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This paper is an effort to ascertain whether there is a relationship between out-migration and the political engagement of those "left behind" in Mexico. We use 2006 CIDE-CSES survey data, which we complement with data from another national survey, to analyze the relationship between different manifestations of out-migration and several indicators of political engagement in Mexico. in particular, we identify the following channels through which out-migration may influence political engagement in Mexico: whether the respondent has close relatives in the Us, receives remittances, intends to migrate to the Us, or has ever worked in the Us. We then model several indicators of political engagement in Mexico (i.e, levels of political information, frequency of political talk within and without the household and electoral participation) as a function of these manifestations of out-migration, and a variety of suitable control variables. Our results suggest that, against the emerging conventional wisdom (according to which migration, and in particular remittances, by their sheer size, will solve many of Mexico's developmental challenges), emigration may in fact depress political engagement in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of economic voting in Mexico have reached mixed conclusions about the role of economic performance on electoral behavior. In this paper, I argue that the effect of economic performance on voting is contingent upon two factors. First, even when voters perceive a weak economy and are dissatisfied with the incumbent, they differ on who the best replacement is. In the context of the 2006 campaign, López Obrador did not receive the support of many voters who thought the economy was weak because they perceived him as too large of a risk. Second, the impact of the economy is contingent upon its have a prominent place on the political agenda. The combination of high levels of economic vulnerability, the fall of the regime cleavage as an alternative motive for electoral choice, and the emphasis on economic issues in the campaign dialogue and advertising strategy of the major political parties in the 2006 election made economic issues especially salient. While the weak performance of the Mexican economy in 2001-2003 opened doors for the pan's challengers, the economic recovery in the second half of Fox's term thus proved sufficient to garner the narrow victory for Calderon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains why income did not shape vote choice in the Mexican 2006 election, despite the efforts by the left party to turn this race into a referendum on inequality and widespread poverty. Logistic models of a post-election survey indicate that "false consciousness" or the inability to understand the issues at stake do not distinguish poorer from wealthier voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the construction of a labor condition index at the state level in Mexico. Using data from the National Employment Survey 2004, we aggregate an index with three dimensions: equality conditions (by gender and by income), jobs covered by social security and returns to schooling. Results show that states with better labor conditions are in general in the North: Coahuila, bcs, Aguascalientes, Nuevo León, bc and Chihuahua. States with a lower labor condition index are: Morelos, Oaxaca, Tlaxcala, Guerrero and Chiapas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appearance of the official poverty line in Mexico in 2000 has not been very useful for a more effective antipoverty policy. One of the main reasons has been that the official line does not acknowledge the wider discussion about poverty that has happened in the last four decades in Northern countries. Two different approaches emerge from that literature. One is the "basket of good approach" used in the United States. The other is the "social relative standards approach" to poverty that has been applied in the European Union. To select between them has important implications in terms of poverty conceptualizations and the appropriate policies to deal with it. This paper describes both approaches and draws some lessons for the case of Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the strategic behavior adopted by food industry plants located in North-Western Mexico. In addition, a taxonomy of the adopted strategies is constructed so it can be used as a reference to similar studies on any of the areas conforming this industry. We present the results of the data obtained from interviews conducted to managers of the 28 industry plants analyzed. To examine the data, a combination of statistical methods and techniques of log-lineal models and correspondence analysis were utilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the determinants of employment in the Mexican states, from a dynamic approach to externalities. We use information from the census of the manufacturing industry for 1988, 1993, 1998 and 2003. The study ranges over the industry branches of grain milling (branch 3114), bakery products (branch 3115) and milling of corn and tortilla production (3116). The results suggest that the growth of employed personnel in each branch depends positively on the growth experienced by the other branches that make up industry sub-sector 31 (food, beverages and snuff). Furthermore, it is proved that externalities do not have a positive impact on employment growth .This suggests that the dissemination of scientific and technological knowledge at an intra- and inter-industrial scale encourages productive diversity and specialization, but does not trigger innovation processes with impact on employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the experience of organized women groups in the municipality of Cunduacán, Tabasco, México, during the period of 2004 to 2007. This was a process in which some women from rural communities fought to defend their rights and demanded public policy, municipal regulations and state laws that protect them. During that process, municipal government created the Care for Women Coordination. The activities of the Coordination and women groups put the local agenda in items of women's rights and gender equity. With these references, we discussing about citizen action in the construction of public policies, with two relevant elements in this experience: Requiring a political openness of a local government product of alternating partisan, as well as the press for change of persons and communities involved. The other element was that in an effective way to solve a social problem, the government structure and its policies must be adapted to the social demands. The Care for Women Coordination is an example of transversely attention of women problems based on participation of them [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of regulation of natural gas pricing in Mexico as a case of "successful" policy research. Studies done under an academic agreement between the Comisión Reguladora de Energía (CRE) and the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City have analyzed the welfare efficiency implications of the netback rule based on the Houston gas price that is used to set the domestic gas price. This rule results from a well structured welfare maximization general model. However, in practice the netback rule has been debated during several North American price spikes. Policy makers relied on CIDE studies to keep the netback rule. This case study examines how and why policy makers did so. The debate within the Mexican government is analyzed, and the actors involved in the policy discussions are described, as well as the relationships between CIDE and CRE that were developed, and that helped in the communication with policymakers. The methods of dissemination of research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the importance of policy networks, by analyzing two case-studies, chosen by their international importance and their similarities in social and economic terms: The Forest Pilot Plan (PPF, by its initial in Spanish) and the Biosphere Calakmul Reserve (RBC). The core hypothesis is that both the structure of policy-network (coordination and degree of relevance of each policy actor) and the efficiency of strategies -rather the social participation, as usually argued by the majority of works on forestry policies- were the key factors, which influenced the policy process and its subsequent initial policy-outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although regulatory authorities have always been a part of the institutional makeup of Mexican public administration, the idea of independent regulatory authorities was introduced only in the early 90's, when the process of economic reform was well underway. These independent regulatory authorities can be grouped into two broad categories. The first includes typical sectoral regulatory entities (e.g. energy and telecommunications). The second category comprises independent agencies created to anchor continuous horizontal reform processes, such as competition and access to information. Based upon the Mexican regulatory authorities' experience, this paper proposes a framework for the analysis of accountability mechanisms of independent regulators. An important lesson from this review is that the use of mechanisms such as access to information and regulatory impact analysis, enforced by other independent regulatory agencies, strengthen the horizontal accountability of sectoral regulatory authorities and reduces the risk of capture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the limitations to regional planning are exposed, especially regarding ecological ordinances since they need horizontal and vertical coordination among different government levels and several actors to better know, adapt and apply the law in their own competences. We propose the possible use of Strategic Environmental Assessment as a tool to motivate transversal coordination among these different agencies to formulate, apply, evaluate and monitor ecological and territorial ordinances. Besides, we express the need to motivate a government transversal coordination scheme to operate coastal lands and vertical coordination among them to attend all types of ecological ordinances (general, regional, local and marine). We took as an example the regional ecological ordinance and the regional environmental impact assessment applied to one of the most ambicious projects of Vicente Fox presidential period named "Nautic ladder of the Sea of Cortes, Mexico". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mexico's water policy has been dramatically reformed over the last dozen years. Centerpieces of the reforms are new legal regimes, different roles for water authorities and a decentralized management of water resources. Water reform is based on a vision of water as an economic good, and its uses are driven by market dynamics. Rather than keeping its role as developer, the State is responsible for allocating and regulating water uses. This paper has a two-fold purpose. First, it aims at assessing the pros and cons of neoclassic economics, which has exerted a deep influence on the water reform. Second, it uses some indicators of performance (e.g. investments and fees) to evaluate some results of the water reform. It shows that water reform has been relatively successful in some economic respects (e.g. reduced governmental investments). Yet less attention has been paid to key issues such as access to the resource by different sectors (equity) and the environmental impacts of water systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is focused on the relevance of routines as a part of the current institutional framework in the context of Mexican local governments. Its purpose is to analyze the implementation network considered in the Law of Sustainable Rural Development, in relation to the procedures the new normative framework establishes, like guidelines of forced behavior for the municipal governments, and, simultaneously, as a condition for success for one of its modalities of execution. The authors consider if the implementation network fits the actual way municipalities effectively pursue rural development policy. In this way, they try to identify the organizational adjustment that exists between the new policy design and the routines previously adopted by local governments. The hypothesis is that local governments tend to adapt the new policy to their own routines, instead of modifying their behavior in relation to the new policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inter-municipal associations for providing services are presented as a choice to Mexican municipalities that lack economic resources and capabilities. The paper discusses the probability that municipalities will associate with them, and which factors act as barriers or incentives. A micro-database is used and, by means of a probabilistic model, the tendency of municipalities to associate is determined. The results show that the municipality size is not relevant. However, the level of marginalization is important, as well as the existence of information and consultancy, the geographical location and the state legislative level on this matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lerma-Chapala basin's future looks serious due to the environmental deterioration of the last decades, given the intensification of the economic-urban development processes. On the one hand, demographic growth continues in the area, which implies more need of water. On the other hand, there is a general perception that rain cycles have shown a deficit. This paper is mainly concerned about analyzing the evolution of the Lerma-Chapala basin (natural environment and economic-urban development) and how this process has impacted the deterioration of the area and reduced its sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in quality in information technology products provoke that compilation of their price indexes represent a major challenge. In this respect, this paper has three goals. In first place, to build price indexes for personal computers during 1990-2004. In second place, to compare our price indexes with those compiled by Mexican Central Bank, Spanish National Institute of Statistics, and Bureau of Labor Statistics. In third place, to make an exploration about the viability of hedonic functions transfer between countries. Our results show a 21% average decline of the PC price index during the analyzed period. In consequence, official price index related to computers has a measurement bias. The adjusted CPI implies that the inflation rate was 4.425%, and not 4.463% as established by the Central Bank between July 2003 and December 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the impact of per capita income levels of Mexican border cities on labor employment of the US border city pairs. During the 90's, the northern border cities of Mexico experienced rapid growth in their population and in their manufacturing and services sectors. A generalized least squares econometric model was constructed in order to estimate the impact of the Mexican cities per capita income on the employment of services and manufacturing sectors of the US border cities. The results showed that the coefficients of the variables of income and border crossings positively affected the employment of the manufacturing and services sectors of the US border cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to support water policy-making, particularly in the stage of political feasibility analysis, this paper identifies the variables that determine an increase in water social conflicts in Mexico. To obtain these variables, an econometric model was built from a data-base of water conflicts registered by the national press in the period 1990-2002. The results allow the generation of a general outline of conflicts in Mexico and the identification of those governmental actions that have produced more conflicts. The correlation between conflict and rise or establishment of prices for water consumption receives particular attention, because one of the policies needed to solve the problem of water shortage Mexico is facing is the reform of its price system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of state governments and governors in Mexico has changed dramatically in the last years. Once appendices of the federal executive, they have shifted to important political and economic actors as a consequence of the arrival of democracy, a greater political competition and the decentralization processes that have taken place in Mexico in recent years. Nevertheless, there are not enough studies analyzing directly the fiscal behavior of state governments. In this context, the main objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of political variables and federal shares in state spending, by means of estimating the existence or not of the "flypaper" effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of public financing policy to higher education in Mexico during the period 1988-2003, considering the experience of public state universities (PSU). It is said that governmental strategy of allocating extraordinary and competing funds has been successful to closing the budget gap between PSUs, reducing budget inequalities. However, existing results show no concluding evidence that access to greater resources is translating into more satisfactory academic results. This supposes a lack of reciprocity in some PSUs to establish the actions and changes needed to advance in processes of academic improvement and institutional consolidation, as well as a limited reach to following mechanism, assessment and governmental control to link resources allocation to palpable results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explain the new location factors which are associated with the recent establishment of export-oriented motor plants in the North of Mexico. The findings support the hypothesis that some types of plants, such as the automotive export companies studied here, are more interested in applying flexible production systems than in taking advantage of the Weberian industrial location determinants. The study concludes that industrial organization theory is relevant in the design of industrial policy, while at the same time recognizing the need to broaden and to reformulate location models inherited from Regional Economics. Of particular importance is the need to recognize the high risks for failure in continuing to follow traditional industrial policies based on production subsidies and or for the provision by government agencies of dedicated infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures the effect of the labor factor mobility on the convergence rate to the steady state of the economy. It is estimated that this rate in relatively low for the Mexican Federate States, compared with other countries like the United States and Japan. However, the ratios between the Mexican Federate States and the US are very similar during the 80’s. According to our estimations, the mobility of the labor factor, “pure” or adjusted by human capital, between the Mexican Federate States does not seem to have a significative effect on the convergence rate to the long run per capita real product; which means that the mobility of the labor force does not seem to smooth considerably the differences in per capita real product between the States. Our results have several implications for Regional Policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss productivity changes among the different sized firms and intensities in the use of inputs in Mexican manufacturing. In order to analyze the underlying factors causing productivity differences we estimated an econometric model. Our results demonstrate that the productivity determinants are the result of an interrelated set of micro and macroeconomic variables. We show that there is a duality in the behavior among firms and therefore, the expected impact from the micro-macroeconomic variables having to do with the productivity dynamic are dissimilar. Finally we expose some of the implications of these differing impacts, both from the theoretical point of view, as well as from an economic policy standpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper detects market power at the two digit level in the Mexican manufacturing sector for the period 1970- 1991. Similarly to Hall (1988), the identification assumption is that total factor productivity growth is not procyclical. The test holds even for the case in which the market power coefficient is variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the prospects for Mexican industry after opening to freer trade. The first part deals with the impact during transition on industrial capacity, particularly the loss of technological capabilities and the scarce development of industrial linkages. The second part shows the recent pattern of industrial specialization in Mexico lacking sectorial linkages, increasing imports content and heavily concentrated in scale intensive and resource based industries. The specialization has favored activities of little technological dynamism where most technological innovations are controlled or dominated through suppliers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a summary of the theory of fiscal decentralization for a federal government. Possible applications of the theory to the case of Mexico are discussed. Finally, a reform consisting of a partial decentralization of the personal income tax is simulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the causes of the growth in spending for the public sector in Mexico, during the period 1925 to 1976, will be investigated. The evidence is explained in terms of three approaches in the positive economics of Public Choice Theory: 1) median voter theory, 2) an institutional approach, and 3) the theory of interest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the absolute version of the purchasing power parity hypothesis is bested as a long-run equilibrium condition in the Mexican case, in particular the existence of convergence between the prices of Mexico and the prices of United States, valuated in the same currency is evaluated. The existence of unit roots in different measures of the real exchange rate and the cointegration of various kinds of internal and external prices valued in the same currency, are tested by using several methodologies. The results show weak evidence in favor of the purchasing power parity which would be a consequence of the action of structural and transitory economic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2000, Mexican politics has changed in two important ways. First, the PRI's defeat in the 2000 elections has ended a 70-year long one-party system. Second, the president no longer holds a majority in either chamber of a bicameral congress. In what is likely to be a new era of divided government, constitutional engineers proposed a multitude of constitutional reforms to promote good governance under a separation of powers system. While some reforms attempt to decrease the likelihood of minority presidents, others aim at strengthening the constitutional powers of the president. This paper argues that a viable and desirable strategy of constitutional change should avoid these two extremes. Instead, reforms should generate incentives to promote inter-branch cooperation during divided government. This paper discusses the benefits of a partial reform consisting of two parts: 1) electoral rules that promote correspondence between the preferences of citizens and those of policy makers and 2) constitutional powers that encourage coordination between the president and the congress in the process of policy making and cabinet formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the dynamics of economic performance for the sub-national Mexican states from 1970 to 2006; the state variables used are the levels and the growth rates of per capita GDP. The authors situate this approach in a conceptual and methodological panorama of the existent literature. Starting from the regime concept, the paper introduces a distance notion to compare the observed paths and the clustering of the economies whose evolution is studied. The analysis shows that two fundamental clusters have existed: one of high and another of low performance, in addition to other transitory groups. In the high performance cluster the member's number increases, while in the low performance cluster this number diminishes. At the same time, the article shows that the sub-national states that belong to the first cluster have had an increasingly similar performance. Also, it confirms that the sub-national states move from the low to the high performance cluster, and that the distance between both clusters has increased. The interpretation of these facts is based on the dual economy concept proposed by the development theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a chronicle of the arise and evolution of a communitarian and intersectional coordination web that for over five years has been looking forward to halt and revert the environmental degradation in San Antón, a urban community located at the shore of the Apatlaco river, one of the main watercourses in Cuernavaca, Morelos, which bears high pollution levels. The paper presents the communitarian development of an autonomous process of management and regulation, related to the local ecosystem in an urban frame. It focuses on socioeconomic institutional change and its possible role in the resolution of coordination failures and the internalization of environmental externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to describe and analyze some of the tools used in social policy to target poverty reduction programs in Mexico. Targeting strategy programs center public actions to a reasonable well defined population or territory, in order to achieve a more focused efficiency in the resource allocation stage. Using data from the National Household Survey of Income and Expenditure (ENIGH) 2002, three econometric models are used to identify the target population: Discriminant Analysis, a Logit Model and a Hierarchical Logit Model. The results show that Discriminant Analysis, which is the main tool used by Sedesol to identify individuals in poverty conditions, has the lowest undercoverage error for the three measures of the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty index. The result leads to conclude that this method proves to be the most efficient in identifying population in poverty conditions, given the available information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to analyze the current situation and perspectives, both at the short run and middle run, of the Mexican exportation maquiladora industry. It is to combine quantitative economic conjuncture analysis with its principal components, that is, the empiric base (statistical information in monthly time series, in this case Mexican aggregated value of exports by maquila services in total national and regional levels in Mexico) and the quantitative methods (statistical-econometrics techniques). For this purpose we present a methodological proposal that models the time series through ARIMA models with outliers and calendar effects, and next we use a reduced model-based procedure for the signal extraction of these time series. The trend cycle component is the appropriate way to analyze its underlying evolution. Using the concepts of underlying growth and inertia, we can extract the main conclusions for the current situation of the Mexican maquila sector, including the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents income poverty and inequality estimates at the State and Municipal levels for Mexico. Our estimates allow for the mapping of poverty and inequality in the country, as well as for determining the specific contribution of each geographic unit to overall poverty. Additionally, it allows to measure inequality in disaggregated geographic spaces, and to decompose inequality in terms of the proportion due to within and between States and Municipalities. Our estimates are based on robust household income measures, generated with methodologies that allow for solving the common dilemma in welfare measurement, namely that there is either information with low quality measurement but high possibilities of disaggregation, or information with high quality measurement but representative only at aggregated levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a macroeconometric simulation model for Mexico on a microeconomics basis. This proposal has several distinctive features that makes it different from other models that have been previously elaborated for the Mexican economy. Behavioral relationships are not specified in an ad-hoc manner, but by means of the study of rational behavior of all the economic agents and their interactions with the markets. Through the formulation of intertemporal optimization models, the dynamics of the key macroeconomic variables are determined. Our proposal allows to reproduce stylized facts of the Mexican economy observed between 1995 and 2002. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the relationship between the Mexican peso/USD exchange rate and the net positions of speculators in the peso futures market at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange within the microstructure approach to exchange rate determination. For the period January 5th, 1999-November 1st, 2005, it is shown that the relationship has not been constant due to the fast growth in the peso futures market. This implies that any effort to forecast the peso/USD exchange rate exploiting this relationship must consider this fact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the continual growth in the number of women elected to legislative office in Mexico since the 1950s. We argue that the historical and institutional reforms of the 1990s best explain the gradual and constant increase in this trend. Not all institutional reforms, however, have the same effects on the election of women. Laws that clearly establish gender quota for legislative candidacies have the strongest effects. This paper uses fixed effects longitudinal regression models to test several hypotheses against Mexican legislative results from 1) 18 federal elections between 1952 and 2003 and 2) 154 subnational elections between 1991 and 2005 in 31 states and the Federal District. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]