Using microdata from the 1998 and 1993 Nicaraguan Living Standards Measurement Survey, this paper analyzes the relative size and attractiveness of formal and informal sector employment. Switching regression models of the formal/informal sector employment choice indicate that education across...

The paper analyzes the intertemporal relationship between oil duties, taxes, government spending, and GDP in Mexico during the 1981-98 period. The results from estimating a VAR model, impulse response functions, and variance decompositions on the quarterly series of taxes, government spending,...

Access to adequate start-up capital has been identified as an important deterrent to microenteprise development and growth. Using firm level data from Mexico's National Survey of Microenterprises, we estimate a stochastic frontier production function with inefficiency effects related to the main...