Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez

The College of Mexico | Colmex · Centro de Estudios Económicos

During a global shock two forces act upon international remittances in opposite directions: income losses among migrants may reduce their ability to send remittances and, at the same time, migrants’ concern for their family's wellbeing may prompt them to send more remittances back home. Which of these drivers prevail is an empirical matter. We asse...

A lo largo del texto se analiza el impacto del sector automotriz en el desarrollo regional del Bajío mexicano. Se usó la metodología de control sintético con adopción escalonada teniendo en cuenta el establecimiento de nuevas armadoras automotrices en las entidades federativas de la región del Bajío entre 2007 y 2014. Se calcula que, por cada nuevo...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had an immediate and severe impact on the economy. However, we do not know whether the disease may have a longer-term effect on people's employment opportunities. In this study, we focus on the effects of COVID-19 infection on labor market outcomes 12 months after diagnosis. We use a unique dataset that include...

We analyze the effect on poverty of a significant increase in the minimum wage using a quasi-experimental situation in Mexico. In January 2019, the Mexican government announced an increase in the minimum wage: in most of the country it increased by 16 per cent, while in 43 municipalities along the U.S. border it increased by 100 per cent. Using hou...

Women's representation at the top is still an issue on the agenda for equality. In this paper, we contribute to the literature on the effect of female application reviewers on the performance of women in selection processes. We define gender bias as any differential treatment of female and male applicants. We are particularly interested in whether...

En contraste con otros países, en México no existe una encuesta para medir numéricamente las expectativas de inflación de los consumidores. En este trabajo se reportan los resultados de la aplicación de un cuestionario simple que pretende obtener una primera aproximación de dichas perspectivas. El ejercicio también busca conseguir información sobre...

Gender stereotypes, the assumptions concerning appropriate social roles for men and women, permeate the labor market. Analyzing information from over 2.5 million job advertisements on three different employment search websites in Mexico, exploiting approximately 235,00 that are explicitly gender-targeted, we find evidence that advertisements seekin...

Using new survey and experimental data, we investigate how perceptions about inequality and social mobility affect preferences for redistribution in Mexico. In addition to the perceived level of inequality typically measured in previous studies, we explore perceptions about who is rich and poor and their share of the population. The shape of percei...

This study examines how characteristics of the social environment and neighborhood may influence the formation of aspirations in young people, specifically in terms of future income and education attainment. The study uses data from the Mexican Social Mobility Survey in 2015, and includes factors such as accessibility and aesthetic of the neighborh...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic revealed large structural inequalities that led to disparities in health outcomes related to socioeconomic status. So far, most of the evidence is based on aggregated data or simulations with individual data, which point to various possible mechanisms behind the association. To date, there have been no studies regar...

In January 2019, Mexico doubled the minimum wage in municipalities that share a border with the United States. We use the universe of workers that were formally employed in the Mexican private sector in the third quarter of 2018 (19.6 million) and track their labor history from 2015Q1 through 2021Q1. Using a synthetic control approach, we find no s...

We study intergenerational social mobility in Mexico at the subnational level to determine whether poorer regions have similar rates of social mobility as richer ones. We approximate socioeconomic status with an index that captures the variability across households in durable goods, services and education of household heads for both adult children...

We estimate child penalties in the Mexican formal labour market at the aggregate level and for specific population subgroups. We use longitudinal administrative data for formal workers. The child penalty begins immediately with pregnancy. Six years after childbirth, the average penalty is 24% on wages and 16% on the rate of formal employment for wo...

En esta investigación se estudia movilidad social, empleo e ingresos laborales en México. Se presentan tendencias para toda la población y para mujeres. La movilidad social es baja: en movilidad ascendente es más baja que países desarrollados y también se tiene altos niveles de persistencia en pobreza y riqueza. Investigaciones previas muestran que...

We analyze the universe of point-of-sale (POS) transactions before and during the COVID-19 lockdown in Mexico. We find three key results. First, consumption in Mexico fell by 23 percent in the April-June quarter of 2020 and by 16 percent from April to September of 2020 as compared to expected levels. Second, reductions in consumption were highly he...

There is a concern among social scientists and policymakers that the COVID-19 crisis might permanently change the nature of work. We study how labor demand in Mexico has been affected during the pandemic by web scraping job ads from a leading job search website. As in the U.S., the number of vacancies in Mexico declined sharply during the lockdown...

This chapter focuses on income inequality in Mexico, which increased between 1989 and 1994. Between 1994 and 2006, inequality declined; between 2006–14, inequality was again on the rise. The authors apply decomposition techniques to analyse the proximate determinants of labour income inequality and fiscal incidence analysis to estimate the first-or...

This article analyzes the effect of international migration on the wage gap between women and men who remain in Mexico. We use historical distance to the U.S. border over early twentieth-century railroad networks as an exogenous factor causing changes in the relative supply of men and women, due to predominately male migration. A 10% decrease in th...

Objective Evidence suggests that voters’ prejudices may lead them to take information shortcuts in choosing political leaders. This study analyzes whether the skin tone of 12,798 candidates influenced the outcome of their electoral campaigns. Methods To determine the probability of winning an election, we estimate a linear regression where skin to...

El surgimiento del nuevo virus sars-cov-2 y su propagación en el mundo provocó en 2020 dos crisis paralelas: una sanitaria y otra económica. Con la evidencia disponible, podemos confirmar que lamentablemente estas crisis afectan con mayor intensidad a quienes viven en situación de pobreza y padecen distintos tipos de desigualdades −de oportunidades...

Este artículo documenta varias medidas de movilidad económica intergeneracional en México. Empleamos datos censales de 1990 a 2015 sobre los ingresos. Dado que los censos no vinculan individuos a través del tiempo, la estrategia empírica sigue un enfoque sintético al comparar a los individuos con los ingresos familiares sintéticos por estado y coho...

The benefits of place-based policies are still under debate. In this study, we analyze what is probably one of the boldest interventions in the recent history of Mexico and the rest of the world: the Northern Border Free Zone (NBFZ). Launched in January 2019, this program doubles the minimum wage and substantially lowers taxes in 43 municipalities...

In this article we use unpublished and geo-referenced data at the municipality level on the beneficiaries of the main programs of the Ministry of Social Development who received the Social Book in 2016. The objective is to know national aspects of social policy and its relationship with poverty. In general, it is observed that social policy covers...

Utilizamos datos de búsquedas en Google sobre empleo para pronosticar la tasa de desempleo en México. Discutimos la bibliografía relacionada con nowcasting y big data donde se utilizan datos generados en internet para predecir desempleo. Además, explicamos algoritmos de aprendizaje que sirven para escoger el mejor modelo de predicción. Finalmente,...

We analyse the evolution and proximate determinants of labour income inequality in Mexico between 1989 and 2017. Labour income inequality increased between 1989 and 1994 and declined between 1994 and 2006. What happened after 2006 is subject to uncertainty. The national labour force survey shows a steady decline and the income expenditure survey su...

This research analyses the minimum wage increases in Mexico in 2012 and 2015; the goal is to identify its effects in the wage structure and in employment. The data comes from administrative records of imss from 2000 to 2018, and henceforth the study is restricted to the formal sector of the economy. Those changes represent a natural experiment due...

How much are people willing to pay extra for sexual services with a white woman instead of one with darker skin? Skin colour assessed from photographs of women on escort websites in Mexico was compared with price information to answer this question. Women with darker skin were found to be underrepresented, consistent with self-selection into other...

We analyze the effect on inflation of doubling the minimum wage and cutting the value-added tax in half. Annual inflation decreased by 1.8 percentage points, suggesting that the minimum wage increase had a limited or even null effect on prices.

We implement a correspondence audit study that uses a non-paired design to test the effect of obesity on employment discrimination in Mexico. In Mexico it is common practice to include a photograph in a resume, and job advertisements often specify personal and physical characteristics. We use both types of information to evaluate discrimination aga...

In January 2014, Mexico addressed its epidemic of obesity by implementing an excise tax of 1 peso (1 MXN) per liter on soft drinks. This study evaluates the pass-through of the tax, the influence on the tax of competition among different stores, and the after-tax price dispersion. Using an unbalanced panel of weekly prices for 553 stores throughout...

Audit studies have found employment discrimination in a variety of contexts. In Mexico, an overlooked aspect of this discrimination is that job advertisements usually include explicit criteria of gender, age, attractiveness, or require a photograph in the resume. These specifications, which we refer to as “explicit discrimination,” may affect which...

Obesity has an adverse impact not only on health but also on the labor market outcomes of individuals. Using anthropometric data and the body mass index (BMI), we analyze the effects of obesity on the decision to work and the wages of Mexican workers aged 20-60. We use children's BMI as an instrumental variable for the BMI of their parents. Our res...

La obesidad tiene un impacto adverso no solo en la salud, sino también en el mercado de trabajo. Con base en información antropométrica y el índice de masa corporal (IMC), analizamos los efectos de la obesidad sobre el empleo y los salarios de los mexicanos entre los 20 y 60 años. Se utilizó el IMC de los hijos como variable instrumental para el IM...

In this study we analyze the extent of gender stereotypes in student evaluations of college professors on the internet site MisProfesores.com in Mexico. We downloaded more than 600,000 evaluations for the period 2008–18. The evaluations include three scores on a scale of 0 to 10: how easy it is to obtain a good grade, how much the professor helps h...

Previous research has employed mechanisms to adjust income and inequality, especially for the upper part of the income distribution that is the population most likely to under-report income in household surveys. These corrections lead to an increase in the inequality and proportion of income obtained by high-income individuals or families. In this...

This research addresses the process of assigning scholarships for study abroad through Mexico's Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología. Based on the data for scholarship applications 2013-2016, we analyzed the type of educational institutions that participate in the process, as well as the relationship between evaluator and candidate characterist...

En 2010, uno de cada tres jóvenes mexicanos mencionó en la Encuesta Nacional sobre Discriminación en México que su principal problema era la falta de oportunidades laborales y de experiencia (Conapred, 2011). Cuando les preguntaron cuáles eran las razones por las cuales no podían conseguir un empleo, el 37% señaló que no tenía la preparación sufici...

In many Latin American countries, census data on race and skin color are scarce or nonexistent. In this study, we contribute to understanding how skin color affects intergenerational social mobility in Mexico. Using a novel data set, we provide evidence of profound social stratification by skin color, even after controlling for specific individual...

Background Academic journals focused in economics can reflect a lot about the economic science status in Mexico. In this article, we study female authorship, academic networks and the topics discussed in Mexican economic journals from 2000 to 2017. Methodology Using data for six of the main economic journals in Mexico from 2000 to 2017 we study the...

This paper describes how the socioeconomic status (SES) of parents relates to the formation and development of the skills and preferences of their teenage children, which have proven to be key to understanding differences in life outcomes. The study used data from a novel survey, conducted in Mexico, that recorded cognitive and non-cognitive skills...

This paper contributes to the debate about the relationship between cognitive ability and economic preferences. We employ both national representative survey data and experimental data, and apply different elicitation procedures for risk and time preferences in a developing country, Mexico. Our findings are based on three different samples-adult an...

Antecedentes: En México, las mujeres obtienen un menor salario en promedio que los hombres. Si bien la discriminación explica parte de esta brecha, en este artículo mostramos que existen otras causales que contribuyen a ella. Metodología: Implementamos un experimento de laboratorio controlado con 404 personas en el que se aplican los juegos del ul...

Background: In Mexico, women obtain a lower wage than men on average. A potential cause of this gender pay gap is discrimination, but, in this paper, we show there are other channels that contribute to such gap. Methodology: We implement a laboratory experiment with 404 individuals in which they play the ultimatum game and a wage bargaining game. T...

This study estimates the income of individuals in the top part of the income distribution in Mexico since 1992. Mexico is the only Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development country that does not report publicly income from fiscal sources. To circumvent this problem, we use income information from household surveys but adjust the misrep...

Background: Recent literature shows that, in Mexico, skin color is relevant for life outcomes and for social mobility. A possible transmission channel is explicit discrimination. Another possible channel is that the effort and aspirations may be affected by negative stereotypes attributed to dark-skinned individuals. Since society values certain ph...

Background: Recent literature shows that, in Mexico, skin color is relevant for life outcomes and for social mobility. A possible transmission channel is explicit discrimination. Another possible channel is that the effort and aspirations may be affected by negative stereotypes attributed to dark-skinned individuals. Since society values certain ph...

This study examines how cognitive and non-cognitive skills are valued in the labour market in Mexico. It uses a novel dataset which includes a wide array of cognitive and non-cognitive skill measures. Non-cognitive skills are rewarded in the market even after controlling for family background and educational attainment. Returns to non-cognitive ski...

This paper analyses the relationship between mean income and the income of the rich. Our methodology closely follows that of Dollar and Kraay (Journal of Economic Growth, 2002, 7, 195), but instead of looking at the bottom of the distribution, we focus on the top. We use panel data from the World Top Incomes database, which collects top income data...

Antecedentes: El Buen Fin es un evento comercial de periodicidad anual que consiste en cuatro días de promoción y rebajas de productos y servicios durante la tercera semana del mes de noviembre en México. El evento ha incrementado su relevancia desde su primera edición en 2011. Sin embargo, no existe un análisis formal que evalúe el efecto del Buen...

In this paper we provide evidence that measures of school supply such as quantity and quality at the local level are important predictors of dropout behavior among conditional cash transfer beneficiaries in Mexico. We use administrative records of the Oportunidades program in both rural and urban areas to follow the schooling trajectory of a cohort...

We estimate a measure of long-run development in Mexico by calculating a human development index for the period 1895-2010. This index is calculated using urbanization rates, measures of schooling, and number of physicians per capita for each state in Mexico. This is the longest homogenous series to date that compares development at the national and...

In this paper, we analyze the nature of cooperation in different corruption regimes. In a laboratory experiment with university students in Mexico, individuals play first a corruption game and then a public goods game. The corruption game is divided into three groups: high- and low-monitoring scenarios as well as a control group not exposed to the...

En este trabajo analizamos la relación entre crecimiento económico y cambios en pobreza para las entidades federativas en México. Primero, no se encuentra una relación entre el crecimiento promedio anual y el cambio en pobreza alimentaria o de patrimonio a nivel estatal en el periodo 2000-2012: las ganancias del crecimiento económico no se han tras...

In this paper we analyze the relation between economic growth and changes in the poverty rates at the state level for the Mexican case. First, we do not find a relationship for all the states between the annual average rate of growth and changes in the poverty rate, either using the alimentary or the patrimony poverty line, during the period betwee...

En este trabajo se analiza la relación entre crecimiento económico y cambios en la pobreza para las entidades federativas en México durante el periodo 2005-2014. Para un número reducido de entidades federativas, el crecimiento económico redujo la pobreza y su intensidad. En la mayoría de estados se observa que los choques macroeconómicos no tienen...

En la literatura internacional se ha encontrado consistentemente que los niños obtienen mejores resultados que las niñas en pruebas estandarizadas de matemáticas, mientras lo opuesto sucede en comprensión de lectura. Este artículo realiza un análisis sobre la diferencia de género en los puntajes de exámenes estandarizados en México. Los datos provi...

A reduction in the wage premium for skilled labor -and a consistent reduction of overall wage inequality-has played an important role in explaining the fall of income inequality in Latin America during the 2000-2014 period. Consistent with that pattern, wage inequality declined in Mexico since 2000. This paper investigates the possible channels on...

In this article I analize previous international empirical evidence on minimum wages as well as I estimate possible impacts on prices from a possible minimum wage increase in Mexico. In terms of previous literature, the most compelling evidence points to a null impact in employment of a minimum wage increase if the increase is "modest" and the orig...

En este artículo se realiza una revisión de la literatura empírica internacional sobre el salario mínimo así como una estimación de posibles impactos en precios de un incremento del mismo en México. En cuanto a las investigaciones previas, la evidencia más contundente apunta a que cuando el incremento del salario mínimo es “modesto” y se tiene un n...

En este estudio mostramos que el sobrepeso y la obesidad tienen repercusiones negativas sobre el salario de las mujeres. Las que padecen obesidad y obesidad severa perciben, respectivamente, entre 9% y 16.7% menos que las que tienen un imc en el rango de 20 a 25. Considerando niveles educativos, las que han estudiado preparatoria o han llegado a la...

In 2002, the Mexican government began an effort to improve health access to the 50 million uninsured in Mexico, a program known as Seguro Popular (SP). The SP offered virtually free health insurance to informal workers, altering the incentives to operate in the formal economy. We find that the SP program had a negative effect on the number of emplo...

Using a nationally representative sample for Mexico, we analyse the effect of a husband having a working mother on the probability that he has a working wife. Our results show that labour force participation by a husband's mother increases the probability of the labour force participation of his wife by 15 percentage points. The effect is mainly dr...

We analize the gender wage gap in Mexico using the population censuses from 1990 to 2010. The wage gap has decreased on average during this period. In 2010, the gender wage gap was about 6%. However, the average hides important aspects of the wage gap across the distribution of wages. We find a stable pattern of "sticky floors" and a decreasing pat...

El documento presenta una propuesta, elaborada por un grupo de expertos, para un acuerdo nacional por una política de recuperación del salario mínimo. Consta de 10 capítulos; Antecedentes, Historia de los salarios mínimos en México, El país que paga menos: México un caso atípico, La teoría, Salario mínimo y productividad, Por un cambio en las insti...

This study measures risk and loss aversion using Prospect Theory and examines the impact of emotions on these parameters. Students’ emotions were manipulated using information on rising deaths due to drug violence in Mexico and youth unemployment and Tanaka et al. (2010) methodology was employed to elicit PT parameters. We find that risk aversion i...

We analyze the consequences of a teenage pregnancy event in the short- and long-run in Mexico. Using longitudinal and cross-section data, we match females who got pregnant and those that did not based on a propensity score. Several balancing tests and specifications indicate that the main assumptions to estimate the average treatment effect on the...

In Mexico, as in most Latin American countries with indigenous populations, it is commonly believed that European phenotypes are preferred to mestizo or indigenous phenotypes. However, it is hard to test for such racial biases in the labor market using official statistics since race can only be inferred from native language. The experiment consiste...

The volume aims to document and explain the sizeable decline of income inequality that has taken place in Latin America during the 2000s. It does so through an exploration of inequality changes in six representative countries, and ten policy chapters dealing with macroeconomics, foreign trade, taxation, labour market, human capital formation, and s...

This paper analyzes the relationship between mean income and the income of the rich. Our methodology closely follows that of Dollar and Kraay (2002), but instead of looking at the bottom of the distribution, we analyze the top. We use panel data from the World Top Incomes database, which collects top income data from several countries using tax ret...

This article estimates semiparametrically life cycle profiles of consumption and income in Mexico during the last 26 years. Consumption expenditures are divided in durable and nondurable goods for household heads according to different characteristics: education or urban/rural status. The findings indicate that consumption shows an inverted-U shape...