Banks' market or 'trading' risks have increased noticeably over the past years, largely as a result of the growth of liquid assets on banks' balance sheets and the increase in banks' off-balance sheet activities. Well-publicized bank failures and significant capital losses have focussed further...

Countercyclical country interest rates have been shown to be both a distinctive characteristic and an important driving force of business cycles in emerging market economies. In order to account for this, most business cycle models of emerging market economies have relied on ad hoc and exogenous...

The decade of the 1990s has witnessed a wave of regional integration initiatives in Latin America: more than 14 agreements -free trade areas or customs unions- since 1990 with a handful more in varying degrees of negotiation (see Table 1). However, this was not just a Latin American phenomenon,...

The countries in Mesoamerica have achieved major advances in the field of environmental management over the last ten years. Both Mexico and the Central American nations have put a whole series of legal, institutional, and operating changes in place with regard to environmental management, both...

This study is an effort to identify the process by which firms venture into GVCs and the obstacles faced by firms once they have been immersed in it. We have focused on two particular GVCs: the aerospace GVC and the software and IT services GVC. Through the case studies, we analyzed the nature...

Many countries are concerned by the dense body of regulations governing their preferential foreign trade and are seeking to simplify the current diversity of rules. To do this they are starting to look at alternatives that allow a degree of convergence between their agreements. This paper aims...

El trabajo describe experiencias de inserción internacional de firmas argentinas productoras de bienes manufacturados no orientados al mercado masivo. A partir de estas experiencias, se desarrolla una tipología de potenciales alternativas de inserción internacional para este tipo de bienes...

The conditions for trade policy formulation have changed significantly in many, if not all, countries over the past decade. The scope of trade policy has increased. Trade policy interrelates more directly with other policies that were previously perceived to belong to the sphere of exclusive...

Until now, amount of inter-country trade within South Asian nations have been low. While similarities in exports profile can be seen as a reason for this low value of trade it might not be a valid one, especially in presence of growing South Asian income. Intra-industry trade theory suggests...

This paper compares growth conditions in China and Latin America to assess fears that China will displace Latin America in the coming decades. China's strengths include the size of the economy, macroeconomic stability, abundant low-cost labor, the rapid expansion of physical infrastructure, and...