Regional integration initiatives have long been part of the world economic landscape. In Latin America, integration flourished in the early post-war era but then lost momentum until the 1990s, when there was a new wave of initiatives ranging from free trade areas to customs unions. This Report...

Credit supplied by the banking sector is the most important funding source for firms and households in Latin America and the Caribbean. Unfortunately, credit is scarce, costly and volatile. Without deep and stable credit markets, the region will be hard pressed to achieve high and sustainable...

In this paper, we examine how the business and interest rate cycles in developed countries affect FDI to developing countries. After aggregating flows into three big source areas (the U.S., Europe and Japan), we find FDI flows to be countercyclical with respect to both output and interest rate...

The role of regional integration agreements (RIAs) as a determinant of the location of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has become an increasingly relevant issue for emerging economies. While the concerns regarding the impact of RIAs on FDI for countries in Latin America may be related to a...

In this paper, the authors discuss in detail a number of channels through which RIA could affect the location of FDI. In addition to clarifying the main effects at play, this conceptual discussion should help lay down a roadmap for the empirical exercises that follow. First, a brief stylized...

The role of regional integration agreements as a determinant of the location of FDI has become an increasingly relevant issue for emerging economies. In Latin America, the largest effects are likely to be associated with the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). In this regard, there are a...

Durante las últimas décadas, hemos evidenciado un incremento en el número y la profundidad de los acuerdos de integración regionales (AIR) alrededor del mundo. La proliferación de acuerdos comerciales ha sido considerablemente amplia. La antigua Comunidad Económica Europea evolucionó...

This paper studies the impact of regional integration agreements (RIAs) on the location of foreign direct investment (FDI), using data on bilateral outward FDI stocks from the OECD International Direct Investment Statistics. The dataset covers FDI from 20 source countries, all of them from the...

In this paper, we examine how the business and interest rate cycles in developed countries affect FDI to developing countries. After aggregating flows into three big source areas (the U. S. , Europe and Japan), we find FDI flows to be countercyclical with respect to both output and interest rate...

The role of regional integration agreements as a determinant of the location of FDI has become an increasingly relevant issue for emerging economies. In Latin America, the largest effects are likely to be associated with the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). In this regard, there are a...