This note warns about the careless computation of poverty indexes when the welfare of each household is measured by its net income, since this can be negative. As is illustrated in the case of Mexico, even if only a handful of households report negative incomes, the resulting poverty aggregates,...

This paper shows that the individual welfare losses due to the exercise of market power in the service sectors are greater in relative terms for the consumers with higher incomes. However, after adding to those results the ones obtained for the case of consumer goods sold in non-competitive...

This paper estimates the distributive and regional effects of firms with market power in the case of Mexico. It presents evidence that the welfare losses due to the exercise of monopoly power are not only significant, but also regressive. Moreover, the losses are different for the urban and...

This paper proposes some changes to the official methodology that is currently in use to measure the state of poverty in Mexico. Among other suggestions, it is recommended the use of bootstrapping to estimate confidence intervals for the poverty statistics, as well as the use of dominance...

A recount of the relations between the World Bank and Mexico not only makes for a fascinating lecture, but it also exemplifies the way in which a development bank should and should not behave if it wants to become a trustworthy partner.

After the economic crisis that erupted in 1994, extreme poverty in Mexico increased steadily until it ended up affecting more than one third of the population in 1996. Since then, the government has increased substantially social benefits, directing most of its efforts toward reducing poverty...

This book presents several microsimulation models that can be used to assess the welfare consequences of a number of policy reforms in five countries: Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico and Uruguay. By using micro data from national surveys, the models not only characterize the population on the...

This paper starts with a review of the marginal tax reform methodology that was first advanced by Ahmad and Stern (1984), as well as its second-order variant introduced by Urzúa (2005). After that, it reviews some aspects of the estimation of demand systems, a topic that, although well known to...

This paper starts with a description of the main features of the current Mexican tax system and of a (minor) tax reform that took place in 2010, when the government tried to correct for a drastic fall in its revenues because of the economic collapse in 2009. It then describes in a detailed way a...

This paper deals with the fiscal implications of a stabilization fund that allows for a stable consumption over time, in particular in the case of an oil producing and exporting country like México. We discuss the functioning of an oil stabilization fund based on international experience and...