The Middle East was once seen as a medieval great globalized force. Nowadays it shows one of the lowest intra-regional trade in the world and therefore it is claimed that the region is poorly integrated. Yet, with the steady flow of workers across national borders of the Middle East is this...

This paper studies the transmission of crime shocks to the economy in a sample of 32 Mexican states over the period from 1993 to 2012. The paper uses a panel structural VAR approach which accounts for the heterogeneity of the dynamic state level responses in GDP, FDI and international migration...

The Brazilian economy grew 7.5% in 2010, when Mr. Lula finished his second mandate as president with a popularity rate of 85%. Six years later, his successor, Ms. Rousseff, is suspended from the presidency under an impeachment trial, while the economy endures a recession of 3.8% of the GDP for...

In this paper we investigate the impact of regional trade agreements (RTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on intra-regional foreign direct investment (FDI) across Latin American countries from 1995 to 2012. We use an augmented gravity model in which we control for cross-country...

Corruption is perceived to be a major factor hindering sustainable development all around the globe. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the corruption-sustainable development nexus from the perspective of select 47 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)....

This paper presents an evaluation of the impact of structural reforms using data collected for 17 Latin American countries for the period 1970-1996. In line with the literature, the results show that growth was responsive to investment in physical as well as in human capital. Results also...

We examine how socio-political conflict in Bolivia has affected its economic performance since the 1970s. Such conflict includes strikes, demonstrations, road blockades, and conventional rent-seeking. Since conflict has costs, it diverts resources away from production, tends to reduce investment...

This paper presents an economic growth model based on the positive externalities generated by the accumulations of physical and human capital. Such externalities imply, at the macroeconomic level, increasing returns to scale. The model helps to better understand the Colombian economic growth...

Financial inclusion is a key element of social inclusion, particularly useful in combat-ing poverty and income inequality by opening blocked advancement opportunities for disadvantaged segments of the population. This study intends to investigate the impact of financial inclusion on reducing...

The last 20 years were a period of major political, economic, social, and institutional reform in Brazil. In the first half of the 1990s, reformers opened the economy to foreign trade and both direct and portfolio investment, sold off a number of large and traditional state-owned enterprises,...