The new wave of regionalism in Latin America amounts to more than just old wine in new bottles. Yet the economic effects of regional integration are likely to fall short of Latin American expectations. The development of foreign direct investment in Latin America in the 1990s reveals that...

Mercosur countries have witnessed a boom of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows since the early 1990s. However, regional integration, viewed in isolation, was not sufficient for the subregion to regain its attractiveness to FDI. FDI growth in individual Mercosur countries was closely related...

Developing countries are constrained in financing current account deficits as real capital mobility is still far from perfect. At the same time, capital flows to these countries proved to be extremely volatile. The paper argues that the long-term problem of "too little" should not be confused...

Even though the automobile industry is technologically advanced, the increasing integration of low-income countries into the global division of labor has put competitive pressure on traditional automobile producing countries. New end-producers emerged in Asia, Latin America as well as Southern...

Die Forderungen von Globalisierungskritikern nach einem radikalen Umbau der internationalen Finanzmarktordnung sind von den wirtschaftspolitischen Entscheidungsträgern aus guten Gründen abgelehnt worden. Vorzuwerfen ist den Entscheidungsträgern allerdings, dass auch ökonomisch sinnvolle...

The claim of globalization critics that the income gap to industrial countries is bound to widen for essentially all developing countries as a consequence of economic globalization is in conflict with empirical evidence. Economic performance differs tremendously across developing countries. We...

There is a startling gap between, allegedly, globalization-induced changes in international competition for foreign direct investment (FDI) and recent empirical evidence on the relative importance of determinants of FDI in developing countries. We show that surprisingly little has changed since...

In a report presented at the UN Conference on Financing for Development in March 2002, the World Bank claims that the effectiveness of its financial aid has improved substantially by targeting aid at poor developing countries pursuing sound economic policies. However, the World Bank's success...

For FDI to help achieve the international development goal of halving absolute poverty, two conditions have to be met. First, poor developing countries need to be attractive to foreign investors. Second, the host-country environment in which foreign investors operate must be conducive to...

It is widely believed that the determinants of foreign direct investment have changed fundamentally in the process of globalization. We apply correlation and regression analyses in order to test this proposition for German direct investments in developing and transition economies. Indications...