The increase in oil prices in recent years has occurred concurrently with a rapid expansion of Chinese exports in the world markets, despite China being an oil importing country. In this paper we develop a theoretical model that explains the positive correlation between Chinese exports and the oil price. The model shows that Chinese growth can lead to an increase in oil prices that has a stronger impact on its export competitors. This is due to the large labor force surplus of China. We then examine this hypothesis by estimating a reduced form equation for Chinese exports using Rodrik [Rodrik, Dani, 2006. What's so special about China's exports? China and World Economy 14, 1-19.]'s measure of export competitiveness, together with the oil price, productivity, real exchange rate, and foreign industrial production over the monthly 1992-2005 period. The results suggest a stable relationship and yields slightly positive values for the price of oil and elastic coefficients for export competitiveness, along with the expected negative elasticity for the real exchange rate.

In this paper we address the following question: would a fully integrated world economy eliminate the widely reported decline in the terms of trade of primary commodities? We address the question by looking at the terms of trade within the US (a highly integrated economy). Our findings show two results. First, US internal real commodities' terms of trade over the 1947–1998 period experienced slowly declining but significant trends. Second, once we control for the effect of US prices on international terms of trade, we find a long-run relationship between the US and international relative prices. These findings support the view that the decline of commodities' terms of trade bears no relationship with the process of globalisation. This seems to indicate that, if world terms of trade behaved as the US terms of trade, neither increased integration nor protectionist measures would eliminate this trend. Copyright The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

The article evaluates crime trends in south border American and Mexican sister cities using panel data analysis. The region offers a unique assessment opportunity since cities are characterized by shared cultural and historical legacies, institutional heterogeneity, and disparate crime outcomes. Higher homicide rates on the Mexican side seem to result from deficient law enforcement. Higher population densities in Mexican cities appear to also be a factor. Cultural differences, on the other hand, have been decreasing, and apparently do not play a substantial role. The homicide rate dynamics show opportunistic clustering of criminal activity in Mexican cities, while no clustering is found on the American side. Crime also appears to spill from Mexican cities into American cities. Homicide rates on both sides of the border have been falling faster than countrywide rates, leading, in the case of American cities, and against stereotypes, to rates below the countrywide rate in 2001.

In this study, we examine the response of Latin American stock markets to movements in European stock markets. Our results vary depending on the openness of the country in terms of international trade. We find evidence that Latin American stock markets are affected by Spanish stock market. Additionally, during the second and third-periods (1995 to 1998 and 1999 to 2004) Spain appears to have much stronger ties (such as more trade) with Brazil and Chile, and this might explain why Brazil and Chile are affected from Spain and not from the other European markets. This study uncovers two important findings. First, Spain has an effect on Latin American markets but these responses are not homogeneous across markets. Second, the magnitude of Spain's influence is different in each of the three sub-periods under study.