Effect of NAFTA on Mexico's Income Distribution in the Presence of Migration

This paper asks how NAFTA affected income distribution within Mexico considering changes in internal migration. Trade liberalization should theoretically increase the income of low-skilled workers in low-skilled labor-abundant developing countries. Thus, by increasing the wages of poorer workers, one might expect that trade will decrease income disparity. However, anecdotal evidence indicates that NAFTA increased the gap between rich and poor in Mexico. Understanding the distributional effects of NAFTA on regional income is particularly important in countries with high levels of geographic inequality, such as Mexico. Because trade may affect wages differently across regions within the country, accurate trade welfare measures must incorporate intra-national migration. Using household level data before and after NAFTA, I find geographic, gender and educational inequalities in the distribution of Mexican income post NAFTA.Income Distribution, Regional Disparities, Trade Liberalization, Internal-Migration, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade,

The Perceived Community Engagement Survey: Structure, Reliability, and Validity of a Community-based Organization Measure of Engagement with the Broader Community

For more than 40 years government funding for community non-profit organizations has grown more than in previous decades. This dramatic increase has led to a proliferation of organizations that claim the status of community-based organizations. Community-based Organizations (CBOs) have become the service delivery providers of communities, particularly underrepresented communities. There has been very little research within the community psychology and other literature exploring if CBOs represent the interest of communities. As funding entities have lately increased their interest in community representation, there has not been a corresponding research base to identify levels of community engagement. This study attempted to address this lack of community engagement literature by developing a tool to measure how all staff within an organization perceive the organization\u27s engagement of the surrounding geographic community. The Perceived Community Engagement Survey (PCES) was developed based on the principles of CBPR within a CBO/community relationship frame. The study explored the reliability and validity of the scale through a principle components analysis, reliability analysis, linear regressions, and examinations of convergent and discriminant validity. The results indicate that the PCES has two components that measure levels of community engagement, that it is a reliable scale, and shows convergent and discriminant validity with 4 relevant items from a Moos organizational climate measure and items assessing staff beliefs in the value and impact of community engagement. The practical use of the scale for more authentic community engagement by CBOs is discussed

The Perceived Community Engagement Survey: Further Exploration Of Its Reliability And Validity

Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) have become the source of delivery for a number of social and health-related services in many communities. CBOs provide needed services in some of the most resource-poor communities. The moniker of community-based implies that these organizations are located within specific communities in order to provide services to community members. As organizations that have bloomed within communities to respond to particular community needs continue to grow and receive government funding, a primary funding source for many CBOs, questions arise about how responsive they remain to their surrounding communities. Funder mandates and foci may become more critical to CBOs than community responsivity as they become dependent on government funds to sustain services. Also, many CBOs become proxy unelected representatives with policy-makers and external stakeholders for their communities. Due to the sparse literature on best practices for geographic community engagement by service delivery Community-Based Organizations, this study builds on a pilot that explored the reliability and validity of a perception of community engagement tool. The Perceived Community Engagement Survey (PCES) was developed to explore to what extent a CBO is perceived as genuinely engaging the broader community. A Principle Axis Factoring Analysis was run on an expanded sample for possible replication of pilot reliability and validity results. The PCES has been found to be a reliable and valid tool across an expanded sample and adds to the literature on community engagement by CBOs. A three-stage model has presented itself from six initially hypothesized areas that is both contiguous, from initial to full engagement, and qualitatively different, from “listening” activities to power-sharing. The PCES holds promise for further exploration and adaptation for use with community members and change in approach, from perception to objective measures

Monitoring water-soil dynamics and tree survival using soil sensors under a big data approach

ArticleThe high importance of green urban planning to ensure access to green areas requires modern and multi-source decision-support tools. The integration of remote sensing data and sensor developments can contribute to the improvement of decision-making in urban forestry. This study proposes a novel big data-based methodology that combines real-time information from soil sensors and climate data to monitor the establishment of a new urban forest in semi-arid conditions. Water-soil dynamics and their implication in tree survival were analyzed considering the application of di erent treatment restoration techniques oriented to facilitate the recovery of tree and shrub vegetation in the degraded area. The synchronized data-capturing scheme made it possible to evaluate hourly, daily, and seasonal changes in soil-water dynamics. The spatial variation of soil-water dynamics was captured by the sensors and it highly contributed to the explanation of the observed ground measurements on tree survival. The methodology showed how the e ciency of treatments varied depending on species selection and across the experimental design. The use of retainers for improving soil moisture content and adjusting tree-watering needs was, on average, the most successful restoration technique. The results and the applied calibration of the sensor technology highlighted the random behavior of water-soil dynamics despite the small-scale scope of the experiment. The results showed the potential of this methodology to assess watering needs and adjust watering resources to the vegetation status using real-time atmospheric and soil datainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The distributional effects of NAFTA in Mexico: evidence from a panel of municipalities

This paper studies the regional distribution of the benefits from trade in Mexico after NAFTA. Specifically, we ask whether or not NAFTA has increased the concentration of economic activity in Mexico. Unlike previous work which uses state-level data, we identify the effect of NAFTA on economic activity at the municipal level allowing us to observe detailed growth patterns across space. Further, to explicitly identify the effect of the trade agreement, we compare results for growth in traded and non-traded sectors. Given the spatial nature of these data, we make explicit use of spatial econometrics methods. We find that NAFTA caused the wealthy regions nearest to the border to grow faster than others, increasing regional disparity. Second, we find that larger municipalities experienced greater per-capita economic benefits from NAFTA. This effect is particularly noticeable in the north. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that regions with a less literate workforce and worse infrastructure grew faster than other areas after the trade agreement, decreasing regional disparity. We notice these redistributive effects occur primarily in the non-traded sectors.Regional Disparities, Trade Liberalization, Agglomeration Economies, Economic Growth, Mexico, Transport Cost, Spatial econometrics, Community/Rural/Urban Development, International Development, International Relations/Trade,

Optimización en la distribución de rutas de colegios privados en Pereira con ayuda de algoritmos de inteligencia artificial

En este proyecto se realizó o una investigación de los distintos algoritmos utilizados para resolver el problema de enrutamiento de vehículos, VRP, con el fi n de facilitar esta tarea a los encargados de rutas en los colegios privados de la ciudad de Pereira. de acuerdo a los resultados encontrados y al conocimiento en algoritmos se eligieron dos para llevarlos a una aplicación con la que se puede optimizar la distribución de rutas para un mapa, un conjunto de estudiantes y unas rutas dadas, minimizando los recorridos basados en la distancia geográficamentre los estudiantes. Los algoritmos de inteligencia artificial usados fueron el Gen ético y el Recocido Simulado (Simulated Annealing). Se realizaron pruebas con dos colegios privados, el Liceo Taller San Miguel y el Saint Andrews, ubicados en la v ía a Armenia y en la vía a Cerritos respectivamente, las dos zonas con mayor concentración de colegios privados de la ciudad. Se identificaron las mejores configuraciones y combinación de los algoritmos dados y se pudieron observar resultados satisfactorios en la medida en que no se logran identificar mejoras

Análisis de la eficacia y la cultura escolar en el subsistema de universidades tecnológicas de México: hacia un modelo de desarrollo docente

En este trabajo se presentan los resultados preliminares de un análisis de la eficacia escolar de las Universidades Tecnológicas en México (nivel 5B CINE, UNESCO) y su relación con la cultura escolar que prevalece en ellas. A partir de un estudio de eficacia que incluyó los datos de exámenes de ingreso y de egreso aplicados por el Centro Nacional de Evaluación para la Educación Superior (CENEVAL), en el periodo 2000-2006 en las Universidades Tecnológicas de todo el país, se revisan algunas características de la cultura escolar de los estudiantes, definidas a partir de un cuestionario de contexto

Mining-energy public policy of lithium in Mexico: tension between nationalism and globalism

This article addresses Mexico's present situation in the lithium industry and its near future, ceteris paribus. Mexico's short- and long-term lithium supply will not improve by the exploration and exploitation planned by the nationalistic objectives of the current government. This analysis demonstrates that significant changes must be made to Mexico's energy policy to promote the development of lithium due to five risks: manufacturing capacity, misaligned incentives, industrial policies, geographic concentration, and limited international coordination. Therefore, although the world's largest lithium mine was found in Sonora in 2019, Mexico's policy approaches to nationalize lithium exploration and exploitation will not allow the country to capitalize on the boom of this industry, as happened in Bolivia. In the short term, Mexico's policies will create an exploration deficit due to the country's lack of know-how and investment. Thus, Mexico will not extract lithium in the long term nor benefit from the demand increase and development of a value chain, especially in North America. Given these risks, this article postulates that Mexico's lithium policy should be revised to open its market to foreign investment and use this nascent market to a good advantage

Technical And Economic Feasibility Study Of Utility-Scale Solar Photovoltaic And Energy Storage Systems At Illinois State University

Solar energy has come a long way since the turn of the century and has been proven to be a useful source of renewable energy from both an environmental, economic and educational standpoint. The advancement of energy storage technology has opened more doors to the capabilities of production for these systems. This study shows expected outcomes of potential locations on Illinois State University’s (ISU) campus. While there have been several studies conducted on solar photovoltaic (PV) systems on campus none have analyzed the implementation of energy storage. We will use Google Earth Pro and Helioscope to conduct site analysis for a majority of the locations within campus for optimal placement of PV array systems. System Advisory Model will provide financial estimates and energy analysis that will cover the data collected through other tools. These methods give feedback and forecasts to the University. This study seeks to provide information as to how a combination of the two systems can lower demand during high demand hours ISU.https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/urs2021tec/1007/thumbnail.jp

Differential Evolution Algorithm in the Construction of Interpretable Classification Models

In this chapter, the application of a differential evolution-based approach to induce oblique decision trees (DTs) is described. This type of decision trees uses a linear combination of attributes to build oblique hyperplanes dividing the instance space. Oblique decision trees are more compact and accurate than the traditional univariate decision trees. On the other hand, as differential evolution (DE) is an efficient evolutionary algorithm (EA) designed to solve optimization problems with real-valued parameters, and since finding an optimal hyperplane is a hard computing task, this metaheuristic (MH) is chosen to conduct an intelligent search of a near-optimal solution. Two methods are described in this chapter: one implementing a recursive partitioning strategy to find the most suitable oblique hyperplane of each internal node of a decision tree, and the other conducting a global search of a near-optimal oblique decision tree. A statistical analysis of the experimental results suggests that these methods show better performance as decision tree induction procedures in comparison with other supervised learning approaches