Economic growth theory predicts more success for North-South than for South-South agreements. We compare the speed of convergence of the North-South area NAFTA with that of the South-South area SICA and the one of the MERCOSUR. We apply GSL fixed effects and a random effects regression with the...

Latin America has recently experienced three cycles of capital inflows, the first two ending in major financial crises. The first took place between 1973 and the 1982 ‘debt-crisis’. The second took place between the 1989 ‘Brady bonds’ agreement (and the beginning of the economic reforms...

The purpose of this essay is offer a perspective of situation crosses today regional agriculture, checking some of its added balances. It interests us to debate the optimistic and not very critical way with which the figures are divulged and to put in evidence aspects fewer diffused, but of...

This paper presents new evidence on the relationship between corruption and income inequality. Using a panel data methodology, we find that lower corruption is associated with higher income inequality in Latin America. This result is in contrast to other empirical studies but it makes sense in...

Brazil, as the rest of Latin America, has experienced three cycles of capital inflows since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. The first two ended in financial crises, and at the time of writing the third one is still unfolding, although already showing considerable signs of distress. The...

Using a panel of 16 countries during the 1961-2010 period, we find that financial development has a positive significant ef fect on economic growth in the long run for high-income countries but a negative significant ef fect for low-income countries. When studying the determinants of financial...

Per capita incomes and the quality of governance are strongly positively correlated across countries. We propose an empirical strategy that allows us to separate this correlation into: i) a strong positive causal effect running from better governance to higher per capita incomes, and ii) a weak...

The concept of club convergence has been widely used in empirical analysis to group countries in clubs with similar development paths. However, there is no unified agreement on how to identify the clubs in the first place. In this paper, I argue that economic history can guide us to identify...