Shleifer and Treisman (2005) argue that Russia is a quot;normal country.quot; Their benchmark for normalcy, however, refers primarily to middle-income countries like Mexico and Argentina. We propose that a more meaningful benchmark is the experience of other post-socialist transition countries,...

Latin American countries have lost competitiveness in world markets in comparison to China over the last two decades. The main purpose of this study is to examine the causes of this development. To this end an augmented Dornbusch-type Ricardian' model is estimated using panel data. The...

This paper shows that the evolution of the level of Mexico real and real per capita output between 1895 and 2008 can be adequately described through a trendstationary model, affected by 4 structural breaks, which occurred at dates that seem to coincide with domestic institutional arrangements,...

This survey reviews the literature on the political economy of financial structure, broadly defined to include the size of capital markets and banking systems as well as the distribution of access to external finance across firms.The theoretical literature on the institutional basis for...

This paper surveys Mexico`s economic weaknesses and provides related policy recommendations. Current problems include weak international financial links and external conditions, a recurrent credit crunch and financial underdevelopment problem, with particularly fragile banks, a weak fiscal...

Ist Südostasien anders? Dieser Frage geht Rainer Schweickert in der Kieler Studie 306 nach. Seine Analyse der Leistungsbilanzen, ihrer Teilkomponenten und ihrer Determinanten seit Anfang der 70er Jahre sowie der krisenhaften Entwicklungen in den 90er Jahren weist nach, dass diese Vermutung in...