This paper starts with a description of the main features of the current Mexican tax system and of a (minor) tax reform that took place in 2010, when the government tried to correct for a drastic fall in its revenues because of the economic collapse in 2009. It then describes in a detailed way a...

This paper reviews the use of microsimulation models as a tool for public policy analysis. This methodology, introduced initially in the fifties, has recently being used intensively specially in Europe thanks to the development of faster computers and better microdata surveys. The paper...

After the economic crisis that erupted in 1994, extreme poverty in Mexico increased steadily until it ended up affecting more than one third of the population in 1996. Since then, the government has increased substantially social benefits, directing most of its efforts toward reducing poverty...

This paper extends the methodology first proposed by Ahmad and Stern for the design of tax reforms that are optimal at the margin. The extension centers on a sharper approximation of welfare measures. The original approach and its variant are illustrated in the case of the current Mexican tax...

This paper proposes some changes to the official methodology that is currently in use to measure the state of poverty in Mexico. Among other suggestions, it is recommended the use of bootstrapping to estimate confidence intervals for the poverty statistics, as well as the use of dominance...

This work identifies the agreements and disagreements that exist among Mexican economists with respect to key economic issues, on the basis of a survey applied to three hundred sixty of them. Among the proposals that provoked greater consensus are: a fair income distribution, the effective...

This paper examines the sustainability of the Mexican current account deficit prior to the December 1994 crisis. It tests whether or not the Mexican economy was satisfying its intertemporal budget constraint, and finds that signals of possible trouble without a change in policies were present...

Entre los resultados obtenidos por el análisis descriptivo presentado aquí destacan los siguientes hechos: 1) la participación de los ingresos por trabajo de los hogares oscila de manera similar a los ciclos de la economía; 2) las transferencias representaron más de un quinto de los ingresos...

Este trabajo documenta que la situación de pobreza a nivel estatal en México está parcialmente determinada por variables macroeconómicas: el crecimiento económico, la desigualdad del ingreso (al menos en el sector urbano), los salarios mínimos reales y las remesas recibidas por los hogares...

This paper characterizes a class of multivariate distributions that includes the multinormal and is contained in the exponential family. The wide range of possible applications of these distributions is suggested by some of the characteristics germane to them: First, they maximize Shannon's...