We analyze if the pattern of comparative advantages and the recent behavior of Mexican manufacturing exports, vis-à-vis its closest competitors, are related with productivity differentials or with differences in factor endowments. The relative abundance of relatively unskilled labor in Mexico...

This paper studies optimal fiscal policy in a small open economy model under incomplete financial markets, where interest rates, government spending and productivity are stochastic and taxes are distortionary. The contributions of the paper are twofold. First, I solve the Ramsey problem and...

In a recent paper, Gertler, Gilchrist and Natalucci (2006) report that the financial accelerator mechanism may account for about half of the fall in output and investment observed during the Korean crisis of 1997-1998. Using the business cycle accounting method of Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan...

When high-frequency data is available, in the context of a stochastic volatility model, realised absolute variation can estimate integrated spot volatility. A central limit theory enables us to do filtering and smoothing using model-based and model-free approaches in order to improve the...

This paper investigates how different macroeconomic shocks affect the term-structure of interest rates in Mexico. In particular, we develop a model that combines a no-arbitrage specification of the term structure with a macroeconomic model of a small open economy. We find that shocks that are...

The formal Mexican labor market has shown important changes in the last five years: the employment in the industry has been decreasing whereas the employment in the service sector has been increasing. This study looks at the consequence of such changes on the aggregate productivity of the formal...

This document analyzes inflation, exchange rate, interest rate, and GDP growth forecasts from the monthly Survey of Specialists in Economics from the Private Sector, maintained by Banco de México. The study concentrates on the mean across forecasters for the period from January 1995 to April...

The paper describes the dynamics of inflation in the Mexican economy from 1992 to 2006 using the New Phillips curve framework. The purpose is to identify key structural characteristics of the economy (structural parameters) that define the short-run dynamics of inflation. Results show that...

We examine the impact that technology shocks have in a trivariate VAR that includes productivity, hours worked per person and the employment ratio. These last two variables have trends that make them non-stationary. There are three results of interest. First, a technology shock reduces both...

The choice of monetary policy is the most important concern of central banks. However, this choice is always confronted, inter alia, with two relevant aspects of economic policy: parameter instability and model uncertainty. This paper deals with both types of uncertainty using a very specific...