Prueba de la hipótesis de comportamiento colusivo entre los miembros de la OPEP

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se presenta una prueba para distinguir entre los comportamientos de los productores de recursos agotables. El comportamiento de un productor competitivo de un recurso agotable debería cumplir con la ecuación de Euler. La existencia de mercados de futuros nos permite dejar de lado los aspectos difíciles que tienen que ver con el cálculo de los precios y la demanda futuros. Este marco teórico se emplea para poner a prueba la hipótesis de comportamiento colusivo entre miembros de la OPEP entre 1983 y 1991.

How Do the Skilled and the Unskilled Respond to Regional Shocks?: The Case of Spain

Are there any differences in how workers of different skill levels respond to regional shocks? This paper addresses that question using the methodology of Blanchard and Katz (1992) and a unique data set on working-age population, labor force, and employment for five educational groups (ranging from the illiterate to the college-educated) over 1964-92 for the 50 Spanish provinces. The paper finds that the highly skilled migrate very promptly in response to a decline in regional labor demand, while low-skilled workers drop out of the labor force or stay unemployed. Copyright 1999, International Monetary Fund

Growing Up in a Recession: Beliefs and the Macroeconomy

Do generations growing up during recessions have different socio-economic beliefs than generations growing up in good times? We study the relationship between recessions and beliefs by matching macroeconomic shocks during early adulthood with self-reported answers from the General Social Survey. Using time and regional variations in macroeconomic conditions to identify the effect of recessions on beliefs, we show that individuals growing up during recessions tend to believe that success in life depends more on luck than on effort, support more government redistribution, but are less confident in public institutions. Moreover, we find that recessions have a long-lasting effect on individuals' beliefs.beliefs formation, macroeconomic shocks

Inmigración ilegal, aplicación de la ley en la frontera y salarios relativos: elementos de juicio sobre las detenciones en la frontera entre EE.UU. y México

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se analizan los factores determinantes de la inmigración ilegal hacia EE. UU. desde México desde 1976 hasta 1995. El principal problema de este trabajo empírico es que las observaciones no son de la cantidad de personas que tratan de entrar ilegalmente a EE. UU. , sino del número de las detenidas en el intento de cruzar ilícitamente la frontera entre EE. UU. y México. Basándonos en un modelo simple de la decisión individual de emigrar, sugerimos la existencia de una función de detenciones, que expresa el número de detenciones realizadas en la frontera entre México y EE. UU. como función del número de intentos ilícitos de cruzar la frontera y el grado en que el gobierno estadounidense aplica la ley en la frontera.

Democracy and Reforms

Empirical evidence on the relationship between democracy and economic reforms is scarce, limited to few reforms and countries and for few years. This paper studies the impact of democracy on the adoption of economic reforms using a new dataset on reforms in the financial, capital, public, and banking sectors, product and labor markets, agriculture, and trade for 150 countries over the period 1960-2004. Democracy has a positive and significant impact on the adoption of economic reforms but there is no evidence that economic reforms foster democracy. Our results are robust to the inclusion of a large variety of controls and estimation strategies.economic liberalization, transition, political economy

Monetary transmission in low income countries

This paper reviews the monetary transmission mechanism in low income countries (LICs). We use monetary transmission in advanced and emerging markets as a benchmark to identify aspects of the transmission mechanism that may operate differently in LICs. In particular, we focus on the effects of financial market structure on monetary transmission. The weak institutional framework prevalent in LICs drastically reduces the role of securities markets and increases the cost of bank lending to private firms. Coupled with imperfect competition in the banking sector, this means that banks with chronically high excess reserves invest in domestic public bonds or (when possible) in foreign bonds. With the financial system not intermediating funds properly, the traditional monetary transmission channels (interest rate, bank lending, and asset price) are impaired. The exchange rate channel, on the other hand, tends to be undermined by central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market. These conclusions are supported by review of the institutional frameworks, statistical analysis, and previous literature.monetary policy, exchange rate, interest rate, banks, credit, institutions

Democracy and Reforms: Evidence from a New Dataset

Empirical evidence on the relationship between democracy and economic reforms is limited to few reforms, countries, and years. This paper studies the impact of democracy on the adoption of economic reforms using a new dataset on reforms in the financial, capital and banking sectors, product markets, agriculture, and trade for 150 countries over the period 1960-2004. Democracy has a positive and significant impact on the adoption of economic reforms but there is no evidence that economic reforms foster democracy. Our results are robust to the inclusion of a large variety of controls and estimation strategies.

Does Border Enforcement Protect U.S. Workers from Illegal Immigration?

In this paper, we examine the impact of government enforcement of the U.S.-Mexican border on wages in the border regions of the United States and Mexico. The U.S. Border Patrol polices U.S. boundaries, seeking to apprehend any individual attempting to enter the United States illegally. These efforts are concentrated on the Mexican border, as most illegal immigrants embark from a Mexican border city and choose a U.S. border state as their final destination. We examine labor markets in southern California, southwestern Texas, and Mexican cities on the U.S.-Mexico border. For each region, we have high-frequency time-series data on wages and on the number of person hours that the U.S. Border Patrol spends policing border areas. For a range of empirical specifications and definitions of regional labor markets, we find little impact of border enforcement on wages in U.S. border cities and a moderate negative impact of border enforcement on wages in Mexican border cities. These findings are consistent with two hypothesis: (1) border enforcement has a minimal impact on illegal immigration, or (2) immigration from Mexico has a minimal impact on wages in U.S. border cities.

Fiscal Policy For The Crisis

Finanzmarktkrise; Geldpolitik; Finanzpolitik; Steuersenkung; Subvention; Vertrauen; Welt