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Professional mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) are one of the policy instruments employed in global and regional trade agreements to facilitate the mobility of skilled labour. While such agreements have been noted in the literature examining cross-border academic mobility, little is known about how they impact higher education. This paper examines the formation of professional MRAs in North America since the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), focusing on three fields: engineering, architecture, and accounting. In the three professions, asymmetries characterizing the NAFTA partners led to system-level reforms in Mexico. The paper discusses how and why the institutional arrangements governing professional higher education in the country were "harmonized" with those of the United States and Canada.

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The new objects of public and open prejudice are Hispanics, primarily Mexicans due to their large population and their proximity to the United States. Because the Iraq War is such a disaster on all fronts, conservatives and reactionaries have shifted their patriotic fervour from invading foreign countries to inveighing against brown-skinned foreigners who come in the United States. In this article, the author talks about America's xenophobia which goes back a long way past 1928 when it was alleged that Al Smith, the Democratic candidate and first Catholic to be nominated for the presidency, would build a tunnel from the Vatican to the White House so that the Pope could secretly run the country. The author also talks about interstate highways which were specifically created to aid evacuation in case of a Soviet attack. The interstate highway in the crosshairs of the xenophobes is I-69 or sometimes conflated with I-35. Anti-immigrant organisations see expansion of I-69 as a plot to create a NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association) superhighway stretching 1600 miles from Mexico to Canada; this would be the first step towards the creation of NAU, the North American Union, resulting in "the disintegration of these countries as sovereign nations." Although the interstate highway is considered as treason to some Americans, the author was astonished to find that to some Christians, it is deemed the road to salvation.

Considers the educational implications of increased cooperation among Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. Highlights each country's labor force needs and the importance of the mobility of professionals across national borders. Discusses the state of academic mobility in North America, the need for common standards, and funding mechanisms. (MAB)

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In this paper we report on the importance of trust in the development and operation of distribution networks that attach non-price information to products to mitigate market dynamics introduced by information asymmetries. Often this non-price information is transmitted from producers to consumers through trusting networks or under certifiable labels such as "organic" or "Fair Trade." We are calling such networks Full Information Product Pricing (FIPP) Networks. This study is part of a larger project aimed at understanding how a suite of future-possible data interoperability standards and social computing technologies will set the stage for a set of product labelings, information architectures and policies that may have the potential to supplement a compliance-enforcement approach with a more market-based voluntary approach to significantly expand the share of worker- and environmentally-friendly products within the NAFTA region. This initial exploration of four cases in Canada and Latin America indicated that trust, in the forms of institutional trust, calculative trust, and relational trust, plays key roles in FIPP operations and expansion. It is critical for building collaboration, coordinating network activities, and mitigating the risks associated with information asymmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 elaborated the idea of sustainable development. A comprehensive document called the Agenda 21 provided an explanation how to achieve a sustainable economic development. Along the tools presented in the document, there emerged in practice a new regionalism which is based on the preferential trade agreements. Currently, regional agreements are of a more complex nature, so that they may include environmental cooperation, too. The aim of this paper is to illustrate, on the case of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a possible approach of regional agreements to environmental cooperation. The paper is divided into four sections. The first one summarizes a general approach to addressing environmental issues within the integration groupings. The second tries to answer the question of whether the NAFTA confirms the general approach to the regional environmental governance. The third deals with the meaning and the failure of the regional governance for the assessment of the cross-border impact of the NAFTA/NAAEC on the environment. The fourth and last section gives an answer to whether the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), as the environmental part of the NAFTA, is a good basis for the effective environmental governance in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994 aims at creating the legal, political, and business conditions for a freer circulation of goods, capitals and services in North America. However it gives scant attention to the mobility of workers. The basic premise of this paper is that globalisation of trade and the universal diffusion of human rights have evolved and progressed side by side, even though with difficulty and reluctantly, and that the regional liberalisation of trade must be deeply interwoven with issues related to socio-economic rights to be ultimately and durably successful. This paper's major questions are: How does NAFTA address labour mobility? Does NAFTA neglect, oppose or support the free movement of people across its borders? Does the agreement deal with labour mobility in a clear and definite manner or does it ignore it and give it short shrift? Should NAFTA support the liberalisation of immigration within its area as a long term objective, as part of a deeper and broader regional integration, conditioned on considerable reforms by its Member States, especially Mexico's legal system, and energy, tax and banking policies, among others? Is the free movement of people needed to be truly successful and provide economic security, survival and prosperity for its member countries in view of vastly changed economic and trade conditions since its inception? This paper first traces the history of the drafting of NAFTA. Then it examines what NAFTA means for labour mobility within the complex interaction between an economic colossus like the United States and a developing country like Mexico, also taking into account current migration trends. In this section, the paper also covers the liberalisation of the mobility of labour (albeit limited) brought about through administrative regulations. Interspersed with this there is a discussion of what should be a mutually reinforcing relationship between international free trade and social policy. Then the paper addresses the links and the relationship between trade, labour standards and migration. Comparative perspectives with the approach of the European Union to movement of workers are also included. Finally, there is a brief critique evaluating NAFTA's legal processes against the ideal to reconcile social integration with regional free trade. Economic realities and crises and the surge in economic and trade power of China, India and possibly Brazil that are redefining the pre-eminence and dominance of the United States are also factored in when the argument for liberalisation of the movement of people within NAFTA is made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most computable general-equilibrium (CGE) studies assessing the welfare impact of moving from a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to a deeper form of integration, for example a customs union (CU), typically proxy the integration as the adoption of a common external tariff toward the rest of the world. However, a CU is also an arrangement that allows for the elimination of FTAs' preferential rules of origin (ROO), which is typically not captured in CGE studies. This paper addresses the issue using a multicountry, multisector dynamic CGE model. Although the removal of distortionary ROO is likely to lower the unit costs of production within North America, it may also deteriorate North American terms of trade with the rest of the world. Thus, the net effect of the removal of NAFTA ROO on welfare is ambiguous and is an empirical issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how overlap between trade and environmental issues are managed under the North American Free Trade Agreement, and specifically the role that the Commission for Environmental Cooperation ( CEC) Secretariat plays in this process. We demonstrate how the CEC Secretariat has influenced trade-environment politics, primarily through knowledge brokering in ways that build state capacity to collaborate across borders on trade-environment issues. Specifically, we demonstrate how the Secretariat has influenced decisions related to budget allocations, cooperative activities between member states, the creation of new institutions, and evaluating allegations of parties' failures to enforce environmental laws. Moreover, we argue that this case raises important questions concerning the appropriate role of secretariats in international politics and has important policy implications with several new secretariats currently being set up under the burgeoning number of regional trade agreements under negotiation by the United States and many others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT High-skilled labour migration figures prominently in global policy narratives. Increasingly, countries in the global north have introduced policies to attract and facilitate the entry of skilled migrants. More recently, the high-skilled migrant is cast as an 'agent of development' within policy discourse and practice. This paper challenges this rhetoric by interrogating the ways in which the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is implicated in skilled worker mobility. Specifically, it focuses on the empirical case of the nascent continental nursing labour market to highlight the linkages between trade, migration, and development. Two specific interrelated aspects are investigated. First, the ways in which the NAFTA appeared to promote a set of linkages between nursing labour markets of Canada, US, and Mexico through its mobility provisions. Second and relatedly, the paper explores how the new continental nursing market, engendered by the NAFTA, has created a space for third party actors, most notably nursing recruiters, to facilitate cross-border mobility of nurses. The paper emphasises the importance of considering the diverse contexts that are implicated in the production, mobility, and governance of specific skills. This consideration troubles dominate policy narratives of skilled migration as being either a boon or detriment to development goals. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that since the completion of the NAFTA in the early 1990s, there has been too much focus on what governments in Ottawa, Washington, and Mexico City have or have not been doing to deepen North American integration. The NAFTA was an anomaly that obscures the larger history of incrementalism that has shaped North America's political economy. A focus on large, government-led integration projects like the NAFTA as a model for North American integration distracts from an examination of the many connections and processes taking place across borders every day. Security has become fully entrenched as a driving paradigm of North American relations. However, much of the activity in this domain and others is taking place at the bureaucratic, sub-state, and non-state levels rather than via active direction from national leadership. As scholars and analysts of North America, we would do well to move away from the NAFTA as a model for negotiating North America's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the need for a new analytical framework to reach a thorough understanding of the outcomes of unequal trade integration, in North America and beyond. To achieve this goal, it was divided in four main sections: the deconstruction of the orthodox argument of free trade areas; the assessment of the contrasting outcomes of NAFTA; an overview of relevant literature; and the delineation of an interdisciplinary agenda. The hypothesis is that the lack of theoretical certainty is due, in parts, to the causal opening of the object of study and to the scarce interaction of specialties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) are one of the policy instruments employed in global and regional trade agreements to facilitate the mobility of skilled labour. While such agreements have been noted in the literature examining cross-border academic mobility, little is known about how they impact higher education. This paper examines the formation of professional MRAs in North America since the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), focusing on three fields: engineering, architecture, and accounting. In the three professions, asymmetries characterizing the NAFTA partners led to system-level reforms in Mexico. The paper discusses how and why the institutional arrangements governing professional higher education in the country were ‘harmonized’ with those of the United States and Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Latin American Business Review is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper offers an assessment of the environmental impact of trade liberalization on the cross-border trucking sector in North America. Specific policies in the realm of transportation, environment and trade are investigated with data directly related to the time of implementation that varied across ports on each of the two international borders in North America subsequent to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The data on truck flows, wait times, air quality and trade value are analyzed using econometrics for quantitative analysis. Results show various policies do have a positive impact on reducing air emissions through changes in trucking characteristics (technology, patterns) in particular ports where they have been implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the North American tomato market in a world market perspective. For this purpose a spatial equilibrium model with endogenous prices is constructed and solved by quadratic mathematical programming method. Six scenarios involving the impacts from transportation costs, tariffs, and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were modelled. The solutions illustrate their impacts on production, consumption, trade flows, prices, and net social welfare. Due to NAFTA, Mexico became the main tomato exporter to the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In theory, a country will impose tariff barriers to protect the domestic industries and firms that are less competitive relative to foreign imports. This study investigates whether revealed comparative advantage (RCA) is related to tariff protection in the three large North American economies. I find little evidence for the hypothesis that higher RCA values always correspond to lower tariff levels. The effects of RCA on tariffs are heterogeneous across sectors; consumer goods are likelier to see higher tariffs as RCA increases than agricultural or other goods. These results challenge the theory that export-competitive goods will necessarily receive less tariff protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the regional dynamics that prevail in North America within the higher education sector. The coming into effect of NAFTA in 1994 raised expectations of greater integration among the higher education systems of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. While NAFTA did not involve education, it had implications for higher education through professional mutual recognition agreements, trilateral programs, and indirectly through regional advocacy. The higher education sector provides interesting insights for the broader debate on North American regionalism whereby asymmetries among partners shape policy developments with special implication' for Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Relaciones Internacionales is the property of Facultad de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The North American free trade area appears to have reached an impasse. Deprived of adequate rule-making mechanisms, it is facing an institutional deficit that hinders its competitivenes, but any form of European-style supranationalism has unequivocally been ruled out as a conceivable way to administer the economic zone created more than 15 years ago by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Should, therefore, North Americans abandon any prospect of deeper economic integration and even expect a relative decline in free trade in the region? Not necessarily, because supranationalism is not in any way a necessary condition for effective international rule making. The key ingredient for effective international rule making is not the external delegation of authority, but rather the level of domestic executive autonomy states are able to pool and coordinate through often sophisticated, but not necessarily legally binding, international institutions. On this account, this article evaluates the potential of the recent Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and concludes that it amalgamates enough executive autonomy to constitute a basis for the establishment of a nontreaty, international rule-making body. After looking at examples of international rule-making bodies to which the United States is a party and that share key institutional features of the SPP, the article suggests paths by which the three governments could upgrade the SPP design in such a way as to provide the North American free trade area with the flexible rule-making capability it needs. La zona de libre comercio de Norteamérica parece haber llegado a un callejón sin salida. A falta de los mecanismos adecuados para crear organismos reglamentarios, enfrenta un déficit institucional que entorpece su competitividad. Sin embargo, cualquier forma de supra-nacionalismo al estilo europeo ha quedado sin duda descartada como una alternativa viable para administrar la zona económica creada hace más de quince años por el TLCAN. ¿Deberían entonces los miembros de Norte América abandonar cualquier esperanza de una integración más profunda, y hasta esperar una contracción del libre comercio en la región? No necesariamente, ya que el supranacionalismo no es de ninguna manera condición necesaria para la generación eficaz de mecanismos reglamentarios. El principal ingrediente para instaurar un organismo reglamentario eficaz, no depende de la delegación de autoridad a un ente externo, sino del nivel de autonomía del poder ejecutivo que los estados estén dispuestos a obtener y coordinar mediante instituciones muchas veces sofisticadas, aunque no necesariamente con poder de obligatoriedad jurídica. Al respecto, este artículo evalúa el potencial de la reciente Alianza para la Seguridad y la Prosperidad de América del Norte (ASPAN), y concluye que dicha institución amalgama la suficiente autonomía del poder ejecutivo como para constituir el fundamento, sin tener que formalizarlo en un tratado, de un cuerpo reglamentario a nivel internacional. Luego de considerar algunos ejemplos de este tipo de organismos en los que Estados Unidos participa y que comparten elementos institucionales clave con la ASPAN, el artículo sugiere alternativas mediante las cuales los tres gobiernos podrían mejorar el diseño de la ASPAN y otorgar a la zona de libre comercio de Norteamérica la flexibilidad que requiere para generar la reglamentación que le hace falta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Politics & Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article offers a historical overview of the evolution of the relationship between Canada and Mexico, emphasizing its exiguity, its fundamental economic nature and the consequences of sharing borders with the United States. It is organized as follows: the first section covers the period going from the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1944 to the late 1960s, a period during which the bilateral relation failed to consolidate despite sporadic efforts; the second section deals with the period starting with the convergence of political visions in the two capitals in the early 1970s up to the period immediately preceding the starting of the negotiations leading to NAFTA. The period during which the most significant engagement between the two countries has taken place to the present is reviewed in the third section. The article concludes presenting some thoughts on the possibilities and limits of cooperation between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Canada's economic relationship with the USA is by far its most important trading relationship. Canada benefits greatly from being located adjacent to the world's largest and most advanced economy. Because of the free trade agreement that Canada implemented with the USA in 1989, the two economies have become increasingly integrated. However, the Canadian-US economic relationship has recently come under stress because of border security concerns in the USA, seemingly intractable trade disputes in some industries, and the complications involved in trying to address issues of bilateral concern in the context of the trilateral North American free trade agreement. Canada is attempting to diversify its external economic relations by negotiating new free trade agreements outside North America, but will remain highly dependent on the US economy and must address certain issues to ensure that the bilateral relationship remains robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We undertake a comparative investigation of how neoliberal restructuring characterizes the third food regime in the three North American countries. By contrasting the experience of the two developed countries of the United States and Canada with that of the developing country of Mexico, we shine some empirical light on the differential impact of neoliberal regulatory restructuring on the division of labor in agriculture within the North American Free Trade Agreement region. In particular, we investigate these countries' agricultural production markets, trade, and food vulnerability-with an emphasis on Mexico-as analytical points for comparing and contrasting their experience with this neoliberal restructuring. We start with a synthesis of food-regime theory and outline the key features of what we call the 'neoliberal food regime.' We then discuss our case-study countries in terms of food vulnerability and resistance in Mexico, their differential relationships to trade liberalization, and what these trends might mean for the evolution of the neoliberal food regime. We conclude that, while dominant trends are ominous, there is room for an alternative trajectory and consequent reshaping of the emerging regime: sufficient bottom-up social resistance, primarily at the level of the nation-state, may yet produce an alternative trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excessive fluctuations in exchange rates often influence trade flows. Theoretically, increased uncertainty may increase or decrease the volume of trade, or leave it unchanged. Using annual export and import data for 102 industries from 1962 to 2004, we analyze both the short- and long-term effects of volatility in the peso/dollar real exchange rate on Mexican trade with the United States. We also investigate the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on this relationship. We find that increased volatility has short-term effects on the trade flows of most industries but that the long-term effects are significant (positive or negative) for only one-third of industries. Most of the significant effects are negative rather than positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). An analysis of the aggregate impact of NAFTA on the North American region is given, with a detailed examination provided of NAFTA's impact on the three member countries which include the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. A description of the regional and global trends that are impacting NAFTA's relevance and effectiveness is provided. Other topics include the political debates that occur in North America about NAFTA and NAFTA's symbolic staying power in public discourse.

How effective has the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation been in strengthening the environmental laws and regulations of the NAFTA countries? The agreement was designed to address concerns that trade and investment liberalisation would contribute to a race to the bottom in environmental standards, regulatory chill, and inadequate enforcement of environmental laws. It is argued here that the reformist approach adopted in this regional agreement has been insufficient to offset the continuing pressure on environmental regulations and their enforcement exerted by regional economic integration and neoliberal globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]