What are the main issues in Chile's trade agenda? This paper argues that the country's agenda does not lend itself to that traditional kind of policy advice usually given throughout Latin America. Protection is low and uniform, institutions that govern trade policy are strong and well protected...

This paper will examine some political and economic forces and the possible interactions between them that will shape the current US negotiating positions in the WTO and FTAA.Abstract: Este trabajo examina algunas de las fuerzas políticas y económicas, y las posibles interacciones entre ellas,...

The paper analyses aspects of trade liberalization and the political economy of protection in Brazil since 1987. Section I considers the internal and external constraints to the continued adoption of a strategy based on import substitution industrialization. In section II trade liberalization up...

While many studies explain the correlation between firm-level productivity and export status entirely by better firms self-selecting into exporting, a few studies find evidence of reverse causation. Especially in developing or ransition economies, exporters seem to improve performance after they...

Recent literature has emphasized the importance of transport costs and infrastructure in explaining trade, access to markets, and increases in per capita income. For most Latin American countries, transport costs are a greater barrier to U.S. markets than import tariffs. The authors investigate...

This paper examines the implications of a North-South trade accord where investments in the Southern partner nation exhibit country risk. Our analysis demonstrates that North-South trade accords can serve as credibility-enhancing mechanisms that induce additional foreign capital inflows into...

Unlike previous empirical studies that focus on barriers to entry in international trade, we focus on barriers to exit as measured by passport costs for a cross-section of countries. We test four common theories on the determinants of such exit barriers and find that macroeconomic and...

In this paper we use Colombian manufacturing data on exports and external financing for the period 1998 - 2006 to estimate the credit elasticity of exports. We use bank-firm linked data to construct a supply side instrument for a manufacturer's demand of credit, which we use to address the...

Brazil and the United States are key players in world agricultural and food markets. The agri-food system in both countries is very large in absolute and relative terms. Both are net exporters of agricultural and food products and major recipients of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the food...

Economic and political integration have been a perennial and neuralgic issue in the Caribbean agenda. This paper draws on the literature on trade, growth and regional agreements to discuss the motivation behind the Caribbean drive for integration, the results obtained so far and what is in stock...