Sustainability has become an imperative. Understanding the effects of countries' policies thereon has therefore acquired vital importance. This is particularly the case with ubiquitous policies such as investment promotion. In this paper, we address this timely policy question from an...

This Perspective proposes a consistent set of evidence-based strategies to effectively promote FDI in the new, more uncertain global environment characterized by the digital transformation, the introduction of a rising number of policy interventions, the greater awareness of global supply...

We estimate import processing costs based on the time it takes to import. Our theory extends existing time-cost measures to account for uncertainty in import processing. We use detailed, highly disaggregated data on import processing dates and import values to provide evidence for our theory and...

As Latin America and the Caribbean bounce back from a sanitary crisis of historic proportions, the search is on for policies that can accelerate recovery while boosting longterm growth. In a scenario of tight fiscal constraints, trade and integration (T&I) policies seem to fit this description....

Online Technical Appendix to "The Reorganization of Global Value Chains: What's in it for Latin America and the Caribbean?" It describes in more detail the data sources, the empirical strategy; and presents a series of robustness checks.

This paper explores the relationship between preferential and multilateral trade liberalization at the sectoral level using a unique dataset that includes data on most favored nation (MFN) and bilateral preferential tariffs at the 4-digit ISIC level for 11 Latin American countries over the...

Trade facilitation policies intend to simplify administrative processes and accelerate the handling of shipments across borders. Recent research shows that these policies have substantial effects on trade flows. In this chapter, we discuss what the existing evidence for trade implies for the...

In the global recession of 2009, exports declined precipitously in many countries. We illustrate with firm-level data for Belgium and Peru that the decline was very sudden and almost entirely due to lower export sales by existing exporters. After the recession, exports rebounded almost equally...

In this paper, we examine an innovative postal export regime that involves both a streamlining of export procedures and provision of intermediation services to investigate how firms' react to changing trade costs and whether and how these firms learn. In so doing, we use a unique dataset that...

We examine transaction-level Peruvian import data to show that firms are subject to significant costs of port-of-entry delays. At the transaction level, we observe the time it takes a shipment to clear each step in the entry process. Our theory shows conditions under which observed entry times...