Research Library

By Paul Lagunes, Baker Institute for Public Policy; Xiaoxuan Yang, Columbia University; and Andrés Castro, Columbia University. Corruption is a persistent problem throughout Latin America. Higher rates of perceived corruption are associated with lower levels of economic welfare and direct foreign investment, write the authors.

The author reviews the evolution of labor and environmental rights in U.S. free trade agreements and evaluates such provisions in the USMCA.

If the country is to be economically successful and democratically viable, it would require learning from past mistakes and developing its significant potential in other economic sectors, writes energy policy fellow Francisco J. Monaldi. Forbes blog: http://bit.ly/2R80KU3.

The author examines provisions in the USMCA for resolving investor and trade disputes among the three North American countries party to the agreement.

If the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is approved, this modified and modernized version of NAFTA will govern most economic relationships in North America. David A. Gantz, the Will Clayton Fellow in Trade and International Economics, reviews the USMCA and discusses its positive and negative elements.

Days after Peru's Congress nearly impeached the country's president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, he pardoned his authoritarian predecessor, Alberto Fujimoro.

While academic and popular debates tend to focus on differential benefits and costs of trade across countries or industries, this brief highlights winners and losers at the level of individual firms. The authors demonstrate that preferential liberalization produces concentrated benefits among a relatively small number of very large and productive firms.

The landscape is changing for foreign direct investment in Latin America. Investments flow not only from north to south, but also from south to south and south to north. What's more, relatively small firms in developing countries are becoming as likely as multinationals to invest abroad.

Voices of the Americas is a space for Americas Project fellows to share their insights into events unfolding in their home countries and in the region as a whole. Links to the blogs are available here: http://bit.ly/1XaJ2hs

This conference report summarizes findings from a lecture by Diego Rodriguez for the event "From the 'What?' to the 'How?' in the Water-Energy Nexus: Challenges, Opportunities and Lessons Learned."