This paper examines the role of several factors in reducing the production costs of Brazilian sugarcane ethanol, including learning-by-doing (LBD), economies of scale, rising factor prices, market competitiveness, and exogenous technological changes. Using the aggregate industry-level data over...

We consider a class of two-player quadratic games under incomplete information to study the relation between exogenous coordination motives and strategic interactions in information acquisition. The players make decisions in two stages. They decide about information acquisition in the first...

Theft is the major component of crime rates in Mexico City and its reporting remains low and stable even when the budget assigned to federal public security reached an increase of 202.23% in 2006-2010. We develop a utility maximization model that attempts to explain the incentives that...

J. D. Geanakoplos and H. M. Polemarchakis (1986) prove the generic constrained suboptimality of equilibrium allocations in two period economies with incomplete markets. In these notes we provide a complete and detailed version of their proof with alternative arguments when needed.

The legacy of Adam Smith leads to a false confidence on the optimality of laissez faire policies for the global market economy. Instead, the polarized character of current globalization deeply affects both developed and underdeveloped economies. Current globalization is characterized by factor...

The objective of this paper is to discuss the assumptions of rationality of individuals in their use and acquisition of information to make financial institutions produce information that is rationally used by individuals. The frictions associated with asymmetric information problems or lack of...

En esta tesina analizamos la relación entre los incentivos de una empresa por incrementar su eficiencia interna y el nivel de competencia en el mercado. La eficiencia interna de una empresa se mide por el esfuerzo realizado por su agente para disminuir el costo marginal. El nivel de competencia...

Market failures in human capital investment and innovation explain the main features of human development and economic growth. This is shown in a Schumpeterian multi-country model with technology transfer and trade. Thus, only institutions expanding investments in nutrition, education, health,...

We make use of a data set that is both long span and high frequency to test for purchasing power parity while allowing for a structural shift in the volatility of the Mexico-US bilateral real exchange rate. The Kim, Leybourne and Newbold (2002) unit root test, robust to changes in the innovation...

Market failures in human capital investment and innovation explain the main features of human development and economic growth. This is shown in a Schumpeterian multi-country model with technology transfer and trade. Thus, only institutions expanding investments in nutrition, education, health,...