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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]

The remittances sent by Mexican migrants in the USA are relevant for recipient household at least in two senses. First, they contribute to rise income, and therefore to diminish poverty level. Second, they also contribute to regional and local economic development via the multipliers generated by the increases of the demand and of the investment in productive activities. Nonetheless, there are several estimations of household remittances magnitude. This paper analyzes the methodologies of Banco de Mexico (Mexican central bank) and those of recognized researchers. There is no consensus regarding the amount of money transferred by Mexican migrants in the USA. Consequently, the positive effects upon the recipient economy may not be conclusive. [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]

Much of the recent worldwide trend towards devolution has been driven by the belief that fiscal decentralisation is likely to have a positive effect on government efficiency and economic growth. It is generally assumed that the transfer of powers and resources to lower tiers of government allows for a better matching of public policies to local needs and thus for a better allocation of resources. These factors, in turn, are expected to lead to an improvement in regional economic performance, if subnational authorities shift resources from current to capital expenditures in search of a better response to local needs. In this paper we test these assumptions empirically by analysing the evolution of subnational expenditure categories and regional growth in Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, and the USA. We find that, contrary to expectations, decentralisation has coincided in the sample countries with a relative increase in current expenditures at the expense of capital expenditures, which has been associated with lower levels of economic growth in countries where devolution has been driven from above (India and Mexico), but not in Spain, where it has been driven from below. We hypothesise that the differences in legitimacy between the central or federal government and subnational governments in top-down and bottom-up processes of devolution may be at the origin of the diverse capacity to deliver greater allocative and productive efficiency and, eventually, greater economic growth by devolved governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the long term relationship between the Mexican and USA economies from 1950 to 2008. It initially analyzes the period 1988-2008, that's to say, the relation during this period is that the Mexican GDP grew in the long term by 0.94% for each percentage point increase in the USA's GDP, and decreased by 0.17% for each percentage point depreciation in the real exchange rate. Once this relation is established, the work then questions if the Mexican economic structure persisted during 1950-2008. This result is interesting because it provides a starting point for a new research agenda that revises which conditions permitted the fast growth of Mexico's economy during 1950-1982, which others led to its subsecuent stagnation. This is not only of interest to historians, and also useful for reconsidering Mexico's present growth strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]