. This paper analyzes the changes in the production and...

Current coffee prices are at record lows and below the cost of production for many producers in Central America. Moreover, the coffee crisis is structural, and changes in supply and demand do not indicate a quick recovery of prices. So, coffee producers in Central America are facing new...

This paper evaluates whether mangroves can mitigate the impact of hurricanes on economic activity. The paper assembles a new, regionwide panel data set that measures local economic activity using nightlights, potential hurricane damages using a detailed hurricane windstorm model, and mangrove...

School dropout is a growing concern in Central America, and in Latin America as a whole, because of its consequences for economic productivity, the inclusiveness of growth, social cohesion, and increasing youth risks. This paper utilizes more than two decades of household survey data to...

The objective of this study is to assess the possibility of using Internet search keyword data for forecasting price series in Central America, focusing on Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras. The Internet search data comes from Google Trends. The paper introduces these data and discusses some...

Several studies have used satellite measures of human activity to complement measures of economic production. This paper builds on those studies by considering satellite measures for improving poverty measures. The paper uses local-scale census and survey data from Guatemala to test at how fine...

Despite the widespread tariff reductions sparked by the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement, borders in the region remain thick, with many hurdles standing in the way of regional trade. Although anecdotal evidence suggests that nontariff measures raise trade costs and inhibit...

In Central America, like many other developing regions, high transport costs are cited as an impediment to trade and economic growth. Prices for road freight transport -- a key mode of transport comprising a significant share of total transport costs for intra- and extra-regional trade, are...

The paper identifies the impact of physical barriers to trade within Central America through the use of an augmented and partially constrained Gravity Model of Trade. Adjusting the Euclidian distance factor for Central America by real average transport times, the model quantifies the impact of...