This Selected Issues paper presents background notes on El Salvador’s economic growth, national savings, and implications of the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA). The paper describes possible factors behind sluggish growth in El Salvador in recent...

This paper examines the effect of the major Canada-U.S. trade agreements on the dynamics of business cycles and productivity in Canada. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its predecessor, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), have led to a substantial expansion of trade...

In a world where poor countries provide weak protection for intellectual property rights, market integration will systematically shift technical change in favor of rich nations. For this reason, free trade can increase international income differences. At the same time, integration with...

This 2005 Article IV Consultation highlights that Russia is in its seventh year of robust economic growth. This strong performance was ignited by the sharp depreciation in the wake of the 1998 crisis, and subsequently sustained by large terms-of-trade gains, in combination with increased...

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the impact of NAFTA on growth and business cycles in Mexico. The effect of the agreement in spurring a dramatic increase in trade and financial flows between Mexico and its NAFTA partners, and its impact on Mexican economic growth and business...

This paper extends Grossman and Helpman’s seminal work (1991), and presents an endogenous growth model where innovations created in a high-tech sector may be assimilated or adapted by a low-tech sector. Applying a simple Heckscher-Ohlin framework, the effects of technological diffusion are...

We present an endogenous growth nmodel in which both the investment to develop a new technology - that upgrades the quality of machines - and entry of imitators are determined endogenously. According to the model, how soon the new-technology machines in launched after the patent is granted is...

Do patents behave substantially like property rights in tangible assets, in that they encourage development and innovation? This article notes that historical evidence, cross-country evidence, economic experiments, and estimates of net benefits all indicate that general property rights...

I construct an endogenous growth model where R&D is carried out at the industry level in a game of innovation between leaders and followers. Innovation costs for followers are assumed to increase with the technological lag from leaders. We obtain three results that contrast with standard...