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This paper analyses women's economic participation (WEP) in Mexico. The hypothesis is that the regional disparities of women's participation are based on education, industrialization, urbanization and other non-observed factors. The question that this study addresses is: What regional factors influence women's participation and cause disparities in their participation across municipalities? Additionally, this paper measures the progress and the current state of WEP during the last decades, and the evolution of the differences across regions. The study tests an econometric model about the influence of various socio-economic factors on WEP. The results show that the main barriers to female participation are the lack of higher education and the absence of diverse work possibilities in industries such as manufacturing and hoteling. Other factors mentioned in the literature that also affect WEP are the number of children per household and poverty in each municipality. Therefore, these variables contribute to increasing WEP and should be the focus of any attempt to increase their labor force participation in the formal sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the regulatory reform experienced in the Mexican gas sector, three areas with market power remained. Production is a legal monopoly of Pemex. Transportation and distribution are natural monopolies. Distributor’s gas sales to (mainly residential) customers are potentially monopolistic in case of lack of competition from marketers or substitute fuels. This paper presents the theoretical concepts and international lessons considered during the design of the price and rate regulations to limit these areas of market power. Benchmarking is used to control Pemex gas prices, while a sophisticated revenue cap methodology is employed to regulate transportation and distribution rates. MI of these mechanisms provide incentives for productive efficiency, take care of allocative efficiency, and minimize the cost of regulation. The paper also points out lessons from the policy design process and some of the potential pitfalls of regulations as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops and empirically implements a neoclassical growth model in which output depends on private capital and human capital as well as the quantity, means of financing, and efficiency of use of public capital. The empirical analysis is based on a cross section of 46 developing countries over the period from 1970 to 1990. In general, the paper finds empirical support for the importance of each of the three dimensions of public capital —quantity, financing, and efficiency— for long run standards of living and for transitional growth rates. The empirical results are applied to the recent performance of the Mexican economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the gains in longevity based on individuals' willingness to pay, and measures the social values of these gains. We apply the Murphy and Topel (2003, 2006) model for Mexico for the first time, which allows us to estimate the value of a life year and the value of remaining years of life at each age. We also apply the estimates to three cases to exemplify how these calculations can be used in decisions concerning public policy: value of gains in mortality rates, cost of deaths associated with obesity, and a cost-benefit analysis of lives saved through treatment for children with leukemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational quality in Mexico is a recurrent topic in the country's public agenda. For this reason, better information about its determinants is required to guide policy makers. This discussion is particularly relevant within the context of the educational reform proposed by the federal government. Existing research for Mexican students is limited because it does not take into account the change in scores, or it is constrained by regional analysis. The aim of the present research is to fill this gap in the literature by using longitudinal data to study the impact of school characteristics on educational achievement, building a model that takes into account changes in educational achievement through time. Because existing data does not allow the tracking of students through time or their linkage to individual teachers, this article uses intra-cohort data for students that participated in the national standardized test ENLACE for primary and secondary schools between 2007 and 2010. This paper addresses endogeneity problems using fixed effects models, HLM models and spatial techniques to associate school location with census data at the neighborhood level. This research provides elements to guide public policies focused on increasing student achievement. Results show that teachers' attendance and punctuality, evaluation of teachers' knowledge of curriculum and constant evaluation of student performance have a positive relationship to student achievement growth. Additionally, there is a persistent effect of the quality of school infrastructure, teaching materials and socioeconomic level of students. These results could be useful to provide more information for the current debate on educational reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a socioeconomic model to analyze the construction and ulterior collapse of an entrepreneurial diaspora. The mathematical model is motivated by some empirical facts of the Barcelonnettes diaspora, a group of French immigrants who came to Mexico in the 19th century. Moreover, it makes evident that a theoretical framework that interconnects the social and economic arenas is very helpful to improve our understanding of the dynamics of any entrepreneurial diaspora. These migration-chains with a high level of entrepreneurialism depend heavily on their underlying social governance and, consequently, the sustainability of their social norms and values is critical for explaining their survival. In the case of the Barcelonnettes, a logistic map and numerical simulations show that the dynamics of this diaspora was very fragile, since its success bred its own destruction. This conclusion can be applied to other entrepreneurial diasporas with a "communitarian spin offs system", where ethnic firms promise the recruited personnel the sponsoring of their entrepreneurial adventures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the so-called bounds testing approach, the paper studies the long-run effect of capital flows and the real exchange rate on Mexico's private investment from 1988 through 2008, presenting two main results. First, while capital inflows can potentially increase investment, in practice they may lower it, because, as capital flows in, the peso appreciates. Second, although both FDI and portfolio inflows can increase investment, the effect from FDI is significantly smaller --in contrast to a frequent finding in the literature for other countries. Both results help to explain the low "transfer" of capital flows to investment in Mexico, and more generally the low levels of investment observed in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of ageing on labor and pension income distribution in Mexico under different scenarios of social security coverage. Static and accounting micro-simulations are used to build synthetic populations in 2025 and 2050. The main findings of the work are, firstly, that, in spite of the critical increase in the elderly population share predicted by the main national and international economic institutions, the level of income dispersion is not likely to dramatically increase in the coming decades. On the contrary, inequality might be reduced in the next few decades because of the higher educational attainment and female activity rates observed among young cohorts at the present moment. Secondly, an upward shift in pension coverage --either through an increase in the share of the population receiving contributory pensions or the establishment of non-contributory old-age benefits-- could be an effective tool to achieve improvements in income distribution figures. Keywords: ageing, pensions, inequality, Mexico, micro-simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private transfers are a market mechanism that changes the inequality in the distribution of income. Should the government increase or reduce the size of Pareto efficient public transfers after observing an increase in inter vivos private transfers that reduces (increases) inequality in the distribution of income? In this paper we provide an answer to this question. Our analysis identifies conditions in which private transfers change income inequality and crowd out government's transfers in a targeted redistributive program, but increase the size of public transfers in a broad base redistributive program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the degree of synchronization between the Mexican states and the US business cycles by using a growth cycle approach for the period 1997-2007. The business cycle indicators are obtained from seasonally-adjusted monthly manufacturing production. Our results confirm that the Mexican aggregate cycle is highly synchronized with the US business cycle. However, although specific Mexican state cycles are pro-cyclical with respect to the US business cycle, their synchronization is very heterogeneous. In particular, it is strong and robust only for the states of Baja California, Jalisco, Nuevo León and the Federal District, and at least moderate for the state of Mexico and Querétaro. The results are robust with respect to three different detrending methods. Synchronization may be explained by the high volumes of international trade carried out by foreign firms in the case of the central and traditionally industrialized states, and by the "maquila" production in the Northern bordering states. This synchronization may be explained by the vertical integration of the productive processes resulting from the internationalization of production of multinational firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a discussion on mergers and the role played by efficiency gains. By introducing a capacity-constrained Cournot model, we show that one way to extract useful information from merging firms is to design a scheme (requiring that the firms divest some of their assets) that leads to self-selection of the more socially worthwhile mergers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies resource adequacy, i.e. the market design dilemma of ensuring enough generation capacity in the long run. international experiences have shown that it is difficult that the market alone provides incentives to attract enough investment in capacity reserves. We analyze various measures to cope with this problem, including moth-ball reserves, capacity payments, ICAP and call options. We then construct a model to analyze the structure of incentives for the expansion of electricity supply in the spot market, and capacity in the long run electricity reserve market. Through a game-theory model, we analyze price convergence in three markets: the peak spot market, the non-peak spot market, and the long-run capacity reserve market. We finally carry out a simulation for Mexican power generation. The combination of CFE's virtual market, together with capacity payments, has eventually resulted in capacity generation expansion similar to what would be attained in an open electricity market, such as the one modelled in our study. But this does not necessarily imply that the Mexican electricity industry will not need in the future -if the generation market is fully open to private investment- some of the discussed capacity incentive mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent contributions to growth theory suggest two main venues through which foreign trade contributes to economic growth; enhanced capital accumulation, and increased productivity growth. These mechanisms have different implications for development policy and trade liberalization in Mexico. This paper tests these competing hypotheses using sectoral data from the Mexican manufacturing industry between 1970 and 1990. Despite large variations in export shares across sectors and over the period, overall the study finds little supportive evidence that (i) exports lead to higher sectoral investment rates, and (ii) experts lead to faster labour productivity growth. Estimates suggest that, to the extent that monetary policy can inhibit the overvaluation of the real exchange rate, it may be also conducive to both faster capital accumulation and export growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]