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...

This paper applies a stochastic frontier approach to analyze the evolution of technical efficiency in manufacturing as a source of regional growth, taking as a unit of analysis the Mexican states in the period 1988-2008. The main findings of our analysis are threefold. First, technical...

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...

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...

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 test the purchasing power parity hypothesis for the Mexican peso/US dollar real exchange rate using monthly data for 1969–2010. Results suggest that the real exchange rate reverts to a changing mean. These mean shifts can be explained by liberalization policies implemented during the 1980s...

We study whether there is a long-run relationship between Mexican current account (CA) revenues and expenditures. Our results show that evidence in favor of this claim is drawn only when (at least) three structural break levels are allowed. The CA therefore behaves as a broken-mean stationary...

We show that the use of the real effective exchange rate to test for purchasing power parity, as in Astorga (2012) and other studies, is subject to a problem that biases tests against finding evidence of PPP. The problem is illustrated using Astorga´s data on six Latin American countries.

This appendix presents an extended explanation for our finding of mean reversion of the real exchange rate to a shifting mean using monthly data for Mexico, 1969-2010. Because such shifts coincide with trade liberalization in Mexico, we conclude that changes in the tradable/nontradable goods...

We show that the use of the real effective exchange rate to test for purchasing power parity, as in Astorga (2012) and other studies, introduces a bias against finding evidence of PPP. The bias is illustrated using unit root tests applied to bilateral real rates.