Artificial intelligence (AI) presents huge opportunities for central banks. At the same time, its adoption entails complex risk management challenges. The use cases for AI span a broad range of critical functions of a central bank including data analysis, research, economic forecasting,...

Drawing on in-depth analysis of nineteen criminal networks in the Americas, this paper develops a multidimensional typology of criminal organization that can be used by policymakers to more effectively target criminal networks. The typology distinguishes between criminal networks by evaluating...

Although we cannot conceive of processes of economic growth that do not involve institutional change, in this essay we outline some reasons why one should be cautious about grounding a theory of growth on institutions. We emphasize how very different institutional structures have often been...

These remarks were delivered by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the 52nd Washington Conference on the Americas. He discusses: the Bank forecast that Latin America and the Caribbean will grow by only 2.3 percent in 2022. Energy, food, and fertilizer prices are rising at a pace not...

"In Beyond Constraint, Shona N. Jackson offers a new approach to labour and its analysis by demonstrating the fundamental relation between Black and Indigenous People's sovereign, free, and coerced labour in the Americas. Through the writings of Cedric Robinson, Walter Rodney, C. L. R. James,...

Lack of evidence has been the major obstacle to understanding trends and differences in human welfare over the millennia. This paper explains and applies methods that are obscure to most academics and essentially unknown to the general public. A millennial perspective is best obtained from...

Computable General Equilibrium models, widely used for the analysis of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are often criticized for having poor econometric foundations. This paper improves the linkage between econometric estimates of key parameters and their usage in CGE analysis in order to better...

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have spread rapidly around the world since the 1990s. In the Americas, the proliferation of trade agreements with countries from within and beyond the region have resulted in a ‘spaghetti bowl’ of overlapping rules and regulations, some of which address...

This paper compares two possible formats for free trade in the Americas: a system of spokes surrounding a U.S. hub, and a free trade area. The paper identifies the sources of welfare change, and it argues that a country's attitude towards a system depends on whether the arrangement is a...

How will free trade affect monetary policy and exchange rate regime choices in the Americas? While the European Union illustrates how the creation of an integrated market in goods and services can enhance monetary cooperation and integration, it is not clear that Europe's experience translates...

"Did Latin American communists have stronger roots in the worldwide movement or in the historical developments of their own countries? This collection uses a transnational lens to examine the relationships of the region's local parties with each other, international counterparts, and outside...

The governments and businessmen of the continent are actively promoting since 1994, the creation of the largest commercial block in the world, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). 34 countries will be included in this agreement, covering a territory that goes from Alaska to Tierra del...

Using subnational historical data, this paper establishes the within country persistence of economic activity in the New World over the last half millennium. The paper constructs a data set incorporating measures of pre-colonial population density, new measures of present regional per capita...

This report discusses FX liquidity metrics and their drivers, reaching four conclusions. First, changes in FX markets have reduced the usefulness of some conventional FX liquidity metrics; several metrics need to be assessed together to give a better picture of market liquidity. Second, some...

This article analyzes how the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would likely exacerbate critical threats to health in the Americas, from the perspectives of public health and human rights. These threats include crises in access to health care, water, and other vital human services;...

The Americas in the rise of industrial capitalism / John Tutino -- The Cádiz liberal revolution and Spanish American independence / Roberto Breña -- Union, capitalism, and slavery in the "rising empire" of the United States / Adam Rothman -- From slave colony to Black nation : Haiti's...

The slave trades out of Africa represent one of the most significant forced migration experiences in history. In this paper, I illustrate their long-term consequences on contemporaneous socio-economic outcomes, drawing from my own previous work on the topic and from an extensive review of the...

"Since the 1980s, scholars have made the case for examining nineteenth-century culture--particularly literary output--through the lens of economics. In Culture and Money in the Nineteenth Century: Abstracting Economics, two luminaries in the field of Victorian studies, Daniel Bivona and Marlene...

Levels of economic development vary widely within countries in the Americas. This paper argues that part of this variation has its roots in the colonial era. Colonizers engaged in different economic activities in different regions of a country, depending on local conditions. Some activities were...

Harrison, Rutherford, Tarr, and Gurgel estimate that the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), the EU-MERCOSUR agreement, and multilateral trade policy changes will all be beneficial for Brazil. The Brazilian government strategy of simultaneously negotiating the FTAA and the EU-MERCOSUR...

Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Abstracting Economics -- Part one: Broad Abstractions -- 1: Born to the Business: Heredity, Ability, and Commercial Character in Late Victorian Britain -- 2: Shifting the Ground of Monetary Politics: The Case of the 1870s -- 3: The Comparative...

The contributors to New Countries examine how eight newly independent nations in the Western Hemisphere between 1750 and 1870 played fundamental roles in the global transformation from commercial to industrial capitalism.

In this book, Arturo Santa-Cruz advances an understanding of power as a social relationship and applies it consistently to the economic realm in United States relations with other countries of the Western Hemisphere. Following the academic and popular debate on the ebb and flow of US hegemony,...