The TRIPs plus phenomenon (additional steps to strengthen the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) tends to be attributed to the regional and bilateral efforts of the United States. This paper suggests that such a perception is mistaken. The EU certainly seeks to...

This paper compares the productivity growth of a set of Canadian and U.S. regulated industries. Using data from Statistics Canada's KLEMS database and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the paper examines productivity growth in transportation services (which includes air and rail),...

We evaluate the proposal for official dollarization in Costa Rica by applying a new approach to measure the business cycle comovements with the United States. While the literature often focuses on the correlation of shocks, we point out that the response of each country to the shocks is also an...

This article surveys the problem of urban marginalization by one of its more critical expressions in the contemporary city: the slums. The aim is to define an urban design strategy for the integration of those settlements as part of the city context, which enables to find solutions for the...

In this paper, we contrast two different views in the debate on official dollarization. The Mundell (1961) framework of optimal currency areas and a model on boom-bust cycles, by Schneider and Tornell (2004), who take account of credit market imperfections prevalent in middle income countries....

We evaluate the proposal for official dollarization in Costa Rica by applying a new approach to measure the business cycle comovements with the United States. While the literature often focuses on the correlation of shocks, we point out that the response of each country to the shocks is also an...

This paper investigates Jamaica's aggregate import demand function with the United States and the United Kingdom from January 1996 to September 2010 using co-integration analysis and error correction modeling techniques. Using real gross domestic product, relative price of imports, real foreign...

American fiscal policy has been procyclical: Washington wasted the expansion period 2001-2007 by running budget deficits, but by 2011 had come to feel constrained by inherited debt to withdraw fiscal stimulus. Chile has achieved countercyclical fiscal policy – saving in booms and easing in...

The recent literature has argued for high concentration of earnings, differences in rates of return on assets and bequests as potential determinants of the high level of wealth concentration in the US. Analyzing the joint distribution of earnings, capital income and net worth, we find evidence...

Purpose - The aim of this work is to study the reorientation that the export industrial sectors in Costa Rica have experienced during the last 20 years.Research design, data, methodology - The study employs the Cluster Analysis with the export data (20 years of cut-off period) from Costa Rica to...