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Performance Audits are among the competences of many Supreme Audit Institutions (sais), both in developed and developing countries. However, the level of real implementation of this technique in Latin America is underexplored. This paper aims to contribute to the analysis of the implementation of performance audits in Latin-American countries. This paper analyzed the situation of performance auditing in Latin America through a comparative study based on the evidence obtained from the websites of the sais and on a questionnaire sent to them. Results show a common rhetoric with respect to the importance of this technique but variations in practice. These variations can be explained by three reasons: rhetorical implementation, lack of fit between this technique and the problems facing Latin American countries and different levels of political and economic development. Access to information is quite difficult, fears to answer the questionnaire and lack of accessibility to the reports makes having a full picture a daunting task. Latin American sais should reevaluate the type of performance audit that suits their aims and adapt rather than adopt the tools developed in countries with different problems in public management. This paper offers a broad view of performance audit in Latin America. It reflects the effort of international organization and the limitations that performance audits confront in certain settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is a significant correlation between energy subsidies in Mexico and some dimensions of sustainable development. In this sense are analyzed the CO2 emissions, subsidies per capita energy sector, the annual growth rate of gdp, electricity consumption per capita and the production of equivalent fossil fuel energy. This research has been between the 2004-2010 period in the recent history of that country. Finally the results are studied and also are established different recommendations related to energy policy and even are presented some possible future research lines in this entire topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship among institutions and economic growth, based on a literature review of the New Institutional Economics (NIE). We focus on those studies that emphasize property and contractual rights as the main explicative variables of economic growth. The principal hypothesis of this current of thought is that liberal (democratic) and market institutions are a prerequisite for encouraging investment, efficiency, innovation, employment and, consequently, economic growth. This document has two main purposes: 1) to identify the influence of specific groups in selecting and building up political and economic institutions in developing countries; 2) to show that influential international interest groups have a considerable impact on the pattern of economic growth in developing countries. The principal argument of this paper is that, while the NIE variables are relevant, the influence of power groups in the international arena is a decisive explanatory factor that the economic and institutional analysis has erroneously put aside. We attempt to incorporate these power relations into institutional analysis using the concept of path dependence. We conduct a panel data model (appendix 2) and our preliminary findings suggest that path dependence variables are as important as the variables traditionally set forth in the NIE literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows evidence about the compliance of the Wagner's Law at the level of the Mexican states during the period 1980-2007. This law sets that the growth of public spending is explained as a result of increased economic activity. To test compliance with the law, this study use the specification proposed by Peacock and Wiseman (1961), Musgrave (1969), and Goffman and Mahar (1971), which sets that public spending and output variables are related in their levels. The bulk of empirical research on the fulfillment of the law at the global level has been conducted investigating whether Wagner's Law is fulfilled in the country level, with few studies on its fulfillment at the level of states, provinces or regions into a country. By means of econometric methods of panel data analysis, the whole set of the states of the Mexican Republic is studied, so as three subgroups classified according to their GDP per capita. The results of the cointegration analysis suggest evidence in favor of compliance with the Wagner's Law in the study period and that compliance is a function of the level of development achieved by the states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation classifies Mexican states according to their strength for attracting clean development mechanism (CDM) projects, as a means to promote economic development from donating Annex I countries of the Kyoto Protocol. We calculated that 46.5 per cent of all cdm projects are concentrated in the states of Jalisco, Coahuila, Puebla, Durango and Veracruz. The study classifies the 32 Mexican states using cluster analysis, based on three dimensions: potential to achieve gas reductions, institutional capacities to tackle the environment; and the general investment climate. The technique creates five clusters where the key variable responds to greenhouse gas reduction projects. Findings have implications both for cdm policies, their federal and state coordination, and also for invest- ment readiness by some states that demonstrate institutional capabilities, but where State-owned Pemex and CFE have shown low attraction of projects and shallow institutional commitment. The paper contributes to analyze the distribution of this type of projects at sub-national level, and their pulling and limiting forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Today that Banco de México has adopted an inflation targeting scheme, it has become more relevant to know the effect that moderate inflation has on economic growth in order to design monetary policy. The purpose of this paper is to estimate that effect following a non-lineal approach similar to that proposed by Sarel (1996). The results are consistent with the findings of Sarel (1996) and Judson y Orphanides (1996), and show that economic growth in Mexico might increase with higher rates of inflation as long as they are lower than 8.1%; inflation rates above that threshold damage severely the pace of economic expansion. In light of these findings, monetary policies aiming at very low rates of inflation may not be optimal, given the excessive costs they could imply in terms of economic growth. These results, however, should be interpreted with caution given the inherent limitations of this methodology. [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]

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]