Why are growth rates in Latin America so disappointing? This book reviews the results of an ambitious research project to determine the binding constraints to growth, that is, the barrier whose removal would yield the greatest benefit in terms of growth. Included are case studies from seven...

"La era de la productividad" describe de qué manera la baja productividad de América Latina y el Caribe impide que la región se ponga a la par de los países del mundo desarrollado. Los autores indagan más allá de las explicaciones macroeconómicas tradicionales y profundizan hasta llegar...

Competing in the world economy does not automatically boost a nation's productivity and restructure its economy. Such progress requires mobilizing capital, employment, technology and knowledge. Opportunities beyond the business realm must be fully exploited to the benfit of society as a whole....

Regional integration initiatives have long been part of the world economic landscape. In Latin America, integration flourished in the early post-war era but then lost momentum until the 1990s, when there was a new wave of initiatives ranging from free trade areas to customs unions. This Report...

This paper combines development and growth accounting exercises with economic theory to estimate the relative importance of total factor productivity and the accumulation of factors of production in the economic development performance of Latin America. The regions development performance is...

This paper analyzes the long-run relationship between output collapsesdefined defined as GDP falling substantially below trendand total factor productivity (TFP), using a panel of 71 developed and developing countries during the period 1960-2003 to identify episodes of output collapse and...

This presentation discusses the effects of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) on foreign direct investment (FDI). In particular, the inflow of FDI from the United States and Canada towards Latin American countries is discussed along with an analysis of the role of regional integration...

Esta presentación fue comisionado por la Red de Integración y Comercio del Diálogo Regional de Política para la V Reunión Hemisférica celebrada los días 14 y 15 de agosto de 2003. Espectacular incremento en IED en el mundo en las últimas dos décadas. Tendencia similar en América...

Durante las últimas décadas, hemos evidenciado un incremento en el número y la profundidad de los acuerdos de integración regionales (AIR) alrededor del mundo. La proliferación de acuerdos comerciales ha sido considerablemente amplia. La antigua Comunidad Económica Europea evolucionó...

This paper estimates the impact of the enforcement of core labor standards on FDI in the region and contains the following: 1) Introduction; 2) Survey of the literature on the determinants of FDI: theoretical models, empirical estimation of the determinants of FDI, and the few studies that have...