This study decomposes both the labor productivity gap and the labor productivity growth into the contributions of technical efficiency, capital deepening and technological change for Mexican manufacturing at the regional level. In order to do so, we apply a methodology that combines two...

In Mexico, the recent upsurge of the global food prices have affected, more than proportionately, the most margined sectors of the population. According with the present results, it is possible to conclude that, even though poverty is highly sensitive to food prices increase, the substitution...

We develop a methodology to estimate the actual exit time from poverty and the minimum necessary growth rate to eradicate it in a pre-determined period of time without assuming distributionally neutral income growth. We compare the exit time for the average poor (Kanbur, 1987) and the average...

We analyze empirically the effect of local transfers (public and private ones) on the probability of partisan alternant under two approaches: first alternant and consecutive alternant between two local administrations, this in the context of political clientelism theory and public-good provision...

An inelastic tax system increases the uncertainty associated with tax revenue collection. This results in continuous short-term adjustments to maintain the stability of tax collection. In this paper, we estimate the revenue elasticity of the principal taxes in Mexico, finding a much greater...

This paper provides a description of some of the empirical regularities for the Mexican business cycle. The purpose is to have a benchmark for assessing dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models for the Mexican case. We follow the Kydland and Prescott methodology to describe the cyclical...

The volatility accuracy of several volatility forecast models is examined for the case of daily spot returns for the Mexican peso - US Dollar exchange rate. The models applied are univariate GARCH, a multi-variate GARCH (the BEKK model), option implied volatilities, and a composite forecast...

Emerging economies tend to experience larger political uncertainty and more default episodes than developed countries. This paper studies the effect of political uncertainty on sovereign default and interest rate spreads in emerging markets. The paper develops a quantitative model of sovereign...

We analyze the existence and magnitude of downward nominal wage rigidities in the Mexican labor market. We use data from the administration records of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS). These records form a firm level panel data, which allows to follow workers employed in the same...

Inflation forecasts of the Federal Reserve seem to have systematically under-predicted inflation from the fourth quarter of 1968 until Volcker's appointment as Chairman, and to systematically over-predict it afterwards until the second quarter of 1998. Furthermore, under quadratic loss,...