The purpose of the paper is to investigate whether Spain's accession to the European Union in 1986 caused a structural break in the allocation of total supplies of manufactures over domestic and foreign supplies. To that end the homogeneity-constrained Almost Ideal Demand System is used to specify the long-run equilibrium relationships between the shares in total supplies and total real demand and relative prices and a first-order error correction mechanism in order to describe the adjustment process to equilibrium. Using a formal statistical test, it turns out that a structural break actually occurred and led to a rather sharp decrease in the share of Spain and an increase in the shares of the other members of the European Union.

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This article discusses the development of the framework and procedures followed by the Mexican authorities in the verification of origin of products under free trade agreements (FTAs) signed by Mexico but mostly under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which is the FTA that given the value of the commercial exchange between the United States and Mexico is most commonly tested by Mexican courts. Furthermore, this article tries to view in some perspective the action of the Mexican authorities and the reaction of the Mexican Federal Tax Court to a very critical legal issue: the reception of international trade law in the Mexican formal legal system. The conclusion is that the verification is still unconcluded process.

It was widely assumed in the West following the collapse of European socialism that China would undergo a similar process of counter-revolution. This article seeks to understand why, three decades later, this hasn't happened, and whether it is likely to happen in the foreseeable future. The article contrasts China's “reform and opening up” process, pursued since 1978, with the “perestroika” and “glasnost” policies taken up in the Soviet Union under the Gorbachev leadership. A close analysis of the available data makes it clear that China's reform has been far more successful than the Soviet reform; that, in contrast to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, all the key quality of life indicators in China have undergone significant improvement in the last 40 years, and China is emerging as a global leader in science, technological innovation and environmental preservation. The article argues that the disparate outcomes in China and the Soviet Union are the result primarily of the far more effective economic strategy pursued by the Chinese government, along with the continued strengthening of the Communist Party of China's leadership.

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