Static time series models usually assume stationarity, normality, and independence for the increments of financial rates of return. This paper investigates the empirical characteristics of financial rates of return from Latin American stock and currency markets and documents that their empirical...

The institutional reforms towards trade liberalizations in Latin America during the 1980s and the 1990s have introduced a good measure of import competition, but trade policies alone are not sufficient to create a competitive environment in an economy. The countries in Latin America have not had...

A survey of trade elasticities published for Latin American economies is conducted. Articles surveyed were published between 1975 and 1997. They include data from the mid-1950s through the mid-1990s. Imports are found to be highly income elastic as well as very price inelastic. Relatively fewer...

This paper examines individual trade policy preferences across the 17 countries in Latin America. The focus is on whether skilled or unskilled workers are more likely to support liberalized trade and on whether country characteristics, such as factor endowments, alter the preferences of skilled...

This paper analyses the dynamics of return to knowledge where knowledge is acquired through the combination of interactive and individual learning. We suggest that in light of this new definition of knowledge, choosing the optimal level of education is no longer an individual exercise of present...

This paper analyzes the impact of globalization on social spending in Latin America. It shows that trade integration has a consistently negative effect on social security expenditures, and that this effect is compounded by higher integration into capital markets. The importance of political...

The object of this paper is to develop an Early Warning System of Macro Vulnerability for several Latin American countries based on previous work of Kaminsky, Lizondo and Reinhart (1997) and Kaminsky (1998). We build a composite leading indicator that signals macroeconomic vulnerability, showing...

Factor-endowment based trade with the leading economy helps to explain the differing development performances of the Americas and East Asia in the past two centuries. Between 1830 and 1945, labor-abundant Britain, the most advanced country, traded heavily with land-abundant countries in the...

We analyze empirically whether the emergence of China as a large recipient of FDI has affected the amount of FDI received by Latin American countries. For the longest time span possible given data availability (from 1984 to 2001), we do not find a substitution from Latin American inward FDI to...