Center for Research and Teaching in Economics

Introduction This study examines the challenges faced by displaced LGBTIQ + populations in Mexico City, emphasizing the roles of legal protections, healthcare, social networks, and social media in their integration. Methods Findings derive from eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico City. Research included observations, in-depth biographical interviews, and informal conversations with 18 displaced LGBTIQ + persons and 10 members of civil society organizations. Results Access to documentation, employment, safe housing, healthcare, and social networks are central issues for LGBTIQ + displaced persons. Although Mexico City is considered an LGBTIQ + -friendly sanctuary with employment opportunities, high rent drives many to peripheral areas with limited job prospects. Long commutes increase exposure to public transport violence and reduce engagement in local communities crucial for integration. Loneliness and isolation related to sexual orientation, gender identity, and migration status heighten vulnerability to exploitative relationships, often initiated through social media. Conclusions The findings highlight the importance of addressing not only legal protections but also the social and economic barriers impeding LGBTIQ + displaced persons’ integration. Targeted programs, anti-discrimination measures, and culturally sensitive services are essential for safeguarding this population’s rights and wellbeing. Policy Implications This study calls for comprehensive integration policies in Mexico that address the specific needs of displaced LGBTIQ + persons. Implementing anti-discrimination measures, expanding mental health and healthcare support, and promoting multi-stakeholder collaboration are critical steps towards inclusive integration.

The society is aware of the critical lack of water problem that is facing currently. However, approximately 40% of the extracted water is lost due to water leaks, which is still a more critical problem. Most methods employed to detect such leaks are expensive and ineffective because they rely on fieldwork, which is very time-consuming and barely covers the entire pipeline network. An interesting optional data source to deal with this problem is Satellite imagery, they are an alternative solution to water leak detection due to their capacity to capture more electromagnetic spectrum data. This data enables the measurement of specific soil conditions, including soil moisture level and temperature, for instance. In this work, a Convolutional Neural Network trained with satellite imagery is proposed to deal with water leak detection. The satellite imagery employed was acquired according to ground truth data of real water leaks located in urban areas in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Hence, the coordinates corresponding to the identified and subsequently repaired leaks during the 2020–2022 time frame were utilized to download images from the Sentinel-2 (S2) satellite. Furthermore, the Land Surface Temperature (LST) of each image was estimated using Landsat 8 data and added as a spectral band to all S2 images; that means, adding one layer to the S2 images. Several experiments were done with combinations of data sources, and the best-obtained result on the test dataset was 81% accuracy for the S2 + LST model. The obtained results underscore the feasibility of effectuating water leak detection through the synergistic application of satellite imagery and deep learning methodologies.

This research studies the effects of a value added tax (VAT) reform that raised the rate from 11 to 16 per cent at localities close to international borders in Mexico. Using difference‐in‐differences, we find that the VAT hike increased prices by one‐third the size of the full‐passthrough counterfactual. Moreover, we find that workers absorbed part of the VAT hike, as the reform had a negative effect on workers’ compensation. Informality, competition across the border, worker mobility and earnings level drive the effects we find.

We study behavior in a trust game where first‐movers initially have a higher endowment than second‐movers but the occurrence of a positive random shock can eliminate this inequality by increasing the endowment of the second‐mover before the decision of the first‐mover. We find that second‐movers return less (i.e., they are less trustworthy) when they have a lower endowment than first‐movers, compared with the case in which first and second‐movers have the same endowment. In addition, second‐movers who experience the positive shock return more than second‐movers who have the same endowment as the first‐mover from the outset. First‐movers do not seem to anticipate this behavior from second‐movers. They send less to second‐movers who benefited from a shock. Our findings suggest that in addition to the distribution of the endowments the source of this distribution plays an important role in determining the levels of trust and trustworthiness.

Developing an information technology (IT) infrastructure for business and organizational operations has gained importance concurrently with the emergence of edge and cloud computing technologies. On the other hand, innovation is crucial for businesses because consumers demand better service and lower ownership costs. Several firms use the cloud as their innovation platform to expand and stay competitive. In the commercial world, cloud computing is swiftly embraced by small, medium, and big businesses in sectors including aerospace, automotive, logistics, financial services, textiles, and health. With all the benefits cloud computing has for business improvement, some issues and problems prevent organizations and companies from migrating to the cloud. Due to these evidentiary gaps, I combined quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques to synthesize the existing literature and identify possible directions for future studies that may have an impact. The primary aim of this research is to provide a bibliometric procedure to review the state of the art on this scope and provide a roadmap for future studies; then, it provides insight into how the adoption and sustained usage of cloud sourcing could and edge encourage the creation of novel business models and impact a company's competitive advantage. The publications were reviewed using a bibliometric approach that divided the papers into four categories: cloud computing data security, business risk management techniques, resource allocation, and business performance. According to the results, adopting cloud and edge computing service delivery models is connected with increased revenue and less capital investment in IT assets for the company. Also, the results showed that one of the main obstacles to implementing cloud and edge computing technology in organizations is low security and lack of sufficient internal resources.

Local governments increasingly rely on contractual relationships with third parties for public service delivery, blending formal agreements with relational mechanisms to reduce risks and uncertainties. While most research on these contracts has focused on relationships between two parties, this work adopts a network perspective to analyze how the structure of these networks—especially close‐knit connections—influences contract design. We analyzed 6576 agreements between local governments in Iowa related to public safety from 2007 to 2017 and selected 300 to qualitatively code for contractual provisions. Our findings show that when there are strong shared connections between third parties, contracts tend to be less formal. These results expand the typical focus on two‐party relationships, showing how larger networks can shape the balance between formal and relational contracts in public service management.

Community-based archaeology has been reshaping the meaning of its praxis in Latin America. This is due to recognizing the importance of memory and active listening as sources of equal value to traditional archaeology methods and theories. Aligning archaeological practice with community knowledge and demands means integrating “affective alliances” in favor of collaboration, solidarity, and care. Inspired by Cusicanqui’s notion of equivalence, which advocates for traditional knowledge producers and interlocutors to engage in dialogue on equal terms, coming from different centers of thought, and by Barkin’s idea of a dialogue of knowledge, which proposes the development of projects designed from a local perspective, where inhabitants take the lead in the recovery and preservation of their own resources. This article presents two Latin American case studies that demonstrate the possibility of integrating content from the past and present through dialogues between the knowledge of community representatives and researchers. The first example is related to the traditional communities cultivating the Atlantic Forest on the coast of São Paulo, Brazil, whose ancestors were partially erased by colonial bureaucracy and academia but continue to articulate practices, identities, and materialities to persist. Another example is based on the research with the Nahua communities and the recuperation of their oral narratives, which, through cartograms and deep mapping, have contributed to recreating the various layers of experience that shaped household materiality in Mixtla de Altamirano, Mexico.

We explore the relationship between Big‐5 Personality Traits and school grades, using a novel survey of state primary school children in Mexico. Linear school fixed‐effects estimates controlling for household income, principal caregiver's education, IQ, and personality traits indicate that higher conscientiousness and agreeableness consistently and significantly correlate with high school performance in all subjects, net of child's IQ. A regression‐based inequality decomposition shows that a child's personality accounts for 5.1% and 6.5% of the inequality in mathematics for girls and boys, whereas for Spanish, it accounts for 3.9% and 8.0%, respectively. Results are robust to unobservable confounders using Oster bounds.

This cross-sectional study is based on the 2016 National Survey on the Dynamics of Relationships in Households in Mexico. It aims to identify the correlates of childrearing-related marital conflict in urban Mexico. The analysis sample consists of 7,544 heterosexual partnered women parenting preschoolers. Binomial logistic regression models were estimated to investigate factors associated with men’s and women’s annoyance regarding how their partners treat or educate their children, as perceived by women. The findings suggest that disputes over workload distribution, and possible power and control struggles underlie this type of conflict. Therefore, couples that enhance their communication skills, prioritize power-sharing within their relationship, and engage in an equitable division of childrearing and household responsibilities may benefit from a reduction in marital childrearing conflict.

The 2022 energy crisis highlighted the dependence of the Europe electricity sector on imported natural gas and the need to accelerate the adoption of renewables to the power system. However, operating a reliable power system with high share of renewables might require curtailing some renewables and activating conventional generators not scheduled in the day-ahead markets to ensure system reliability. These actions can result in environmental impacts, higher system costs and welfare impacts for customers. We use a novel high-granularity data from the Spanish power system for the period 2019–2022 to estimate the effects of these actions and forecast future impact of implementing ambitious targets of the European Gas Reduction Plan. We show that reliance on conventional generators will sharply increase with the addition of renewables. However, higher electricity consumption reduces the negative welfare impacts of integrating renewables. Until renewables and storage technologies advance further, conventional generators are needed for reliable operation of the systems.

Introduction Poverty is one of the macro factors that has been little studied in terms of its effect on death from COVID-19 since most studies have focused only on investigating whether the pandemic increased poverty or not. With that on mind, the present study aims to analyze how the social deprivations that comprise the measurement of municipal poverty in interaction with health comorbidities and sociodemographic characteristics, increased the probability of death from COVID-19. Methods The study is cross-sectional and covers daily reports on the conditions of COVID-19 in the Mexican population for almost 2 years. Using data from the National Epidemiological Surveillance System and the National Council for Evaluation of the Social Development Policy (N = 5,387,981), we employ a Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM), specifically a binomial generalized linear mixed model. Results The findings indicate that, besides comorbidities, sociodemographic traits, and clinical aspects, living in a municipality where one or more of the social deprivations exist increases the probability of death. Specifically, in those municipalities where there is deprivation in education, social security, and food, as well as deprivation due to access to health services and deprivation in household services, the probability of death was greater. Discussion Living in a municipality with one or more of the social deprivations that compose poverty generated a greater probability of death. Each one of them or together, shows that poverty is a substantial factor for a pandemic like COVID-19 to worsen contagion and death, becoming a circle from which it is difficult to escape.

In this paper, we provide empirical evidence of the energy-efficiency gap between homeowners and renters and quantify the magnitude of the split incentives problem in an emerging economy by studying Mexican households. Using micro-level data from the first National Survey on Energy Consumption in Private Homes (ENCEVI-2018) and a regression framework, we show that underinvestment problems occur in multiple categories of residential energy efficiency. Concretely, our results show that renters have significantly less insulation and energy-efficient equipment, that they tend to use some of their equipment more frequently, and that they pay higher utility bills than homeowners. In addition, renters are less aware of government programs that can reduce their energy expenditure and are also less likely to take advantage of them. Finally, a substantial reduction in carbon emissions could be achieved if renters were equally energy efficient as homeowners. JEL classification: D12; Q15; Q40; Q53

This study explored the association between subjective well-being (measured by life satisfaction) and ethnoracial characteristics (i.e. self-ascription, skin color, and speaking an Indigenous language) in Mexico and the role of socioeconomic inequalities in mediating this relationship. The emerging questions were: 'What are the associations between subjective well-being and ethnoracial characteristics in Mexico?' and 'Are these associations affected by socioeconomic inequalities?.' A multinomial logistic analysis was conducted, which estimates associations among multiple categories and predictor variables, using the data from the 2019 Project on Ethnoracial Discrimination in Mexico (PRODER, N = 7,037). The results indicated that Indigenous and white self-ascriptions were positively related to life satisfaction, whereas Mestizo and African Mexican identification did not have any association. Concerning skin color, the digital colorimeter measurements indicated that those with a lighter skin color had greater probabilities of having higher levels of life satisfaction. Additionally, those who reported speaking or who have parents speaking an Indigenous language were less likely to be in higher categories of life satisfaction. These results have central implications for the design and implementation of inclusive public policies, and for the design and modification of public programs.

Introduction The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Latin American labor markets continue to be quantified, to identify the social and economic impacts that this pandemic had, and to design more efficient public policies that would protect the most vulnerable groups. For this reason, the research question was as follows: what were the changes in the labor formality rates before and two years after the main contingency measures of the COVID-19 pandemic were implemented? Methods Using data from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, the formality rate (τ) was analyzed, which was calculated using a weighted average between the formal employment rates of the number (i) of economic sectors (p) in a specific period (t). Results The results suggest that the weighted labor formality rate increased in the countries of the region. These changes in formality could be the result of greater capital accumulation, the integration of productive processes, the integration of commercialization processes, and differentiated fiscal stimuli (i.e., the intrasectoral aspect), but it was not due to the displacement of workers from highly informal economic sectors to more formalized sectors (i.e., the intersectoral component). Discussion The findings emphasized the precarious situation of women in the region, regardless of the country, particularly in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. These findings suggest the need to design public policies that reverse the current situation of the labor market and prevent future economic shocks, with special emphasis on the informal sector and women.

Este artículo analiza la venta del Centro Médico Nacional (CMN) por parte de la Secretaría de Salubridad y Asistencia (SSA) al Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) en 1961 como parte de un proceso más amplio de fragmentación de la atención médica y hospitalaria que comenzó desde la década de los cuarenta, cuando se dividió el acceso a la asistencia médica entre la seguridad social para trabajadores del sector formal, encabezada por el IMSS, y la asistencia social ofrecida por la SSA para la población sin acceso a ella. Analizando documentos de ambas instituciones, se muestra que la venta del CMN fue producto de las grandes desigualdades que para entonces regían entre un IMSS que pasaba por una época de oro, y una SSA subfinanciada y saturada. Asimismo, se argumenta que estas desigualdades no hicieron más que profundizarse con el traspaso del CMN de una institución a otra.

El artículo toma como referencia la trayectoria trasnacional del intelectual brasileño Darcy Ribeiro, con la finalidad de reconstruir en forma conectada las intervenciones de las izquierdas latinoamericanas en torno a la cuestión universitaria, haciendo hincapié en centros de estudio de Argentina, México, Chile y otros países de la región. El abordaje de la cuestión universitaria permite evitar las perspectivas unidireccionales que retratan a los sesenta y setenta como un momento de ruptura, marcado por el predominio de una nueva izquierda. Lejos de esas visiones lineales, el debate sobre la crisis de las universidades manifiesta encrucijadas comunes entre diversos actores, como las juventudes comunistas, el peronismo de izquierda y grupos fuertemente críticos de las izquierdas tradicionales. De esta manera, el trabajo concluye que si se profundiza en este tipo de controversias quizás puedan encontrarse más puentes tendidos entre experiencias de politización, radicalización y partidización diversas, pero con temáticas y abordajes comunes.

Literature on recidivism and desistance has acquired increasing relevance in the criminological discussions of recent years. This study seeks to contribute to this discourse by implementing an instrumental variable analysis to examine inmates' expectations regarding the factors that play a central role in their perceptions of factors for successful social reintegration. Results indicate that education is perceived as a key factor, while the support of family and friends exerts a limited influence over incarcerated persons' perceptions of social reintegration possibilities in Mexico. These results serve as a basis for discussing barriers to social reintegration and for exploring public policy modifications in Latin America.