Microeconomic flexibility, by facilitating the process of creative-destruction, is at the core of economic growth in modern market economies. The main reason for why this process is not infinitely fast is the presence of adjustment costs, some of them technological, others institutional. Chief...

Trade liberalization in Latin America has substantially altered business opportunities andeconomic development in the region. As barriers to competing inputs have come down andforeign investment in the region has gone up, small, domestic firms have struggled to stayafloat. Many small businesses...

This study investigates the interaction between corruption and foreign direct investment inflows in 23 emerging market economies during the period 2002-2014 by employing Westerlund-Durbin-Hausman (2008) cointegration test. We found that control of corruption and rule of law had no statistically...

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) from Spain made large foreign direct investments (FDIs) in Latin America between 1990 and 2002, making Spain the second largest direct investor in this region since 1998, behind the United States. This dissertation explains the reasons that led Spanish firms to...

Within the next few months, the Greek government, is supposed to persuade private creditors holding about EUR 200bn in its bonds to voluntarily exchange their existing bonds for new bonds that pay roughly 50 percent less. This may work with large creditors whose failure to participate in a debt...

The first essay proposes to test the Grossman and Helpman "Protection for Sale" model using data from the U.S. food processing industries at the 4-digit level. The Grossman and Helpman model departs from previous frameworks of trade protection in that it provides micro-foundations to the...