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This paper analyzes the major trade blocks in Asia and Latin America and their effects on intra-regional trade flows using annual trade data for the period 1970-2006. The paper uses a gravity model augmented with several sets of dummy variables to estimate the effect of various trade blocks such as the Association for South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Central American Common Market (CACM), the Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), the Andean Pact or Andean Community (AC), and the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR) on trade flows within and across membership groupings as well as the effect of trade blocks on members' trade with other Asia-Pacific and Western Hemispheric countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we explore the hypotheses that (a) workers' remittances enhance economic growth in Latin American countries, and (b) workers' remittances help reduce poverty in Latin American countries. In recent decades, workers' remittances have become an important source of income for many developing countries and, as a global aggregate, workers' remittances are the largest source of foreign financing after foreign direct investment. This paper analyzes the effects of workers' remittances on economic growth and poverty in 21 Latin American countries. The study uses annual data covering all Latin American countries for the period 1980–2018. We employ panel least squares and panel fully-modified least squares (FMOLS) methods. In addition, we estimate the short-run and long-run effects of workers' remittances on economic growth and poverty on individual countries with the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL-ECM) approach to co-integration analysis. The results reveal that workers' remittances have a positive effect on long-run economic growth in the majority of the countries studied, but have mixed effects in the short-run. They also suggest that workers' remittances tend to lower poverty rates in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]