The study of new goods exports is drawing attentions of trade economists since the heterogeneous firms trade model by Melitz (2003) has given a theoretical backbone to the mechanism of the new goods exports. This paper analyses whether the formation of MERCOSUR has had a discernible effect on the new goods exports of Argentina. It shows a sharp increase in the number of product categories in Argentina’s exports to Brazil, compared to other non-MERCOSUR countries. The paper finds a statistically significant positive effect of MERCOSUR on the probability of new goods exports. It also argues the role of a large-scale trade liberalisation for an expansion of new goods exports to other non-member countries, which this paper calls ‘springboard’ effect. The paper shows that Brazilian market indeed has played such a role.

Decentralization has become an important theme of governance in many developed and developing countries in recent years. Yet we know little about how politically this could be possible in a centralized state.

The case of Bolivian decentralization reform with the Popular Participation Law (1994) was chosen to be analyzed because this is one of the most striking examples of the radical decentralization through highly centralized process. As a consequence the paper concludes that competitive relationship between the presidents and the regional economic elites has been the crucial axis to promote the decentralization politics.

In this paper, we analyze the determinants of wage inequality in Chile over the period 1970-2003 by estimating the Mincerian wage function taking sample selection bias into consideration. We show that the return to secondary education tends to decrease rapidly to 5% after 1997 and the return to higher education is relatively stable after 1981. Especially in the late 1980s working in agricultural sector meant that the wage was higher than that in rndustrial sector. Finally, being from a higher socioeconomic origin with all the other attributes the same has the possibility to increase the wage during the period. But they have little impact on the wage inequality.