Desde la perspectiva del comercio internacional la prestación de servicios, en particular la de servicios públicos, ha sido un tema reciente. En el caso de la educación este tema se consideraba tradicionalmente como una actividad propia del Estado, asociada al concepto de servicio público....

A partir de la apertura económica que inició con el gobierno del presidenteCésar Gaviria Trujillo, y de acuerdo con lo que está ocurriendo en el país en los últimos años, se está en una dinámica importante relacionada con la suscripción de acuerdos y tratados internacionales de...

This paper examines the impact of Free Trade Areas (FTAs) on the incentives for multilateral liberalization and challenges the contention that Free Trade Areas are superior to GATT style (multilateral) trade liberalization as a way of getting to multilateral free trade for all. Incorporating...

A key issue in the NAFTA debate was the effect of international capital mobility. This paper considers the implications of capital mobility in a three-good, three-country model of preferential trading. Capital mobility gives rise to foreign investment-induced trade creation in one country, but...

The majority of the trading blocs to date are between similar countries, rather than between developed and developing countries. This paper provides a rationale for why trading blocs among similar countries may arise as an equilibrium phenomenon. It develops a model of an asymmetric world...

This note looks at the correlation of short-term business cycles in the euro area and the EU accession countries. The issue is assessed with the help of vector autoregressive models. There are clear differences in the degree of correlation between accession countries. For Hungary and Slovenia,...

We review the literature on business-cycle correlation between the euro area and Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), a topic that has gained attention in recent years as new EU entrants prepare for participation in the monetary union. Our meta-analysis suggests several CEECs already...

Optimal currency area theory suggests that business cycle co-movement is a sufficient condition for monetary union, particularly if there are low levels of labour mobility between potential members of the monetary union. Previous studies of co-movement of business cycle variables found that...

The paper classifies small open economies in Europe into three categories. First, countries moving primarily in line with international fluctuations. Second, countries responding mainly to shocks at the EU level, and third, countries where fluctuations can be attributed essentially to domestic...

This paper explores the relationship between trade liberalization and skilled-unskilled wage inequality in the Bangladesh cotton textile industry. A dynamic two-equation model is estimated for wages of skilled and unskilled workers over the period 1973-2002, using four different openness...