The aim of this policy commentary is two-fold. First, to examine new historical research regarding the political, cultural, and social drivers informing the design and implementation of Mexico’s ‘war on drugs’ - a set of state policies centered on punitive and militarized responses towards...

Seguro Popular (SP) was introduced in 2002 to provide health insurance to the 50 million Mexicans without Social Security. This paper tests whether the program has had unintended consequences, distorting workers' incentives to operate in the informal sector. The analysis examines the impact of...

Providing unemployment insurance is particularly problematic in countries with high informality because workers can claim unemployment benefits and work in the informal sector at the same time. This paper proposes a method to evaluate alternative schemes to provide insurance for unemployed...

My work studies how the construction of international highways and the rise in automobile consumption in northern Mexico during the 1930s and 1940s facilitated the illegal entry of thousands of stolen cars from the United States and encouraged the expansion of vehicle theft in the U.S....

This is a review of the 2020 IASOC Prize Winner Intimate Crimes: Kidnapping, Gangs and Trust in Mexico City by Rolando Ochoa. Ochoa provides a masterful account of how private citizens understand risk, as kidnapping continues to be a significant problem in Mexico, and manage their private...