Rene Cabral

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Tecnológico de Monterrey

This paper examines northbound crossings of personal vehicles and pedestrians from Mexico to the U.S. Sample size from January 1997 to December 2019 includes the period after December 2006 when then inaugurated Mexican government announced the “war on drugs”. We construct a series of border homicide share, which stands for the allocation of homicid...

This paper examines the sustainability of subnational governments in Mexico, focusing on its top 110 most indebted municipalities. We employ dynamic panel data techniques to assess whether municipal debt remained sustainable during 2007–2017. Our study finds that the subnational fiscal position of Mexican municipalities remains sustainable despite...

En este documento se analiza la relación entre las remuneraciones y la productividad laboral en México, a nivel estatal, considerando el impacto que la productividad de las entidades vecinas tiene en las remuneraciones locales. La omisión de la estructura espacial en las estimaciones puede conducir a un sesgo en el cálculo del parámetro de producti...

This paper examines the convergence of energy consumption per capita (ECPC) in the 32 Mexican states from 2002 to 2017. Regardless of the recent Global Financial Crisis and Mexican Energy Reform, we first find evidence of a positive, increasing, and statistically significant spatial correlation of ECPC across states. Using cross-section and spatial...

This study aimed to investigate the impact of people’s sentiments toward border crossings on personal vehicle and pedestrian crossings along the US–Mexico border. This study focused on regional factors and employed data derived from Google Trends as a proxy for people’s sentiments. Monthly data from the first quarter of 2004 to February 2020 were u...

This paper evaluates public debt sustainability in all 32 subnational Mexican states from 1993 to 2016. Using dynamic panel data methods, we find several interesting results. First, although subnational public debt in Mexican states, in general, is still sustainable, in some states, fiscal stances have been compromised in recent years. Second, usin...

This article examines manufacturing export determinants across Mexican states and regions from 2007 to 2015. Paying particular attention to the role of FDI, the analysis considers internal and external determinants of manufacturing exports under static and dynamic panel data methods. Several interesting results were obtained. First, the ratio of ma...

This paper examines absolute manufacturing labour productivity convergence across Mexican states and municipalities between 1993 and 2018, using census data and employing spatial econometric techniques. It applies a novel approach (spatial econometrics and disaggregation at the municipal level) to show that there is absolute convergence in manufact...

The purpose of this paper is twofold: To measure school technical efficiency and to identify the determinants of elementary school performance among Mexican states. Our panel data consist of 48,645 public elementary schools observed annually from 2009 to 2011, a period where subnational states administered most of the educational expenditure. We pr...

The paper investigates the exchange rate on the reaction function of 24 emerging markets economies’ (EMEs) central banks from 2000Q1 to 2015Q2. This is done by first employing fixed-effects (FE) ordinary least squares and then system generalized methods of the moments techniques. Under FE, the exchange rate is important in the reaction function of...

This paper examines the northbound crossings of personal vehicles from Mexico to the U.S. A monthly dataset, from January 1997 to September 2018, is implemented for panel data methods with heterogeneous slopes. Controlling for national economic conditions, local labor markets, and dummy variables, the major results are as follows. First, when the p...

This paper examines the effects of the 2008 financial crisis on economic growth and convergence across European countries from 1973 to 2012. Employing cross-sectional and dynamic panel data techniques, the results show that the global financial crisis has brought a greater absolute convergence rate rather than divergence, affected richer members mo...

This paper re‐examines inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the 32 subnational Mexican states based on quarterly data from 2005 to 2015, which includes rising drug‐related crimes. We estimate our models using panel data methods by type of crime, state‐level indicators (real wages and electricity consumption), macroeconomic forces (the real...

This article examines real wage determinants from 1996 to 2014 across Mexican states. Real wages are determined in equilibrium by combining labor supply (years of education and population growth) and labor demand (mostly external factors) forces. Panel data models provide two main results. First, years of education and U.S. real GDP appear to be re...

In this article, the objective is to focus on the likelihood that politicians will rely on intergovernmental transfers to pursue political ambition. In what circumstances are incumbents more likely to rely on transfers to win votes, than to reward core supporters? How are constraints (introduced to ensure that politicians rely on predetermined form...

We estimate residential water demand for Mexico´s Northern Border state of Nuevo León using data from the National Household Survey. Employing Shin's (1985) price perception model and instrumental variables (IV) techniques to deal with simultaneity problems, our findings indicate that households in the region respond to a 'perceived' price which is...

We examine the relation between government size and economic openness employing a panel of the 32 Mexican states between 1996 and 2006. Making use of two alternative measures of capital and labor openness and employing alternative econometric specifications, we first find systematic positive effects of our openness measures on the size of states’ t...

We reexamine in this paper the role of globalization on top income shares (five classes from top 0.1% to top 10% of the income distribution) for a sample of 15 economies over the period 1970-2004. We investigate financial globalization measures that complement trade openness. Our system GMM (SGMM) estimations allow for a robust treatment of the end...

This paper examines the evolution of Mexico’s labor productivity (GDP per worker) across its 32 sub-national entities from 2003 to 2013, during a period of rising drug-related crimes. Using quarterly data and economic controls, fixed effects models suggest the effects of crime are small and differ depending on whether such crimes are prosecuted by...

This paper examines how competition impacts the technical efficiency of schools. We model competition between schools using Geographical Information System (GIS) tools in order to develop a Herfindahl-Hirschman market concentration index (HHI) and then follow a stochastic frontier analysis with alternative specifications that enable us to obtain th...

Motivated by the recent experience of Greece and other relatively small European Monetary Union members, this paper examines the appeal of taking part in a large monetary union from the perspective of small open economies. We show that in the absence of fiscal policy considerations, taking part in a large monetary union is counterproductive for a s...

Government expenditures are procyclical if they increase in periods of economic growth and decrease in periods of economic downturn. This paper tests the proposition that (within federations) political pressures for public expenditure increase the likelihood that expenditures and intergovernmental transfers will be procyclical. An analysis of polit...

This article examines Mexico's (real) wage movements across its 32 subnational entities for post-North American Free Trade Agreement years. Employing dynamic panel data methods, we obtain the following results. First, education (or labor productivity) has slightly higher wage effects in the Border-North region. Second, allowing for foreign capital...

In this article, we examine the effects of three openness measures on 54 industrial and emerging economies' output growth over the “globalization years” of 1986–2004. Controlling for standard determinants of the Solow growth model in panel data, we find positive effects of openness on real output growth. While we find support for higher convergence...

This paper examines Mexico’s output convergence across its 32 states for 1993–2006, a period including the start of NAFTA. Employing dynamic panel data methods, our estimates provide interesting new results. First, we find positive rates of output absolute convergence across Mexican regions: varying from 1.5% for the years 1993–2006 to 9.4% for the...

This paper examines the effects of intra-industry imports on total factor productivity (TFP). Employing a new sample of 25 Mexican manufacturing industries with annual data from 1984 to 2000, interesting panel data results emerge. First, we find the positive impact of intra-industry imports on productivity to be substantially larger after NAFTA. Se...

Panel data studies typically average out the error terms to be five calendar years apart such that they are less influenced by business cycle fluctuations. Using dynamic growth equations over the globalization years of 1986-2004, we provide an examination of the role of government expenditures to GDP (G/Y) in long-run growth. While the yearly time...

This paper compares credibility and the impact of real shocks on a small open economy operating under two opposite corner solutions: a flexible exchange rate and official dollarization. Using an asymmetric two-country model, we show that although dollarization is an effective device to achieve price stability and avoid credibility problems, small o...

This paper studies the effects of capital and labor mobility on real wages across Mexican states for the period 1997-2006. Employing dynamic panel data methods, we find: (1) strong positive effects on real wages from foreign direct investment (FDI) and from migration; (2) domestic and foreign migration provide similar wage effects; and (3) alternat...

We examine the effects of labor productivity and total factor productivity (TFP) on employment across 25 Mexican manufacturing industries from 1984 to 2000. Employing panel data methods, several interesting findings emerge. First, we observe a strong and positive impact of NAFTA on employment. Second, productivity exerts a procyclical, positive eff...

This paper examines the effects of inflation targeting on industrial and emerging economies' output growth over the "globalization years" of 1986-2004. Controlling for trade openness and two indicators of financial globalization, the authors find systematic positive and significant effects of inflation targeting on real output growth. In dynamic mo...

This paper studies the implications of inflation targeting (IT) regimes for public debt accumulation. By utilizing a simple dynamic macroeconomic policymaking model, we show that IT regimes may lead to higher public debt. Our results suggest that in countries where there are inherent distortions in the economy all IT regimes can do is shift the bur...

This paper presents an empirical assessment of the performance of EMEs that have adopted inflation targets to conduct monetary policy. In contrast to the evidence previously found for industrial economies, we observe that IT has really mattered for EMEs' price stability. Cross-section and panel estimations consistently suggest that IT has significa...

This paper compares the impact of real shocks on small open economies operating under two opposite corner solutions: flexible exchange rates and official dollarization. Using an asymmetric two-country model of policy coordination, we show that although a pegged regime like dollarization is an effective device to achieve price stability, small open...

Motivated by the accession of new member states into the European Union, this paper examines the appeal of taking part in a large monetary union from the perspective of small open economies. Consistent with existing findings in the literature, we show that in the absence of fiscal policy considerations, tak- ing part in a large monetary union is co...

A vast literature employs vector autoregressions (VAR) methods in order to capture whether innovations in productivity lead to increases or decreases in employment for U.S. manufacturing. Studying 25 Mexican manufacturing industries with annual data from 1984 to 2000, we examine labour productivity (value added per employee) and total factor produc...