Second Meeting of the Finance Ministers of the Americas and the Caribbean

The use of economic instruments has drawn increased attention as a tool for both lessening the size of the solid waste management problem and improving upon the delivery of solid waste collection and disposal services.

This presentation was commissioned by the Environment Network of the Regional Policy Dialogue for the III Hemispheric Meeting celebrated on March 9th and 10th, 2004. Latin American cities have high rates of air pollution, mainly particulate matter. There is no doubt that air pollution produces...

Recent studies have shown that developing countries might have significantly better export performance if they were able to increase the duration of their trade relationships. Evidence on duration of these relationships at the firm level is virtually absent. In this paper, we aim at filling this...

This presentation was commissioned by the Trade and Integration Network of the Regional Policy Dialogue for the III Hemispheric Meeting celebrated on March 19th and 20th, 2002.

Trade liberalization is a positive sum game from which all can benefit. Well-defined rules, and the mechanisms of making binding commitments and concessions, are beneficial to increasing the stability of reforms.

We investigate whether greater microeconomic flexibility facilitates the process of creative destruction in the context of new trade models with heterogeneous firms (Bernard et al., 2003 and Melitz, 2003). In these models, freer trade increases aggregate productivity because high-efficiency...

The purpose of this document is to inform Bank staff and other interested parties about recent developments in integration and trade among the countries of the Western Hemisphere and between these and other countries and world regions.