In this paper we provide an overview of the situation of the Internet in Latin America and argue that, although latecomers, Latin American countries could in principle catch up at a faster pace and a lower cost. But that will depend on the environment for innovation in the countries; in that...

This paper examines the economic effects of employment protection legislation in a sample of developed and developing countries. Implementing a difference-in-differences test lessens the potentially severe endogeneity and omitted variable problems associated with cross-country regressions. This...

In this paper we estimate the early effect of the European Monetary Union (EMU) on trade. We use a panel data set that includes the most recent information on bilateral trade for 22 developed countries from 1992 through 2002. During this period 12 European countries formally entered into a...

According to recent research, external factors and political governance considerations are key determinants of capital flows in Latin America. We postulate that corporate governance is a crucial determinant as well. We show that while the region is characterized by relatively low levels of...

This paper examines whether bank ownership (public versus private, domestic versus foreign) is correlated with bank lending behavior over the business cycle. The paper finds that state-owned banks may play a useful credit-smoothing role because their lending is less responsive to macroeconomic...

This paper builds a new dataset on bank ownership and bank performance covering approximately 50,000 observations for 119 countries over the 1995-2002 period. The paper then uses the dataset to reassess the relationship between bank ownership and bank performance, providing separated estimations...

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the role of state-owned banks and also presents some new results and a robustness analysis. The paper shows that state-owned banks located in developing countries have fiscal costs because they are characterized by lower returns than...

This paper examines the effect of employment protection regulation on gross job flows in a sample of developed and developing countries. By implementing a differences-in-differences test we lessen the potentially severe endogeneity and omitted variable problems associated with cross-country...

In recent years, Latin American banking sectors have experienced an accelerated process of concentration and foreign penetration that has prompted diverse views regarding its implications for the competitive behavior of banks and for the financial stability of the system as a whole. Exploiting a...

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. We investigate the...