In this paper I present a methodology that uses matching comparisons to explain gender differences in wages. The approach emphasizes gender differences in the supports of the distributions of observable characteristics and provides useful insights about the distribution of the unexplained gender...

This paper analyzes the performance of Mexican manufacturing firms following trade liberalization within a very specific institutional setting: The North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA). We compare plants' productivity growth and patterns of job creation and destruction across their...

This paper investigates labour supply of married women in Mexico City. A static neoclassical structural mode is used. We assume that each woman chooses her labour supply and corresponding income so that her utility is maximized, conditional upon her husband ?s labour supply and earnings. We use...

This paper analyses the effects of fiscal shocks using a two-country macroeconomic model for output, labour input, government spending and relative prices which provides the orthogonality restrictions for obtaining the structural shocks. Dynamic simulation techniques are then applied, in...

This paper analyzes how major external shocks and policy reforms affect Bolivia's ability to achieve pro-poor growth. Employing a recursive-dynamic CGE model, it considers three different scenarios: an optimistic baseline scenario that roughly extrapolates the situation prevailing before the...

This paper surveys gender earnings gaps in Colombia from 1994 to 2006, using matching comparisons to examine the extent to which individuals with similar human capital characteristics earn different wages. Three sub-periods are considered: 1994-1998; 2000-2001; and 2002- 2006, corresponding to the...

We evaluate the proposal for official dollarization in Costa Rica by applying a new approach to measure the business cycle comovements with the United States. While the literature often focuses on the correlation of shocks, we point out that the response of each country to the shocks is also an...

Due to inadequate savings and binding borrowing constraints, income volatility can make households in developing countries particularly susceptible to economic hardship. We examine the role of remittances in either alleviating or increasing household income volatility using Mexican household...

This paper investigates convergence in social indicators among Colombian departments from 1973 to 2005. We use census data and apply both the regression approach and the distributional approach (univariate and bivariate kernel density estimators). Using literacy rate as a proxy for education, we...

Focusing on core-infrastructure capital vis-à-vis productive capital, we propose a macroeconomic method to determine both which type of capital shortage would be constraining potential output and what would be the optimal composition, or optimal ratio between these two types, of capital in any...