Search

In the 1980s, Mexico switched from a policy of import substitution to export-oriented development. From 1994, it participated in a North–South free trade agreement with the United States and Canada (North American Free Trade Agreement – NAFTA). The agreement strongly reflected the asymmetric power of the three participants, although some Mexico's regions served as production platforms in global value chains. Under NAFTA, Mexico's overall growth was insipid, yet a trade surplus with the United States was the excuse for Donald Trump's government to impose a renegotiation that led in 2020 to a new agreement (US, Mexico, Canada Agreement – USMCA) with terms yet more favourable to the United States. In the light of this experience and the political and economic factors that explain it, this paper studies to the need to get Mexico's trade policies right through permanent consideration to the development needs in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the decline of the labor income share (LIS) in Mexico during the 1990-2015 period. The decline is mostly explained by reductions within the economy's major sectors (including manufacturing, tradables, and non-tradables), rather than by a recomposition of value added towards sectors with low labor shares. In contrast to agriculture --where LIS fell due to a shift of labor force from self-employment to wage-employment-- in other major areas of the economy the fall in LIS is explained by reductions within the wage-employment sector. Econometric estimations indicate that parallel declines in the wage share and relative productivity of non-tradables and in the US manufacturing labor share all played a large role in the reduction of the manufacturing wage share in Mexico. More generally, the analysis suggests that the lagging productivity of the economy's informal non-tradable sector --itself a reflection of the country's low aggregate rate of economic growth-- is a crucial factor in the fall of LIS in the formal sectors. The paper concludes by discussing possible explanations for the paradox of the slow rate of economic growth in Mexico despite the rise in the profit share. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Win—win outcomes between biodiversity conservation and local economic development are now a goal of many governments and conservation organizations but can be difficult to achieve. Where they occur, reductions in poverty from protected areas are often thought to be driven by economic gains from tourism that are sufficient to outweigh losses due to restrictions on land‐use or resource extraction. However, evidence about this channel is scarce. In this paper, we explore the potential compensatory effect of tourism by comparing poverty alleviation outcomes for cultural heritage sites in Mexico across two decades from 1990 to 2010. These sites are similar to protected areas in terms of attracting tourists, but they do not impose substantial restrictions on local land or resource use, allowing us to isolate tourism as a possible channel for economic development. Overall, we find mixed evidence that proximity to cultural heritage sites is associated with poverty reduction. During the first study period (1990–2000), localities close to cultural heritage sites saw reduced poverty of 0.034 standard deviations for each additional site. However, during the second period (2000–2010), localities close to heritage sites saw less poverty reduction than the comparison group (−0.014 standard deviations for each additional site). In both periods, poverty alleviation effects were not consistently correlated with the total number of visitors, but were larger further from cities, where baseline poverty was higher, and in the Yucatán Peninsula. This heterogeneity indicates that variability in the ability of local communities to capture benefits from tourism depends on a particular combination of institutional and geographic factors—as was the case in the Yucatan peninsula, where cultural heritage sites had consistent poverty alleviation effects over two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By means of a well-known methodology in the literature, this paper deals with the causals of structural change in the Mexican economy during the 1950s, characterised by the entrenching of growth tendencies, related to the development if the industrial and the services sectors. Results allow to say that growth was commanded by private consumption, as well as the dynamics of the internal market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to characterize the business dynamics of the software industries located in Mexico City, Monterrey, and Tijuana, beginning with a survey administered by the authors to 175 companies located in the aforementioned cities in 2014. The literature about this industry in Mexico has tended to favor theoretical approaches to innovation and learning and their subsequent application to local cases. This work relies on the logic of clusters (Porter, 1998) and therefore analyzes relationships with the local market in terms of sales and usage of human, financial, and informational resources, revealing regional differences in business dynamics. One important difference is the weight of local competition in Mexico City as compared with the two other cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is a significant correlation between energy subsidies in Mexico and some dimensions of sustainable development. In this sense are analyzed the CO2 emissions, subsidies per capita energy sector, the annual growth rate of gdp, electricity consumption per capita and the production of equivalent fossil fuel energy. This research has been between the 2004-2010 period in the recent history of that country. Finally the results are studied and also are established different recommendations related to energy policy and even are presented some possible future research lines in this entire topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much attention has been given to the effects of migration and remittances on agricultural activities in the communities of origin, the relationship between remittances and rural households' use of natural resources remains understudied. This paper contributes in filling this gap by using a Mexican data set that contains detailed information on both remittances and use of natural resources at the household level. The data set is representative of the rural population of Mexico at the national level, which allows us to move beyond case studies overcoming one of the main challenges for understanding the relationship between livelihoods and the environment. Results show that remittances have significant effects on the use of natural resources by the receiving households. We find that a) remittances decrease the likelihood that a household will participate in natural resource extraction, and b) households that receive remittances and extract natural resources have lower environmental income and lower environmental reliance than households not receiving remittances. By reducing participation in extraction as well as reliance on natural resources, remittances reduce the pressure that local populations put on the natural resource base that surrounds them. This could mean good news for the conservation of natural resources. However, it also shows the vulnerability of Mexico's natural resource to periods of low or negative economic growth in the United States inasmuch as they affect the amount of remittances that migrants send back home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary While recent literature has pointed to a positive effect of migrants’ remittances on the financial development of receiving countries, findings with respect to access to and the use of loans have been ambiguous. This paper investigates the effect of remittances on the use of formal and informal financial services using Mexican household data and finds positive and statistically significant effects of remittances on the ownership of savings accounts, the existence of debts, and on recent borrowing. The fact that the effect of remittances on borrowing is driven by informal finance rather than by traditional bank loans points to deficiencies of the formal financial sector in addressing the financial needs of remittance-receiving households. We address methodological concerns of selection bias and reverse causality through household fixed effects and an instrumental strategy that exploits distance to train lines and labor market conditions in the US as exogenous determinants of remittances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government expenditures are procyclical if they increase in periods of economic growth and decrease in periods of economic downturn. This paper tests the proposition that (within federations) political pressures for public expenditure increase the likelihood that expenditures and intergovernmental transfers will be procyclical. An analysis of political pressures in Mexico suggests that political pressures will produce a distinct pattern of procyclical expenditures across fiscal tiers and across government budgets. This prediction is tested with reference to the expenditures of 31 states in Mexico between 2005 and 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tiebout's “voting with the feet” proposition directs attention to the role of local authorities in delivering public services, and the implications of their decisions in people's choice of place of residence. Similarly, the bottom-up approach to economic development places a relevant role of local governments in promoting higher standards of living. By considering the latter, the former can be extended as citizens can choose a jurisdiction not only on the basis of a combination of taxes and public services but a broader mix of public goods. This paper analyses the effects of the fundamental features of the bottom-up or local economic development (LED) approach on population mobility among Mexican municipalities. This study finds significant evidence of a positive impact of LED elements on immigration during the period between 1990 and 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]